This past weekend I traveled about an hour north of Bangkok to go to Ayutthaya, which is the former capital of Thailand that was sacked by Burmese invaders about 300 years ago. That means it is a place full of historical value, where ancient ruins poke up every which where around a modern town and you can tour through the ruined temple grounds. Which is what we did. It was a little bit of a drizzly day, but the weather seemed to perfectly match the moment of meandering around and looking at pretty old things. It was a magically photogenic little world, here's a snippet:

Well, I've fallen behind a little bit in my blogging, but I have the pictures from an amazing weekend in Kanchanaburi to make my apologies for me (we actually went a week ago, this past weekend was spend on a rather boring beach in Hua Hin, where the highlight was that there was good coffee everyday, olive tapanade, and a tv with english movies in our hotel room - so good things, but not really exciting ones)

But last weekend, I went back to Kanchanaburi (of the elephant riding and the waterfall swimming) It was, again, an immensely happy and fun weekend. I'm beginning to think its my favorite place in Thailand.

went back to the elephants, they're still hungry

it is still incredible to swim on them, with them

we saw a cave, with a temple in it

giant buddha relaxing in a natural cave


and then for the amazing day! On Sunday a friend and I went to the Safari Park, where, we'd heard, you rode around in a big safari van and got to be accosted by giraffes who were hungry for your company (or really, for your carrots). It more than lived up to my wildest dreams of a Safari Park in Thailand. Here are the highlights:

feeding carrots to kissing giraffes (and one of them kissed me!)

freaking out over how many giraffes had entered our bus

meeting the sweetest, saddest gibbon that has ever existed

holding on to that gibbon's hand, when he really didn't want to let go

Katie fed a baby tiger

I fed a baby leopard (and oh my gosh.... he just looked up at me with these big green baby leopard eyes. It was the most incredible thing, he was basically calling me mom)