The fifth day found me in Ayutthaya where we had a free day to explore the city before heading to Chiang Mai using a local overnight expressed train.

The sweet, historic little Ayutthaya is one of those towns that I pretty much recommend to every single traveler who is thinking to visit Thailand. With its incredible sights, slice of small-town Thai life, easy accessibility, and manageable size, it’s hard to imagine anyone who would be immune to its charms.

Since we had the day free to explore, I have decided to visit the local markets that were near my hotel.

If I’m not mistaken It was called Chao Phrom Market. This is the most famous local market in Ayutthaya as it offers food, clothing, and day to day necessities at a variety of shops and stalls. More for locals, the food is fantastic, good clothing deals can be found as well. If you want to have a real touch of the local Thai market, you should not miss this place.

While visiting the local market it was a great opportunity to grab lunch and taste the local food and desserts they had. It offered enough choices, even a few vegetarian dishes, the food was prepared on the spot and served steaming and fresh.

Further inside one of the alleys, I stumbled onto a beautifully presented stall with a variety of Thai desserts. The smiling vendor noticing my bag of several Thai treats, she invited me to taste her homemade desserts.

One of her specialties is the Thai ‘Fish Egg’ dessert. These funny looking deserts are called Thai fish eggs due to their shape and color. This local dessert is made from palm sugar and doesn’t taste at all like fish eggs. To eat this dessert, you dip one ‘fish egg’ into a small container filled with shredded coconut. This dessert has a gooery texture and a light coconut taste.

Ayutthaya is one of the best eating towns in Thailand. It all goes back to the history of course. This was the place where pre-existing Thai culinary traditions absorbed rice noodles and flame heated woks from China, unleavened breads from the Muslim word, dry spices from India, sticky rice noodles from Mon, baked goods from Europe and rice flour sweets from Japan.

Did you know that the first of Ayutthaya’s signature specialties is Kway Teow Rua, or boat noodles? I didn’t, until recently. Back in the city’s heyday, Chinese vendors plied the many canals selling bowls of rice noodles in pork broth tempered with roasted pig’s blood from the comfort of their wooden sampans. Today these long and narrow rowboats remain, but they’re propped up and used as counter space at the boat noodle shops found all over town. One of the best is Jay Muey, located just off Uthong Road on the southeast side of the island. Medium-size bowls go for 20 baht (order two to fill up) and are filled with your choice of rice noodles along with pork liver, crackling deep-fried pork skin, pork balls, roasted pork and greens bobbing in a dark-brown broth that will leave you feeling warm and cosy.

Another fine option for kuay tiao ruea is Pa Lek, conveniently located within sight of the historical park off Chikun Road — look for an open-sided dining area marked by a Thai script sign in red, white and green. The large and extremely popular place serves small 15-baht bowls of pork or beef noodles that virtually every Thai visitor to Ayutthaya seems to want to try.

A reflection of Ayutthaya’s very old Muslim community, the second notable local specialty is roti sai mai, threads of twirled palm sugar wrapped in round unleavened bread and served at room temperature. Not the dentist’s best friend, the threads taste something like cotton candy, with a consistency strangely similar to human hair. Rolled up in the thin slices of roti, the threads melt in the mouth and come in a host of flavours, from banana to strawberry to coconut and pandan. To try it, head for “Roti Road” — the stretch of Uthong Road that runs along the southern belly of the island around Ayutthaya Hospital. Dozens of vendors sell puffy bags of the colourful sweet by day and night.

A third well-known Ayutthaya food is giant freshwater prawn, which is farmed in the area and prized for a melt-in-the-mouth texture and flavour that’s supposedly superior to other prawns. You’ll find them at several large seafood restaurants with riverside dining terraces located, once again, on the south side of the island off Uthong Road. One popular spot is Ban Mai Lim Nam, serving a full range of Thai seafood dishes in a fairly easy to find riverside location south of the Historical Park. While whole steamed fishes, plates of grilled squid and other options will run you 200 to 300 baht, prepare to pay over 1,000 baht for just three or four of the giant prawns — one of them should be about the size of your forearm.

Right across from the Soi Farang backpacker strip, a smaller collection of street food stalls set up every night along Naresuan Road. They’re accustomed to foreign travellers and many offer English menus, making this an easy place to sample classic Thai street dishes like khao ka muu (roasted pork shoulder with rice) and krapao gai (wok-fried minced chicken with chillies, garlic and Thai basil) for around 30 baht a plate. In the same vicinity, Chao Phrom Market sets up daily from early morning until early afternoon and is a good place to score Thai sweets made from sticky rice and coconut, khanom krok (a sweet fried corn and coconut dumpling), fried bananas and fresh fruit.

The time passed quickly exploring the old capital, and it was time to go back to the hotel for a shower and get some rest before going to the train station.

Late afternoon we had to say goodbye to beautiful Ayutthaya and their welcoming people and head on to the city’s train station to catch up the expressed train for Chiang Mai…..A well-earned rest on a 12 hour journey until the next stop.

Ayutthaya train station is the main railway station of Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province. It is owned by the state Railway of Thailand and it is served by the Northern Line and the Northeastern Line. I have found out that it serves 77 trains per day, equivalent to 10,000-12,000 people passing through it daily.

I have never been in such a train before with private cabins with a lower and upper bed, it was an awesome experience.

Stay Tuned for more adventures in Chiang Mai…