| The best accommodation in Ayutthaya
Cattani's Riverside Home
Ayutthaya is an ancient city of ruins in Thailand. Although this place is quite well discovered by tourism, it was not easy to find good accommodation here. But finally, we stumbled upon a hidden gem! Cattani’s Riverside Home, which is located a bit outside of the old city centre, next to the Chao Phraya River, is the place to relax during a roundtrip of Thailand.
Quickly go to
Years ago on our first trip together to Bali, we decided to try a homestay. It wasn’t quite as we’d expected. I remember feeling puzzled when I first used the toilet there, in our outdoor bathroom, and was holding a slightly damp roll of paper that was split in half.
“What could have happened here?” I thought.
The mystery was ultimately solved when Maurits returned from the same bathroom with a picture of a cat he’d noticed sitting on the wall. Apparently the owners – probably with a mind for not wanting to waste what could still be used – rolled the paper back up after the cat had its fun with it.
We left the next day, deciding homestays just weren’t for us. We were wrong!
Now, six years later, our perspective completely changed when we visited Cattani’s Riverside Home. By far our best stay in Thailand!
The hot pie on arrival, slow-cooked ribs for lunch (and dinner!), the magical garden, clean and lavishly decorated rooms, but above all the hospitality of the owners Nana and Brian, made Cattani’s Riverside Home a place for which we would gladly return to Ayutthaya.
Cattani’s Riverside Home
Cattani’s is a small, family run homestay, with three spacious apartments, which are lavishly decorated and connected together through a beautiful tropical garden and a passion for nature and travel.
All the rooms had so many personal touches, created from bespoke furniture that the owners had collected over years of travelling together and living in various places in the world. Ayutthaya is Nana’s hometown, however, which is why they decided to return and make their place here.
We stayed at the smallest of the apartments, which is decorated in Japanese style. The room was very clean and comfortable, especially the bed. It is incredibly difficult to put into words how beautiful and nice this place was. You just have to experience it for yourself!
In the garden we’d watch the squirrels play whilst having the best possible food made by Nana and her sisters. The oven used for the 8 hours slow-cooked spareribs was sitting next to us on the terrace, emitting a delicious smell of what was to come. Nana told us that the oven would make life unbearable inside, as it was doing its magic almost daily.
Maurits hasn’t stopped talking about the ribs since and couldn’t recommend them more. He had them for lunch, then dinner and then lunch again. O, and dinner again. He insists that this was only because they didn’t also serve them for breakfast.
But the other food was also wonderful. Even if you are not staying at Cattani’s, we can definitely recommend coming here in the weekends for lunch or dinner. During weekdays, the restaurant is only open for homestay guests.
We would stay in the garden until long after dinner, having conversations over wine with Brian about life and all that comes with it. It was a place where wonderful new connections were made – also with the other guests.
This personal ambiance is one of the main reasons to choose for a homestay over a hotel or resort, but we’d never experienced it like this before. We hope to relive this again in the future and that others may share in this as well.
Ayutthaya
Cattani’s Riverside Home can be found in Ayutthaya, which was the capital of Siam (as Thailand was previously named) before the Burmese attacked and moved it to Bangkok in 1782.
In this city, you can still visit the impressive remains of that what once was. This includes the famous temples in Ayutthaya, like Wat Chai Watthanaram, Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon, Wat Lokayasutharam and Wat Phra Mahathat, the temple with the famous buddha in the bodhi tree.
We visited all these sites and wrote a special blogpost about this here.
How to get here?
Ayutthaya is easy to reach from Bangkok. It is only a 1.5 hour drive from here. You can travel to Ayutthaya in different ways, by car, taxi, bus, train, but also with a unique cruise of two days and one night. For up-to-date travel information, such as connections and times, it is best to check the site of 12Go.
Cheap flights to Thailand
We recommend comparing offers from Skyscanner and Kiwi.com. We still use Skyscanner in most cases to find the most favourable flight tickets to South-East Asia. But recently we have also discovered Kiwi . The advantage of the latter search engine is that you can book tickets directly with Kiwi and have all your baggage included in the price. This saves unexpected additional costs.
Hi, we are Samira & Maurits, a travel-hungry couple with a passion for photography.
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