River Kwai Resort

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The time in Bangkok was over for now and I was heading to Ratchaburi province about 100km west of Bangkok. I would be staying with a friend of my uncles who has a toy company based in Thailand. A delivery driver who had a drop off in Bangkok picked me up for the journey. For my sake, he brought a young english speaking woman who was working as a nanny for the family. The ride was very quiet to say the least, but it was nice to get out of the city.

After meeting up with Cole he gave me a quick tour of the factory, then he took me to his house and armed me with a bike for the afternoon. I got some very odd looks during my bike ride. I can confidently say I was one of the few white folks in the area. We had dinner at a small family restaraunt on a lake where no English was spoken. This was a huge advantage of being with a thai speaker, going where no tourist can go.

The weekend was spent outside Chantaburi on the River Kwai with some Coles friends and their families. The location was only about 40 km from the Burmese border. One family was from Beijing but had lived in Portland for 4 years. Another man was from Australia, but he married and Thai woman and worked in Bangkok. Again, a very international group. The resort was amazing and set right on the River Kwai in the jungle. We did quite a few activities from riding elephants, to bike rides to a bamboo float trip. The highlight had to be playing with Coles speed boat. Along with a business shipment from Portland, Cole loaded up a brand new aluminum 200HP motor boat and sent it to Thailand. He brought this up for the weekend and with some clever thinking we launched the boat on the river Kwai. I don't think any of the locals had seen such a boat before. We even jimmy rigged a system to get Cole water skiing on a wind surfing board. We were able to cover so much ground on that boat and make it a long ways up the river.

Overall an incredible weekend with some great people. I hitched a ride with the foreign families back to Bangkok. I had a meeting to get to with my intrepid tour group. The tour was taking off the next morning at 7am for a 8-10 hour drive to Siem Reap in Cambodia.

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