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Published: July 14th 2006
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So we finally left the Islands! They are everything that people say they are and more and we stayed down there for far longer then we planned, as a result we've only got a few days left on the Thai visas and have to get out of the country - I think this is going to end up being a scramble for the Laos border!
We caught a sleeper train back up from Surat Thani to Hualampong in Bangkok, dumped our mammoth sized backpacks at the left luggage and went into bangkok to get our Laos and Vientnam visas, then into a taxi to the South bus station and off to Kanchanaburi about three hours west of Bangkok on the way to Myanmar.
When we rocked up we were both tired, hungry and grumpy and the weather was really hot and humid so we caught a really shady looking sawngthaew (pick up truck/taxi) to the nearest hotel/floatel on the river Kwai and got some food and slept! kanchanaburi is a funny little place, its near enought to Bangkok to have a lot of european expats and all the usual sex trade and techno bars that, that brings with it,
but still quite countryish. The views are amazing with loads of big limesteone mountains, sugar caine plantations and forests.
Anyways we spent the first night at a dodgy little place called the sugar cane; complete with resident mosquitoes and cockroaches! We also had these really annoying floating Thai discos that would sail by every half an hour playing this really dodgy Thai rave music. The place was precariously floating on the river Kwai on about a dozen barrels and getting to it involved threading across some really old looking boards! On the positive side it had a bed and a really great view of the river and the bridge itself.
We moved to a much nicer place, that had other guests (always a good sign), called blue star the next day! They had much nicer residents including a family of kittens that very quickly moved into our room - I think that the cat food that we left outside may be encouraging them! The thing is you just feel sorry for them, You see dozens of lame dogs and skinny stray cats out here and the Thai's have absolutely no interest they seem to be just as happy
to kick them off then fuss over them. (I've stuck a couple of pics of them below)
Kanchanaburi is famous for the bridge over the river Kwai and death railway where 100,000 POWs died building a Japanese railway to Burma during World War II. There are three or four war cemeteries dotted around the town as well as museums. We went to the main allied one which, even though its 60 years on, is still really sad - especially reading the headstones.
We caught a taxi a few miles outside Kanchanuri to a place called the tiger temple, we heard that they had some 'friendly' tigers that you could stroke and play with!! Apparently local poachers shot a tiger ten years ago and gave the cubs to a monk to raise - I guess things snowballed because now they have about twenty. Anyways its not quite what we expected but it was still absolutely unbelievably amazing. Its based in a buddhist temple, but its really just a big organic farm with loads of water buffalo and boars and stuff roaming around. In a part of it there is a quarry where they have eleven fully grown semi tame
tigers! The tigers' keepers hold your hand and walk you around a few of them and your allowed to stroke them and stuff - then at the end you're allowed to walk with them back to their pens and stroke them. Its funny we came here full of confidence, but when you sit beside one of the things you realise how much bigger then you he is!!! Its really incredible when you get to the pens all the boars and pigs start going nuts at the sight of the tigers and the big water buffalo bulls line up and start moving toward them aggressively; but the tigers don't even bat an eyelid! I'd recommend it to anyone it was really good!
We spent a couple more days in Kanchanaburi. Got really hammered in an Irish bar, that was run by a Phillipino woman, while we were watching the England v Portugal game - hangovers hurt in the heat! Ended up talking to a Thai prostitute for about two hours (and didn't spend a penny - honestly mam!) she started telling us how her folks stuck her on the street when she was fourteen! and some really nasty stuff like
that. Went home stayed in bed, chewed on paracetomol and played with the kittens all the next day!
On the last day in Kanchanaburi we went up to a place called Erawan national park - they've got seven levels of waterfalls that are all incredible. Its like something from a Timotei commercial. There are monkeys in the trees that come down and grab your food and some German guys camera, snakes, loads of lizards and apparently some big cats. The falls are about thirty foot high and fall into turqouise pools that are full of really big fish that nip at your feet when you jump in. We didn't get nearly long enough here before having to run to catch the last bus back to Kanchanaburi! You come away from the place feeling really calm and happy - proper tree hugging hippy stuff! but absolutely brilliant.
Met a painter from Bangkok on the bus on the way back - in very pidgeon English he explained how he had travelled up with his sister and his mam to sort out his wife who had ran off with another man!! tuh Women
Catching the bus back to Bangkok
later and then onto another twelve hour bus trip across the 'friendship bridge' to the Peoples Democratic Republic of Laos!
Hi to everyone
Noel
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