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Published: November 8th 2007
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The last couple of days have been amazing!! I am currently in Kanchanaburi, a town famous for The Bridge Over The River Kwai - building this bridge and railway track caused thousands of deaths to prisoners of wars during World War Two, due to the extremely bad conditions the prisoners were kept in.
However as well a being a very historical town, it is also a place surrounded by lush countryside, beautiful rivers, waterfalls, mountains and jungle. Kanchanaburi was one of my favourite destinations on my last trip, so I just had to come back!! Since I have already seen all the museums and other historic sites I decided to focus on the great outdoors this time, so headed to Erawan National Park. I have been to Erawan National Park before on an organised tour, but we were only given 2 hours to explore it, so I was keen to spend a bit more time there. This time I managed to find a tour that gave us 4 hours there, which turned out to be the perfect amount of time.
We set off early in the morning (8am), so when we arrived, both me and Kim were half asleep,
however as soon as we entered the park I felt on a high. The waterfalls here are truly spectacular!! The park itself is very pretty - it feels like something from a Disney film, with turquoise water gushing everywhere, oversized roots weaving their way through the ground, multicoloured butterflys flying around and lots and lots of trees!! It's quite a steep trek to see the waterfalls as there are 7 different tiers, so me and Kim were soon feeling pretty exhausted, so we had to stop at a viewpoint, where you could see trees for miles - it was beautiful. We had decided to try and trek to the top waterfall and then walk down and swim in the pools on the way down, but it took us about an hour and half just to reach the fifth level - I guess I'm not as fit as I thought!! The fith level waterfall was my favourite, so we decided to stay there for a while and go for a swim. In the end, we decided not to bother with the last two waterfalls, as all the people coming back down with them said it was quite hard work making it
up there and not really worth the effort.
On the way down I noticed that at one of the waterfalls there was a ledge where you could stand behind the waterfall - some guys had done it and made it look easy, so I decided to give it a go. It was surprisingly hard to get to the waterfall as you have to swim against the direction of the water and the water was absolutely freezing!! I felt almost like I couldn't breathe from the combination of icy water and the spray which was coming from the waterfall, but I finally managed to climb up!! Feelling a huge sense of achievement I swam back to the edge of the pool to see if Kim fancied having a go. Kim jumped in and attempted to get behind the ledge but couldn't do it, so I guess its a lot harder than it looks!!
The next day still feeling on a high from our experience at Erawan National Park, we decided to go on an elephant ride, however this wasn't just any elephant ride - we got to bathe with them in the river!! Now I'm not sure if all
of you know this, but elephants are my favourite animals in the world, so as you can imagine I was really really excited about this!!! I have had an elephant ride before and I know they can get boring after a while, but I really enjoyed this one as it not only went through the jungle - it also went past a Karen village - this a local tribes village where they live in bamboo houses, so it was great to see local scenery. Sometimes when you visit tribes people it can feel a bit too voyeuristic and touristy and they often get stuff out to sell to you as soon as you are there, so wondering past on the back of an elephant was refreshing as they just ignored us and got on with their daily life.
After the village, we reached the river where we were to get changed into a lifejacket so we could go bathing with the elephants. I went first and gave Kim my camera to take some photos. I felt a bit nervous getting on the back of the elephant, as with most elephant rides you sit on a basket on their back,
but to bathe with them you sit on the elephants neck, where the mahoot (the elephants owner/trainer) would normally sit. The ride started well and I managed to get on the elephants back without falling off, but then we headed into the river. This was actually surprisingly scary as the mahoot kept getting the elephant to dive under the water, so that my head almost went under the water (I think it would have, had I not been wearing a life jacket). It was also great fun and I spent the entire time laughing and screaming!! It was one of the best experiences I've ever had!!!
I think we'll head to Chiang Mai next as I want to see some more elephants and beautiful scenery!!
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