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Published: January 10th 2008
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For our last few days in Thailand we took a 3 day trip out to Kanchanaburi, most commonly known for the famed bridge over the river Kwai. Most hotels and travel shops offer trips but we found the cheapest by far is the big Israeli travel agent across from the top of Koh San road. We got tickets here for half the price other places were offering. We were the only Westerners on our bus sharing with 2 monks, about 8 Thais and a guy from Singapore. We had to kill some time before we took off and a nice couple, on their way to a wedding, treated us to some Thai street vendor food; bananas in sugar cane syrup. Delicious! Our driver was as reckless as we’ve become used to and we even slept as we dodged traffic at high speeds.
We picked a guesthouse, Pong Phen, by the river from the Lonely Planet guide which turned out to be really nice. The staff were all pretty friendly, the food was good and the views out over the river were ok but we couldn't see the bridge. Having heard about the karaoke boats we watched a few go by
but decided against giving them a go as we didn’t know any of the songs and they were mostly empty. It rained a good bit while we were there and each time we came back to our room there would be an army of tiny baby frogs hopping around. They were so cute but it did get a bit stressful trying to avoid squishing them as there were so many. Our first night we wandered down the main tourist drag to find a pub showing the Wigan v Fulham match which ended up being a 1-1 draw.
On day 2 we booked a trip to the tiger temples through our guesthouse and got collected there. There were other people to collect in the town so we wandered around the stalls for a few minutes checking out some more food; bbq pork and chicken on skewers. This also turned out to be yummy and was very popular with the locals. When we arrived at the tiger temple we had 20 minutes before the tigers were walked back from the canyon to their cages. We were whisked around the tiger stations being careful to stay behind the tigers at all times.
Some of them were huge! Ade got to rub the tiger cub’s belly which was really cool. At the end all the tourists had to stand to one side and the tigers were led out by their handlers but we were allowed, one at a time, to walk beside a tiger and the founding monk for a photo opportunity. The ladies had to be very careful not to touch the monk as is customary in the buddhist religion! When that was all over there were a few tiger cubs playing and we got to touch them and Ade got to hold one. It was all very exciting. On the estate there are also loads of other animals which were fed during our visit. It was so funny. A truck drove out and chucked out loads of bags of potatoes and all the animals went nuts. There were cows, buffalo, deer, wild boar, peacocks and goats but to Ade they were all tiger fodder.
Back in Kanchanaburi we hit the Jeath War Museum. It is very detailed and while some of it was interesting we found it was a little bit daunting. Instead of having captions by each exhibit it
had novels and the bits we did end up reading seemed to repeat themselves a lot. Still, very informative, although it made a point of trying not to make the Japanese look too bad which is quite a difficult thing to do given the circumstances. We walked across the bridge at this point and saw the tourist train go over and the karaoke boats drift under. It’s a bit like a carnival all around with hundreds of tourists milling about and stalls set up everywhere selling anything including jewellery, dvds and food. We bought the film The Bridge Over the River Kwai but much to our frustration after over two hours of viewing it cut to Thai karaoke as the men were about to blow the bridge so we never saw the end!
The next day we didn’t move too quickly so the only option we had to see the Erawan falls was to rent scooters and drive ourselves. We didn’t pick a great day for it and got soaked there and back having to stop often to regain feeling in our fingers and toes. It was over 70km each way and took hours. We didn’t have a lot
of time at the falls either but it was enough to appreciate them and we wouldn’t have missed it given the choice to do it again. It’s like being transported to a scene from the elven forest in Lord of the Rings. There are different steps of waterfalls in a beautiful forest that you follow a trail through and can swim in each one. On the way back we nearly ran out of petrol but luckily the restaurant we stopped in had a litre for sale in a coke bottle so we made it back without incident.
We headed back to Bangkok the next day to get ready to fly to Vietnam. We organised visas, replaced Ash’s lost sunglasses, Ade got the Warcraft game and loaded another 30 albums on to our mp3 player. We also bought a laptop in the 6 storey Panthip Plaza and picked up post from the Poste Restante including Ash’s birthday presents :-) Hanoi next stop...
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Mom
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Body language
Body language doesn't lie. You two look a bit hesitant around that big cat. Something tells me you didn't say "Here kitty kitty..."