To the central plains!

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We started our journey from Koh Lanta at 10am getting picked up by minibus at our resort and driven to Krabi bus station where we booked a bus to Surat Thani. We then got a bus from Surat Thani town to the railway station and boarded an overnight train at 9pm arriving in Bangkok at 9am the following day. We had to get the underground to the Chinese embassy to apply for our visa - got ticket number 191 so 2 hours later we finally submitted the form. Then got the underground, a bus, a water taxi and a tuk-tuk to Thomburi train station to finally catch our 2pm train to Kanchanaburi!

We were the only westerners on the train and were the entertainment for the locals. They kept pinching our skin and saying how white we were - do they not know we just spent 10 days on a beach trying to tan!!!! One man wanted to practice his English so it made for a long 3 hour journey!!!

Our hostel for the next 3 nights was a river raft - something different!! On our first day we had a wander around the town and went to the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre. This is a museum all about the building of the 'death railway' and as neither of us did history, it was quite interesting to learn about this aspect of WW2. The Japanese forced thousands of POW's to build this 415km railway in under 20 months in horrific conditions. Over 12, 000 of them died and a further 90,000 Asian's who were conscripted to help. Next to the museum is the cemetry for the POW's.

On our second day we went on a tour. First stop was the Erawan Waterfall which has 7 tiers of beautiful clear water. We only managed up to the 5th tier as we were wearing flip-flops and couldn't go any further without risk of serious injury!! We then went to 'Hellfire Pass', which is a portion of the death railway where POW's had to cut into rock to make way for the train. We then went on the train along the railway for about 30 minutes, hugging the cliff face and crossing over a wooden tressle bridge built by the POW's. Last stop was the imfamous Bridge over the River Kwai.

Back to Bangkok (for the 5th time) for 2 days before we flew out to Hong Kong.

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