Bridge Over the River Kwai

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Kanchanaburi
Saw Bridge Over River Kwai
Lots of History.

Okay, I must admit before leaving for Kanchanaburi I did not really know the importance of all of the things I would be seeing. Let me tell you that I learned a lot of WWII history!

This was the first day of my tour. It was a bit disorganized BUT I reminded myself that "you get what you pay for" and I just started to take things as they came to me. Can't really complain when I only spent 500TB per day for my tour (that translates to about $16CDN - all meals and accommodations included!)

Most of the morning was spent getting thru Bangkok rush hour and then driving to Kanchanaburi. Then we stopped off at a War Cemetary and the JEATH Museum. It was all rather random at the JEATH (Stands for Japan, England, Australia, Thailand and Holland. All the nations involved in the building of the Death Railway.) Not only did they have information on the hardships, deaths and history of the building of the railway from Thailand to Burma during the Second World War but they had some pretty random displays such as Miss Thailand, Gems, Stamps, Coins, Famous Genius' and Royalty to name a few things. To top it off, they charged 30TB entry fee for the "maintenance" of the museum. Meanwhile you look at all of the mannequins and they are either missing fingers or other appendages and/or have massive cobwebs hanging off of them. After a quick walk through the maze of buildings we headed over to the Bridge and took a little walk over it. Nothing too spectacular.

Next stop was to our accommodations at the C&C Jungle huts, for the night where we dropped off our packs. It was a pretty cool place. Our rooms were in tree house like structures. Pretty neat even though I ended up with the highest one! After a bit of a rest we were carted off to Erawan National Park to check out the 7-tiered waterfall. They charge 200TB to foreigners and 15TB to Thai locals. Everyone in my group kept telling me that I should have said I was Thai. LOL Being a really hot and humid day...I swear it was at least 10 degrees hotter in Kanchanaburi than it was in Bangkok…if that is possible! The walk up to the seventh tier was about 4.5 km. We were joking that with the incredible heat it must have been at least three times that distance. Heck...round trip we must have completed a half marathon! lol When we got to the bottom it was such a relief to see the ice cold drinks for sale. They could have charged us whatever they wanted because all of us had consumed all of the water we had brought with us...obviously not enough!

It was back to our tree top Jungle huts where we enjoyed a really nice Thai dinner and the 10 of us talked the evening away.

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