The Juckers

Last day before we head for South Africa. We did sweet nothing all day! Just relax and counting the hours before we leave. We leave tomorrow night from Bangkok then to Hong Kong then South Africa. This is the end of the South East Asia Blog for the Juckers! Thanks for reading. Next will be South Africa Blog, only once every week or so as we will be at the beach most of the time........ read more

We decided to go see the Tiger Temples today and go see a few other things in that area. We hires a motorbike for the day and head off at about 9am. We heard that you can play with the tiger cubs and have photos touching the big tigers. They start at about 1pm and the tourist buses come around 2.30pm so we wanted to avoid the tourist bus. Our first stop was Krasae Cave, which is situated along the Death Railway. It took us a while to get here as the road signs from the main road all of a sudden change to the Thai language, so we stopped and had to ask directions 100 times. We eventually got there. These caves were used by the Japanese to house the POW who were working on ... read more

Today we hired bicycles to see the town and the bridge on the river Kwai. The Bridge On The River Kwai is about 2 km from where we were staying. What can one say about a bridge? It was nice? Apart from the history, there is nothing amazing about this bridge. When you walk over it, it has a amazing view of the river which is very clean. So I tell Linda to walk ahead so I can get a photo of her on the bridge. I turn around for 5 seconds and find Linda in a photo shoot like she was some sort of a movie star by what appeared to be Malay people. Very funny to watch Linda getting treated like a movie star! While walking on the bridge we notices a floating restaurant ... read more

We took the morning train from Lopburi to Bangkok then had to take a taxi to another train station to get a train to Kanchaburi. 2 hours on a hard seat from Bangkok, we arrive in Kanchanaburi. When we got off, as usual there are tuck tuck guys everywhere. We had a general idea on where we wanted to go so decided to walk. A few hundred meters we bump into a oldish guy on a bicycle and cart in the back. He asks if we need help, having heard the story to many times we say we are ok. Then he says he can take us to the hotels for free because he gets commission. Still saying we are ok, he persists. Finally we feel sorry for him and jump on. Linda, 2 big back ... read more

We arrived early in the morning having taken the night train from Chiang Mai. The train was so so, we had seating so it was a little better than taking the bus! We arrived at the station at 7.00am and were greeted by a huge gold statue of a monkey with the hugest balls, sorry, there is no easy way of writing it! So we jump off only to be greeted by tuck tuck drivers. We knew where we wanted to stay, a hotel that is said to be the playground for the monkeys as they run and swing on the window bars. No idea where it was, we decide to take a bicycle cart sort of thing each, costing 30 baht each. As we sit in and get ready to suck in the scenery, the ... read more

Today we set of bright and early as we had to have the jeep back by 11am and still had some waterfalls to see and a bit of a drive as well! So off we go, Team Swissdens last leg of the road trip. Spirits high and everyone keen to see the waterfalls as they were supposed to be the best ones in the region. We first stop to fill up gas and notice a morning market with food and stuff so we decide to get breakfast there. Alex and I order noddles with chilly! Bloody hot chilly, our noses were running and tung paralyzed. I think the girls had fruit, safe choice! Not even 20 minutes into the trip we start going down a steep hill. We smell breaks burning and hear a scraping noise. ... read more

Today our goal is to get to a town called Khun Yuam so we can see the waterfalls and another hot spring. Along the way we stop off at a number of small waterfalls. We seem to be driving forever again, praying it is the the right direction. We found a hot spring and it looked like one could swim there. So we all jump out and make our way to the spring. Unfortunately, the spring was there but we couldn't swim as it is to hot. They did have these small rooms with swimming pools you could hire and they fill it with cold water and hot water from a spring. This was not what we had in mind, four of us in a small room sitting in water! One place we we wanted to ... read more

Today we set off early for Lod Cave and made sure we knew where we were going so we never spent time driving in the wrong direction. Now the drive to Lod Cave was pretty amazing, up and down mountains, small villages, etc. The only reason we saw small villages was because we got so lost again. It turned out we drove straight past Lod Cave and did a full circle, through small villages, dirt roads, steep and bad dirt roads. All the time we are asking for directions and are told go straight! 3 hours later,We finally get to what we thought was Lod Cave but turned out to be a resort with bungalows not to far from Lod Cave. Hungry and tired we stop here to have lunch. The place is pretty cool, fire ... read more

So we got to Chiang Mai expecting it to be a lot like Sappa, relaxed little town in the hills with hill side tribes all over town in the market. Wrong, it was arriving to Bangkok. It is a pretty big city with a lot of western influence,like, Mc Donald's, KFC, Toyota car dealerships, etc. We met a Swiss couple on the bus to Chiang Mai Corine and Alex and made friends with them. We decided to share a taxi to the backpackers area and would meet up that evening for a drink. That evening we decided to go on a road trip to Pie and around. We hired a jeep for 3 days and set off in the morning on what was to be, Team Swissden Road Trip. Because 3 of us were Swiss and ... read more

25 November. "Heading north". After two hours waiting at the bus station in Vientienne we caught the bus to Nong Khai on the Thailand side. The boarder crossing went swiftly and one or so hour later we had crossed the friendship bridge joining Laos and Thailand and were relaxing at the Mut Mee guest house, a peaceful and very nice guest house on the Mekong riverbank. We had a nice dinner on a riverboat cruise on the Mekong watching the sunset. After the boatride we went back to listen to some live music being played at the floating pub situated just below the guest house. Chris had been sleeping poorly for a few days due to uncomfortable beds but after a few drinks we headed straight to bed and enjoyed a good nights sleep in the ... read more