Chillin with tigers, Elephant rides, and swimmin in waterfalls...typical Thai

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July 11th 2006

Published: July 11th 2006

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Stephilynn

little boy bravely crossing log

I love Thailand! I just got back from the best weekend I've had yet. This weekend was the holiday of Buddha's enlightenment so we got off Monday and Tuesday. On friday night, me, my roommates, and a bunch of other international kids went to a place called RCA. It is a street lined with dance clubs. It was so fun hanging out with kids from Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and of course U.S. The next day we spend shopping at JJ Market and I finally got the rest of everyone's souveniers..I think. Then we also went to Siam Paragon for the sole purpose of getting Subway. Sunday morning we woke up, headed to the train station, and took a very scenic four hour ride to Kanchanaburi (north of Bangkok). I've never been on a long train trip before so it was very very exciting. Then we asked some Thai people sitting with us to help us know when it was our stop, the cities weren't exactly announced over an intercom. After one stop, one started looking worried and then discovered we had just missed out stop. We got off on the next one hoping we could catch another train the other way

mountains

for a bit. Well the next stop wasn't even a stop, just sorta dropped us off on a field close to a road. Luckily, the man that was suppose to pick us up to begin with, followed our train and came out of nowhere honking. We jumped in his truck and we were off....saved from our brief panic of being lost. With booking our hotel, we also bought a package that consisted of a little sightseeing and a few meals. We arrived at our quaint resort and immediately he said, lunch first! This didn't really suprise me, Thai's take food very seriously and it is always a top priority. Lunch was awesome and it seemed like they were never going to stop bringing more dishes. We were then off to ride elephants! We all three got on a bench on our elephant, Champoo. Then our guide sat basically on the elephants head. We each took turns riding on the poor elephants head. A few times we about tumbled off, but barely managed to make it back safe.
The next day we first went to "a Tiger Temple". Here the monks have trained the tigers to be around people and

elephant massage

this was so cool

they live and worship with them around. Also in the park there are lots of other wild animals. We each got to pet the different tigers, with hardly any caution from the trainers or monks. Everyone seemed to think that Tigers running about was nothing impressive. Well...I was quite impressed. I made one convert from being a Temple Tiger to an Auburn Tiger and told him "war eagle" when I left. And with that, we left to go to Erawan National Park.
All I had heard about this place thus far was there were a bunch of waterfalls. Well that is definately an understatement. I don't think I could adequately describe the amasement we all felt for a good couple of hours. We decided we were definately in our own fairytale land and that it was the best place....ever. You hike up seven main "steps" to see the sites one by one. Some of the falls were huge while others consisted of a million small falls. Most had places you could swim in turquoise pools, surrounded my rich tropical jungle. The hiking was ridiculous crazy. Mud was everywhere and I finally resorted to going barefoot and just slipping and

houses along River Kwaai

slidding around the slopes. I fell quite a few times and once pretty hard, the knee is a lil bruised..all worth it though. For the rest, I'll let my pictures do the talking...

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