Kanchanaburi and arrival in Ayuthaya

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I've been out of internet contact for a few days, so will try to do a bit of catcing up.

After my exciting night out in Bangkok, I could done with a bit of as lie in, but the mini bus to Kanchanaburi was due at 7 o'clock. I tried to pack my bags before going to sleep, but found that I'd left a pair of shoes out, so I left it till morning.

Then I had great fun trying to cram everything in. I am, very slowly, getting better at this. I'm now cramming stuff into any possible receptacle (like socks in shoes) and rolling stuff up to fit in really tightly. I'm also now trying to put the stuff I'll need last - for example all the stuff for India - at the bottom, so I can access the stuff I have to use more often. I was ready on time and even managed to grab a quick breakfast at the Buddy restaurant.

There were five other people already in the mini bus but they were all on the one day tour, not the the three day trip I was on, so I was the only one with luggage.

Oyr first stop was the floating market. This was much better than the one in Bangkok but most of the vendors seemed to sell the same merchandise - tiger balm, spices and ornaments. All I bought was some mango, which was very refreshing.

After that we went to a snake farm where they put on a thrilling show, with experts catching venomous snakes (one had to catch three snakes - one in each hand and one in his mouth!) One part that seemed a bit cruel to me was when they got a mongoose to fight a cobra in a cage. The mongoose was well ahead on points and just about to bite the snake's head off when they stopped the fight. They carried a cobra round for everyone to touch and see its jaws and poison. They got it to bite into a vase through plastic and you could see the venom in the jar.

Next was the tiger temple. The monks here bring up tigers from their birth, feeding them only on milk and cooked meat, no raw meat. Because of this the tigers have no fear of men and are tame and docile and biddable.

I had my photo taken patting a tiger and accidentally stood on its tail as I stood up. It growled a bit, but ddidn't even move. The tigers are sleepy during the day because they are mostly nocturnal animals. Then I accompanied the head monk as he led the tigers back to their cages. Then I saw him feed one baby tiger with a milk bottle, holding him on his lap.

We went on to the famous Bridge over the River Kwai and the museum there. This was another example of the Thai acronyms. The museum is known as the JEATH museum from the initials of the countries involved in the Burma railway - Japan, England, Australia, Thailand and Holland. If they could have left the Japanese out (after all it's the suffering and efforts of the workers that the museum commemorates, not the evil oifthe Japanese) and found some other country, I don't know - Denmark or Djoubuti or somewhere - that was involved it could have been the DEATH museum. Much better and easily remembered acronym. Ah well.

The present bridge is not the one constructed by the POWs and it's possible to walk across it. A sign tells you to go to the safety platforms if a train is coming! The views are wonderfall and it seems tragic that such bestial behaviour took place in such beauty.

After the visit to the JEATH museum the others went back to Bangkok and I went on in another nminivan to my hotel for the next two nights - a raft house on the River Kwai!

The bed in my room was really hard but I had two nights of good sleep there. When I went to the toilet, I looked for the handle to flush it but there wasn't one. Then I realised that there was no cistern and no water to be flushed. I had to fill up a bucket of water and use this to flush the toilet. This worked very well. There was a shower and I really need that after the day's travels.

Then it was time for dinner. All the meals except for breakfast were much the same - rice or noodles plus various meat and vegetables and then watermelon or some fruit that seemed to be a cross between a grapefruit and an orange - tart but more sweet than a grapefruit. I liked this and ate some even though my cardiologist has told me not to eat grapefruit - these probably weren't actual grapefruits. Breakfast was coffee and toast, eggs and tomato. The first day the eggs were fried and the next scrambled.

At dinner I met the other guests - a French couple and an Italian called Lorenzo with his Thai girlfriend. Everyone was friendly but only the frenchwoman and Lorenzo spoke English. We were warned that we would have to get up early the next day if we wanted to bathe with the elephants.

I wanted to, so that was another 7 o'clock getting out of bed.

Only Lorenzo and myself bathed with the elephants, his girlfriend came with to watch and take photos. The elephant knel in the middle of the river and I sawm out to it and, with difficuty clambered onto its back. My elephant seemed to be much tamer than Lorenzo's and also had somthing round its neck to hold onto. Poor Lorenzo was always being thrown off his elephant! Mine ducked into the water from time to time somtimes submersing me but the most worrying part was when it stood up and started to walk out of the river onto the bank. I suddenly became aware of how high up I was. But the elephant keeper soon got it to go back into the middle of the water and lie down. From time to time he told me to tug on the elephant's ear - it was big, floppy and a mottled grey in colour. The elephants were female, I think - no tusks.

All this time someone on shore was taking photos of me with my camera. He took his job seriously - I think he took about 50 photographs!

After the bathing I climbed onto Lorenzo's elephant, initially facing the wrong way for another photo opportunity and that was the end of the bathing.

Next was rafting along the river, all of us went for this on a large raft with a straw shade. The boatman paddled it along at a surprisingly fast rate, even against the current and the river runs very quickly. I wondered if there might be an engine as well. The views from the raft of the river and the vegetation on either side, with mountains rising in the distance were superb.

Reverting to the elephant theme we were taken on to place that did elephant rides next. My mahout was a very young boy - probably no more than 7 at most - who was amazingly confident and in control of his elephant. He told me that she was called Mega and that the others were Sandy and Briamore. We rode on a winding path up and down hills though the jungle. From time to time the elephants would stop side by side at a particular tree and the lead would change. They would occasionaly raise their trunks into the trees and pull off a bunch of leaves which they crammed into their mouths.

After the ride we could buy bananas for 20B to feed to the elephants. They took them one by one and ate them complete with skins. The trunk almost felt as though it was a hand, carefully piccking up each banana from my hand.

At the banana vendor's place was a small monkey in a cage. It's name was Toto (stressed on the second syllable like the famous Italian comic actor) and he looked just like a little man.

We visited a small waterfall next. This seemed to be a major tourist attraction for Thais. Many Thai families were picknicking there.

Finally that day we went to Hellfire Pass and its museum. This was a particularly terrible spot during the construction of the wartime Burma Railroad - a pass had to be blasted out through mountains and the Japanes insited on its being done to an impossible schedule. The prisoners of war - and also forced labourerers from Thailand and other countries - had to work for up to 18 hours a day with just two meals of rice. There was no provision made for their treatment when they were sick. They were treated by the Japanese as fungible and disposable and many died.

We walked through the pass for about 2km and were tired and very thirsty by the end. I don't want to imagine what it was like working there with the heat of the sun increased by fires and machinery, doing back breaking work everyday with no rest. Some of the original wooden sleepers are still in place and the saying was "every sleeper meant a life". Some trees now grow where the railway ran and it seemed amazing that such tall trees had grown in the last 65 years or so since the war.

There were also a number of wierd trees whose branches grew in serpentine coils, looping across the old track. Annette, the frenchwoman, thought they might be lianas - like those from which Tarzan swings in the films. Most of them seemed too thick and inflexible to me for this to be the case, but some were indeed thin enough for it to be possible.

After that it was back to the raft house for dinner and bed. Lorenzo, who is from Ferrara near Bologna, told me that he thought Italy should never have been united, the southerners are a different people from the northerners. He quoted the old saying that Italians only really get behind their country to support the national football team.

He and his friend left the next day and a Dutch couple joined the group.

There was only one activity that day before the return to Bangkok - the Erewhan waterfall walk. There are seven separate waterfalls at different levels. The first four are close together, then there's a walk of about a kilometre to the fifth and the sixth and seventh are again quite close.

As we had to get back to the parking place by 12.30, I only went up to the 5th level. I liked the 4th one best, and had a nice swim there.

Then there was a long drive (three hours) back to Bangkok, a quick visit to the TAT office and I was at the station waiting for the train to Ayuthaya. It was an oldfashioned sort of train with wooden seats and the windows and doors were all wide open as it went. At some stations the staionmaster ceremoniously rang a bell to signal to the driver to leave. After two hours I arrived in Ayuthaya to be met by a van taking me to the hostel there.

The driver was Mark, an Australian who has been living at the hostel for a month or so and who dies odd jobs there to pay for his stay. He told me that there was another long term resident at the hostel, an Englishman who taught here and who had lived there for six years now.

I had to take my shoes off before going into the hostel and leave them on a rack outside.

The bed was the opposite of the one in the raft house, so soft that you sank into it if you sat on it. I showered and changed and went down to go out for a walk. I could hear singing.

When I got out I saw Mark and the landlady sitting in a sort of open conservatory with some other people and singing and drinking. I went over and was toild it was the landlady's birthday - so I stayed for a beer. I was very thirsty and the beer was good. Somehow, I had drunk two more litres of beer and some Thai whiskey before I knew it. I can't quite remember going to bed, but I slept very well.

That takes me to this morning but I have been in the internet cafe too long and will continue later . .

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