Bangkok (17th - 21st March)

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Hey Guys,

Well... first of all we must apologise for the sketchy nature of this blog entry. We sent our Southeast Asia LP home before leaving BK and as such most of the information below is from memory!

We flew to BK from Chiang Mai on the 17th and decided to stay in the popular backpackers area of Khao San Road, as the area we stayed in last time didn´t seem to have too much character. Neither of us were too sure whether this was a good idea or not.... the road was literally packed with backpackers and wall to wall bars, restaurants, stalls and tattoo parlours..... so, as you can see, it had its pros and cons.

It took us a while to find a hotel (Dan was desperate to watch the rugby so we had to find one with a T.V and ESPN, which proved harder than you´d think!) but we finally ended up staying at the Sawasadee (still can´t pronounce it) which was pretty alright. It was a little expensive but they had ESPN and did provide towels and toilet roll and breakfast was included. There was a nice courtyard area where the restaurant was and where you could also watch movies that they showed every evening. There was quick and pretty cheap laundry and internet, so all in all, not too bad.


That evening we had dinner at a very good (though Dan´s stomach didn´t quite agree!) Indian and realised that we actually missed the place, then headed off for an early night. The following day was spent relaxing and sorting out the blog (eight hours worth), then we had a Thai dinner of noodles.

On the 19th we´d arranged a tour to the Bridge over the River Kwai and the Tiger Temple so we headed to the meeting point at 7am when it was pouring down! (thanks for the brolly Di, came in super handy!) Luckily the rain stopped before we headed off by mini-van to the first stop of the day which was the Kanchanaburi War Cemetary. The cemetary is set near the site of a prisinor of war camp that was used to house prisinors while they were in transit to other camps. The cemetry is home to some 5,000 Commonwealth and 1,800 Dutch casualties who died in the making of the infamous Burma-Siam (aka the Death Railway because it is thought that the number of sleepers on the track equal the number of people who died building it) railway. It was engineered by the Japanese to improve their communications with the large Japanese army that was in Burma and was built between 1942-1943, totaling 415km in length and obviously of great strategic importance.

We only had 20 minutes to visit the sight, and as the memorial registers are not kept at the sight, we were unable to find any possible relatives, however, since then we have looked at the Roll of Honour on the internet, and found one Free (although not from Suffolk even though there were many casualties that were) but no Sweets.

FREE, Private, LEONARD, 5955557. 5th Bn. Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment. 5th July 1943. Age 28. Foster-son of Mrs. K. S. Pratt, of Watford, Hertfordshire.

It was very thought provoking to see the huge number of graves there and to know that they are only a small number of the people who died building that railway. 13,000 prisinors of war and 80,000 civillians are thought to have died while building the railway.

Our second stop was a museum not far from the bridge itself. This place, although it looked like it was still under construction, was very interesting. It housed a lot of artefacts from the war as well as photographs and lots of information. Unfortunatly we only had half an hour to look around so we didn´t really get to look at anything in depth.

After our quick tour of the museum, we walked to the Bridge itself. There were two bridges built adjacent to one another, one wooden and one steel. Both were bombed on numberous occasions by the allied forces and the prisoners of war were forced to rebuild them each time. On one occasion, in a desperate attempt to prevent the allies from bombing the bridge further, the Japanese forced the prisoners to stand on the bridge and to wave at the incoming bombers (obviously hoping that they wouldn´t kill there own). It didn´t work and as a result it was said that the river turned red with blood of the victims and failled to clear for some days.

In all honesty, the bridge wasn´t quite what we were expecting. While we can only vaguely remember the film, we recalled it looking alot grander then what it did in real life, though it was never the architectural aspect of the bridge that made it famous, rather the enormous loss of life involved in it´s construction and the connecting railway. The bridge is just a bridge, but we´ve found a quote that really captures it: "The Bridge on the River Kwai is a concrete and steel structure, low to the water, nothing like in the film. In fact, it is extremely non-imposing and, well, ugly. (Perhaps functional is a better word.) Tourists, upon viewing it, typically comment: "Uh-huh, that’s a bridge on the River Kwai. But where’s The Bridge on the River Kwai."" -http://www.walkabouttravelgear.com/kwai.htm

We took a stroll over the bridge along with the hoards of other tourists and didn´t quite realise how dangerous this actually was. The bridge itself is safe, it´s just the huge drop to the river below that isn´t and there is no safety precautions in place.... to make things even more interesting, trains still use the track, something we didn´t realise until we were halfway across the bridge! Luckily, they´d planned for such eventualities and there were platforms set at intervals along the bridge.......phew!

Next we headed to a train station where we took a ride on the Death Railway. The train was crowded and we found ourselves sitting opposite a rather old monk, who (although at first he seemed rather annoyed at our choice of seats) warmed to us, giving us a few smiles especially when he lit up a cheeky cigarette (it was a no smoking carriage!). The journey took an hour and we got to see quite a lot of the countryside. Twice our guide came round to advise us that you could see the bridge ahead, but that was only if you hung out the side of the train (there were no doors). The bridge did look cool though when you could see it.

Next stop was lunch, rice and veg on a floating restaurant and from there it was off to a waterfall which while quite impressive, was packed with people and probably not as good as some that we´d seen in Chiang Mai.

Our final stop for the day was the much anticpated Tiger Temple! Although there was not so much temple as there was tiger, infact we didn´t see any temple and only one monk, but to be honest we didn´t go to see them anyway! It was the tigers we were interested in! After paying your entry fee you have to sign a form saying that you understand that there are wild animals in the area and that you can´t hold them liable for any injuries that may occur...slightly worrying! The tigers were in the Tiger Canyon and you have to walk a little way through quite a bit of construction (they are developing the site to help accomodate the tigers better) to get there. There were about 12 tigers in the Canyon, and all but one were on a chain. There were also a large number of guides and one takes your camera while another takes your hand and they lead you around the tigers. They take you to about 3 or 4 different tigers and tell you where to sit and where you can stroke them while you have your photo taken. The tigers are huge but all were really chilled out (except one who took a liking to Dan, so the guide quickly steered Dan away to another tiger!) and half asleep most of the time. Stroking them didn´t feel like how either of us had imagined it. We both thought that they´d have really thick fur and be really cuddly, but they weren´t at all (thats what Dani thought). Their hair was really short and felt a lot like a short haired dogs, it wasn´t particularly smooth or soft either but they were incredibly beautiful and you couldn´t help but be in awe. One account of the place we´d read had said that the tigers were drugged so that they could be handled, however, we didn´t see any sign of this. Some of the animals were really docile and asleep when we arrived, but that wasn´t all of them, and some who had been sleepy got up and started walking around and one even played with a dog bone and others were playing with their keepers who were squirting water at them. However, the guides did only take you to the ones who were chilled out, which is understandable! We also asked an English volunteer there if the animals were drugged and she explained that they weren´t and that their timid nature is due to the fact that firstly; they´re kept very full, and if not hungry, they just sleep and secondly: they´ve been largely hand reaered. While it was a reasonably plausible explanation, we weren´t entirely convinced and the sight of the single monk sitting there watching the money roll in didn´t really fill you with confidence either though in fairness the tigers did seem well cared for and so it can´t be that bad. Irrespective of the motivation behind it, the temple, looked to be a massive success and it was an amazing experience. We both find it hard to believe that we have actually stroked a tiger!!



On the 20th we decided to guide ourselves around the sights of the city, which turned out not to be such a good idea. There were four sights that we both wanted to see, the first being The Grand Palace. Unfortunately we let ourselves be convinced by a tout that it was closed and wouldn´t be open until 2pm. He kindly showed us some other sights to visit in the mean time as long as we visited a factory/shop as well (as he´d get commission). We declined and attempted to find a tuk tuk driver who would just take us to the places we wanted to go. Eventually we did, well we thought we had...

First stop was the ´Big Buddha´ (that was the only name we were given!) and it certainly was big! (as you can see from the photo). Next we went to the Golden Mount (aka Phu Khao Thong), which is (as the name suggests) an 80-meter high man-made golden mountain which is surmounted by a very large golden chedi. The climb of more than 300 stairs was pretty tiring but the view of surrounding Bangkok and the breeze was worth it! Our third stop was a factory (thought we´d got out of it but alas, we hadn´t!) where they tried to make us both a suit and sell us lots of over-priced souviniors, but we politely refused as we´d only gone in for our driver´s sake. Our fourth and final (although we´d asked to be taken to four sights!) stop with our driver was Wat Benchamabophit (aka the marble temple), which was very beautiful and houses 52 Buddha images. Each image is in a different position and all have explanations of what the positions represent.

We then headed back to Khao San Road (rather annoyed that we hadn´t gotten to see the Lucky Buddha) and had lunch before setting off on our own to the Grand Palace. On the way we fed some pigeons to bring us good luck, but I think it actually cursed us. When we got to the Palace we found out that it had just closed (3.30pm) and that it had been open since 8am!! It´ll teach us not to believe everything we´re told!! Anyway, we headed down the road to Wat Pho instead.

Wat Pho is the oldest and largest temple in the city, built in the 16th century. It is also home to the largest reclining Buddha in Thailand, which is extremely impressive, one of the most impressive things we´ve seen so far. It was unbelievably huge; at 46m long and 15m high, it barely fit in the building! The whole image is covered in gold leaf but the most beautiful part of all, was the bottom of the images feet; these were covered in intricate pictures of Buddha inlaid with mother of pearl. We wandered around the smaller temples in the grounds of Wat Pho, all of which were beautifully decorated, although Dan was more interested in the terrapins living in a small pond there, then headed over to Chinatown.

We´d attempted to visit Chinatown and the markets there the previous evening but couldn´t find them (we did however find numerous restaurants selling birds nests and shark fins!) and as we began to feel quite unsafe, we caught a tuk tuk back to Khao San Road. This afternoon we had an idea of where we were going as we had our trusty LP with us but even so, the markets that we did find were only selling daily household items that we don´t really have much use for, so we again headed back to Khao San Road.

That evening we had a pizza for dinner (yeah, our last night in Thailand and we have pizza!!) and then wandered around the stalls. Dani spent some of her birthday money on clothes then we grabbed some noodles (see we aren´t such heathans!) from a stall (and they were the best noodles we´d had) and rather cheekily had a few beers at one of the bars before heading off to bed. We had to be up again at 3am to get a taxi to the airport.......

p.s Dani´s photos to follow shortly!

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