From crowded temples to elephant riding

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I arrived in Bangkok at midnight as my plane was delayed - something about half the passengers on the flight were meant to be going to Heathrow, which was having issues with snow. As it was so late, I got a shuttle bus to one of the nearby hotels which was far too expensive, but it had a bed in it so alls good. The following day I headed into Bangkok central, in a taxi which only cost about B200, but the driver was mental - apparently seeming not to notice trivial details like white lines and red lights. Once at Th Khao San (backpacker road), I checked into a much cheaper hotel, and headed out into the city. I ended up spending most of the afternoon gong round the markets in Khao San, which were absolutely massive and very cheap, although everyone tried to rip us "farangs" off so bargaining was fairly essential. I ended up spending lots of money as everything was so cheap.

The next day I was fairly bored of markets, so I went into Khao San to get cheap (B20) breakfast at one of the stalls, and then walked to Wat Pari Nayok, the Lucky Buddha Temple. The main attraction of this is actually not the temple itself, but the 40ft high golden buddha standing next to it. As well as the massive one, there was loads of little ones around the square at it's foot, with Thais praying and trying to sell us stuff. Me and 2 Japanese tourists bought a little cage with birds and set them free - an act which would give us good luck forever and ever, according to the Thai woman taking our money.

After this I got a Tuktuk - a 3 wheeled vehicle with a front seat for the driver and a bench on the back, with a metal frame for the roof and open windows. He said he would take me round all the main temples for 20B (a special promotion "just for today", that I had been offered the day before as well), so we went to a temple near the golden buddha, then Wat Sraket - The Golden Mount. Which was, according to the guy outside trying to sell farangs gems, closed for the monks to pray. We weren't convinced, but the doors were locked, so we just looked from the outside. Next stop was the Marble Temple which was very impressive, with something like 200 buddhas, marble walls and gold decoration. Then I discovered why the tuk tuk ride was only 20B, when the guy tried to take me to all these export shops where he would get a free fuel coupon if I went inside. The first one was quite interesting, and had the guys making the jewellery, and then loads of cheap souvenirs, but the next one they tried to sell me 200000B diamond rings, and so I made the guy take me back to the hotel rather than go round another 10. That evening, I went to Calypso cabaret, which was very impressive, which lots of girls, guys and ladyboys dancing on stage in amazing costumes with loads of feathers. They did lots of little sketches, e.g. woman marries man, man cheats on her with 3 others, she breaks it off, tries to shoot him, eventually he wins her back and the other 3 women were all pissed and tried to kill them. As well as these were little sketches, of just one dance or song, without a real story. After the show I got a taxi back to the hotel, as the tuk tuk drivers outside were all trying to take the farangs coming out of the show to a "ping pong" game, which had "SEX SHOW" written in big letters at the top of the flyer.

The next morning I left early on a tour to Kanchanaburi - I booked it through the TAT (government tourist agency) as recommended by Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, and TukTuk driver, and it turned out I paid more than everyone else, but it was only about 40GBP for 2 days so it was still a good price. Our first stop was a floating market, about an hour out of Bangkok, where me and 3 guys from Jordan got a paddleboat, and went round. It was pretty much the same as Th Khao San, except the stalls were set up on boats, and they tried to rip us off even more. I didn't get anything but everything the guys got started off around 1000/2000B, and ended up being around 200-300 after they finished bargaining. Then the women paddling our boat took us on a quick tour of the village, which was loads of makeshift houses build on or along the river, and we went back to shore, where our next activity was a high speed boat ride round the village. This involved a long boat, with what looked like a propeller on a stick attached to a rewired car engine. It was pretty, good and we saw more of the village, but the paddleboat was better.

Then we did the long bus ride to Kanchanburi - everything here is much closer together than Australia, but it takes ages to get anywhere, even when the driver goes at crazy speeds, weaving the bus in and out of traffic as if he was riding a motorbike. Once in Kanchanaburi we looked at the bridge over the river Kwai, stroked a tiger some guy had on a stall, but we didn't want to give him any money so we didn't get a photo, and then made the short trip to a tiny town called Wang Pho, where we spent half an hour eating 40p cornettos, strawberry fanta and sugar toast from the market stalls there. Then we got the train along the Death Railway, which is a long stretch of railway between Thailand and Burma (I think), and was so named for the 200 odd people that died for every kilometre of railway made. The train took us to another tiny town called Tha Kilet or something.

That night we went to a floating "hotel" on the river Kwai, which was very basic, but had good food, and me and Marcus from Venesuela walked along to the bridge that went across the river a little way down. It looked quite unsafe, but as we'd seen a motorcycle ride across it earlier, we decided to give it a go, which was mildly scary, as there it was wooden, with lots of rotten bits, big holes, and just 1m of water below, but we made it across and back without falling to our deaths. Then we went back for a quick swim in the river, which turned out to be more of a fast float on the current before we had to pull ourselves out to avoid going past the end of the hotel - it was too strong to really swim against. After that we had dinner and stayed up until midnight drinking cheap alcohol that tastes kindof like either rum or whisky, then as Santa hadn't turned up, we celebrated Christmas by jumping in the river at midnight, and going to bed.

The next day we were up early to go swimming with elephants. We got a boat down the river a little way to where some guys were riding the elephants down to the river. Then 2 of them took our cameras to take pictures, whilst we climbed up onto the elephants - one farang on the front, and one thai guy on the back of each. We ended up spending about an hour on the elephants; I started off on a little one that was fairly easy to stay on, even when the guide made it do crazy things like duck it's head (which I was sat on) under the water, and roll to the side. Even so, I fell off a couple of times, which was actually kindof nasty as there was loads of elephant dirt in the river water around us. Then I swapped with one of the others to go on the mother elephant which was way bigger, and ducked down so far underwater that I couldn't stay on her, so I kept falling off and then struggling to get back on as she was so tall! Then the guide directed our elephant, and the baby who was following it's mother, over to the side, and got me to stand up whilst he made her spray water back over us out of her trunk. Then we went back to the "hotel" where we had a nice cold shower - which I'm not convinced got us any cleaner as there was a sign over the toilet saying "Water goes into river - no toilet paper" and one by the shower and sink saying "No drink, water from river", niiice. After that, we had a quick breakfast of fried egg and took a bamboo raft upriver with one of the powerboats. Rafting turned out to be pretty good, and the current was strong enough that we didn't have to paddle, or swim when we jumped in. We ended up back at the hotel after about 30 minutes, having done more swimming than rafting.

After a short time of general disorganisation, we got a bus over to a place with a couple of houses and a few elephants, where me and the Russian guy got on the back of one, and the 2 Japs got on the other, and we went for a 30-40 minute ride through the countryside. It was a little worrying, as the Russian was about twice the size of me so the seat on the back of the elephant tilted alarmingly towards him, but the guide on the front assured us it was safe. Then it was back to base for lunch, and a brief visit to a waterfall before getting the bus into Kanchanaburi to meet up with the guys from Baan Dada Children's Home.

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Comments

[GDM]

Ah! Long may you enjoy the path to enlightenment.....although not necessarily on the back of an elephant! xx GDM