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Published: November 4th 2006
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Well - spent all of Saturday lounging about - naturally going for the excuse of resting and recuperating my ankle - which seemed to work quite well whilst also topping up the tan, which had paled significantly since leaving the beach environment!!!
However, Sunday was a different story! A 7 o'clock start found Jen looking decidedly green after a rather rough night (and not alcohol induced!)- and still feeling rather nauseous - but still ludicrously up for doing the day trip! The day trip began at Erawan Waterfall, went on to Krasae Cave, The Death Railway and then via a rather dodgy train onto The Bridge over the River Kwai! Erawan Waterfall is a rather spectacular 7 tier waterfall about 1 hours drive out of Kanchan! Check out the piccies, Jen unfortunately only made it to level 4 - which was a pretty cool level to make it to though - having some huge rocks employed largely as water slides, which had to be done of course....photos to follow! I left her there and limped my way up to level 6, 7 being a bit of a hike up a mountain side and too much for the ankle. However, 6
was absolutely marvelous! Again check out the piccies! From there we went on to Krasae Cave which was used as a hospital whilst the Death Railway was being built and went on the Death Railway itself - only for half an hour before making our way to the Bridge Over The River Kwai. All in all a pretty eventful day which I thoroughly enjoyed and I think Jen found ok - but only towards the end of the day given her greeny hue!
Monday saw us opting for the BEST decision we have made to date! We headed to an elephant sanctuary called Elephant friends (www.elephant-friends.com). This is the most amazing place. We were greeted upon arrival by some local thai guys who took our rucksacks and jogged back to the park! Unbelievable! Though we soon understood why when we saw them lugging around elephant food - no small feat it has to be said! We were given the warmest of welcomes and got chatting to the long term volunteer there, John who gave us teh low down for the place and told us what to expect. After settling in to our bamboo huts, we were pretty much thrown
into the saddle. Or not! Bareback elephant riding was the way forward (with 2 pairs of trousers as their hides and hair is so thick!) We started off at the camp where we were staying, mounting the elephants from a very handily placed bamboo platform and rode the elephants the 10 minute ride down to the banks of the River Kwai (I have to say i had the BIGGEST of grins on my face - the entire time!)
Elephant Bathing - wow what an experience!! Mout, Shamoo, just some of the commands issued to the elephants to ensure that we got as wet as possible - roughly translated into dunk and duck!!! Jen and her elephant Kamoon - had by far and above the best dunking techniques - doing circles with his head. However his first dunk wasn't the best as mine chose that exact moment to go to the loo - man that is what you call a floatie!!! It has to be said that Jen came up spitting somewhat! Aside from that tho Kaewtar my elephant had been trained to squirt water with its trunk so i got a fairly good dousing like that as well as
the occassional 'mout' splurging me into the water! AMAZING!
Onced bathed the elephans were then taken up to the Jungle about 45 minutes from the river. We trekked bareback from there on the river plains taking in the sights and getting to know our Mahouts - mine was called Num (who spoke very little english - making things very interesting!) and the elephants. Needless to say after 45 minutes I got off walking more than a little bit like Jen - somewhat bow-legged!
That night, after a rather lengthy shower and a pretty delicious thai meal (all included in the 17GBP we had paid for the entire experience!!!) we sat around and played cards with the Mahouts and the family that run the camp! So much fun, particularly when trying to teach each other different games without any language in common! Challenging to say the least - but sooo much fun!
Kanchan to Ayutthaya transportation went somewhat against the grain for our experiences and was pretty much problem free, getting into the changeover bus station Soooo unlike us tho! The drive into the region was quite impressive as the floods from monsoon season had been particularly bad
and many houses, fields and roads were completely submerged - fortunately we had about 1 ft clearance and got there without any problems!
Ayutthaya was unlike anything we had done before. It is an ancient city that was Thailands capital until the 1400's when the Burmese took the city and destroyed some of its treasures. What remains however was still pretty spectacular. - Wat's - Temples, Prangs - Big gherkins and Stupas - pointy things dominate the skyline and make for pretty spectacular sight seeing! We walked between the main recommended sites and opted for a boat trip around the ones off the island. The walking took us from Wat Phra Si Sanphet, to the Ancient Palace remains and to a serious of other Wats with Prangs and Stupas within them. Our boat trip promised to show us some of the best sites in Ayutthaya, some of the best preserved and largest...........however it was not quite what we were expecting! Jen had previously asked a tour operator what the trip entailled to be told that we would get 25 minutes at each of the three main sites with boat transportation in between...what we actually got was an hour long
boat trip upstream and then an hour long boat trip back downstream! Jen was NOT happy! And needless to say a few short sharp words were exchanged - she has quite a little attitude when she wants - winning us back 100 baht for our disppointment! Good on her or what!
From there it was onto Chiang Mai - WOW! (I seem to be saying that rather alot!) Chilling out and relaxing (we seem to do that alot don't we!) were order for the day! This time we think we deserved it! The transfer up to CM was purgatory! 10 hours on a so called VIP bus whose seats only reclined 2 inches, that stopped in mosquito hell, had THE loudest AC ever, and was all in all horrid! Still cheap though I suppose! Anyway we got in at 6 am and did the proper traveller thing (1st time i hate to admit) of going around a series of hostels looking for the cheapest room - but we seemed to have some boundless energy from somewhere. Ended up in the same hostel as 2 american girls (Teira and Riley) that we had met 4 weeks previously in the Cameron
Highlands! Weird but cool! Spent the day meandering the streets, sussing out hair salons for some pampering ...oh yeah...and got us a thai massage! WOW! was that amazing or what?! Heaven! Good job we hadn't tried it previously tho I think as it would have become a daily occurance! Only 1.75 GBP for an hour! And indescribably bliss! Went for dinner with Teira and Riley and then went shopping! Disasterous here! The night market was the most amazing of night markets and sooooo many bargains to be had! So much so that we ended up there the next day as well!
Our 2nd day in CM saw Jen getting a haircut and highlights and me going all out and radical (and no...not dying my hair black.....getting a perm!) I now have curly hair! Pretty cool or what! I'm sure that'll draw some comments from Dan!!! We also managed to frequent (once again) the night market - but this time we were buying - and man do we drive a hard bargain! Have totally sussed the whole bartyring melarchy! and it is soooo much fun, you pick your price....if they don't go to it...walk away! It SOO works! sometimes you
have to give maybe 10baht - the equivalent of about 7p!!! So many bargains were had, we got our adrenalhin rushes for the week and came away with a distinct feeling of smug satisfaction! Excellent fun!
Our last day in CM was pretty chilled, coffees, drinks, piccies and chilling and not really a great deal else to report. We went in search of the customary postcard to send back.....but discovered we couldn't really send any of them as we haven't seen any of the sites! Ah well.....the shopping experience made up for it! Next stop Bangkok to catch our flight to China! OMG!!!!! Fear..................
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anonymous
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I now have curly hair! Pretty cool or what! - I refuse to comment until i see it, altho i heat the "wet poodle" look is very in this year !