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Published: November 19th 2006
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Our House!
This is where we stayed for two out of the four nights we spend in Kanchanaburi! Greetings one and all,
Since my last entry the gang and I moved up to the West of Bangkok last Tuesday to a place called Kanchanburi which is where the Bridge over the River Kwai is located (you may have heard of the film) for a bit of R&R away from the hustle and bustle of crazy Bangkok.
The town is very peaceful and was the ideal location to chill out ater 5 hectic nights in the city but the towns tragic past as a POW camp from WW2 was very apparent and the scars from a not so distant memory
On arriving in town we were taken to a guest house by our mini-bus driver which was right on the banks of the river and as cheap a chips so we decided that this would be the place to rest out hats for a few days and soak up the magficant surroundings (It's a hard life isn't it?!)
On our first full day we spent the day on the river banks soaking up the sun and in the evening went out for a meal and ended up getting roped into drinking Thai Whiskey with the lovely
Our House!
Another shot of our pad! restaurant owners, their friends and a random Isralli couple! A fun night was had by all and the I must have had a few too many whiskeys as by the end of the night I was eating dried sqid skin which was being passed around by the owners (don't recommend it - smells like fish food)
The next day (last Thursday) we had a full on day with a whole day trip out to see the sights which started of with the 'HellFire Pass' memorial museum which is a deep section of rock that was dug out by prisoners of war during WW2 of which the Thai-Burmese railway was to run. The museum was made to commemorate the large numbers of soliders who died whilst being forced to work in hideous conditions up to 18 hours a day and clearing rocks with only picks and hamers and sometimes only their bare hands. Needless to say but it was a very emotional start to the day an certainly one which woke us all up pretty quickly.
After that our tour guide then took us for lunch at his familys restaurant (if you can call it that!) and then onto
the beautiful Sai Yok Nio waterfalls for a quick dip of the feet to cool off. I actually attempted to climb up the waterfall but chickened out about half way up, bu I think it was a good effort for my first attempt at climbing a waterfall!
Next we went on to do a small elephant trek which generally would have been quite a relaxing ride, but unfortunatly Kelly didn't feel quite as comfortable with being sat on nelly as I was and spent the whole journey saying under her breath 'we're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die' along with the occasional sporadic high pitched squeal when we had to go up or down hill. Anyway, I found this hillarious and found myself laughing at her from start to finnish. I'm not sure if this helped or hindered her, but it certainly amused me, especially when the guide tried to get her to sit on the elephants head so she could have a go. No way Jose. I think she would have had a heart attack!
Following the elephant ride we did a spot of bamboo rafting down the River Kwai. Well, I
say 'we' but actually a very small Thai lady did all of the rafting and grafting whilst we sat back and took in the views! And there was me getting ready to get stuck into it!
The final part of the day consisted of catching the train down "Death Railway" which is part of the Bridge over the River Kwai and again is linked to WW2, with it's name coming from the amount of people who died during it's construction due to the terrible working conditions.
After our fun packed day an early night was got by us all as we were all shattered and I was in bed by 10pm!!!
The next day was spent having a very lazy one what with milling about the local market (x2 pairs of flip flops for less than 2pounds!) and walking over the River Kwai Bridge. Well, I attempted to but got about 10ft onto the bridge and realised that there were no hand rails and that I could see through the slats below me so I decided to give that one a miss!
That evening we all went out for a meal and drinks which resulted in
meeting lots of other travellers and drinking what is known as a 'Samsong Bucket'. I have heard of these from the various people I know who have travelled over this way, but no-one warned me how stong those bad boys are (cheers guys!). Samsong buckets are made up of Thai Whiskey, Red-Bull and Coke and seriously knock the back of your head off! Kelly and I being the hard core crew decided that as we are double hard we would have one each (not a good idea after drink copious amounts of 6.4% Chang earlier on on the evening) and resulted in Kelly having to lie down in the bar as she was so drunk and me being involved in a mini motorbike inury (don't panic guys. I was't attempting to drive a motorbike in that state!), but I will explain all in another blog. I am fne though and think that it might have been the Samsong Bucket that saved me from a serious injury (you bounce when you're drunk don't you?!)
As we had spent a few days in Kanchanaburi we decided that it was time to move onwards and upwards and booked the overnight sleeper train
from Bangkok to Chaing Mai in the North of Thailland which is where I am writing this from now.
We caught the train at 1800 yesterday evening and it arrived at 0800 this morning! It actually sounds worse that it was as we had our own individual bunk beds and I managed to get about 7 hours sleep (I will sleep anywhere!)
Anyway, I will sign off now and keep you informed of my goings on when I have spent a few days in Chaig Mai as I haven't got much to report other than we are stopping in a beautiful family run guest house and we are going to the night market in an hour or so to do a bit of bargain hunting.
Catch you later
L x
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Jodie
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Wow
It looks amazing! The waterfall and elephant ride sounds brilliant, can't wait for the next blog!!