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Published: January 24th 2007
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Kanchanaburi Bridge
The Bridge on the River Kwai. Hello again,
Let's play a quick bit of catch up......
I last left you in Hong Kong. After the blog we had a few more days there.
We woke up fairly late, as we were still adapting to the time change, and headed for City Hall for some Dim Sum (weird foody stuff). We had to queue for about 50 minutes but were assured it was worth the wait. It was very very nice, and we agreed it was worth the wait...there's not much else I can tell you about food really, it smelled good.
We took an afternoon trip to Lantau Island to see the "Largest Seated Bronze Buddha in the World". He looked liked a large seated bronze buddha, everything else fitted the description, so I took their word for it that it is in fact the largest in the world. We had a wander about and visited a Temple. Outside was a rack or burning insence sticks of all sizes. I suggested to Norm we purchase a firework, have a little pray, light it, and move away calmly but swiftly. He said it was a bad idea, so we didn't.
The following day we took an early bus to the airport and arrived in Bangkok at about 12pm. We stayed one night before heading up to our current location, Kanchanaburi. Not much really happened on the night in Bangkok. We had a very nice Thai Green Curry..and er...oh yeh... ARSENAL BEAT MAN UTD 2-1!!!! We were very pleased Arsenal won and celebrated by drinking some alcohol. We also consoled all the Man Utd fans, who were from Thailand, and probably didn't know where Manchester was; let's be honest, most Man Utd supporters don't know where it is, let alone where the UK is...yes yes......I know you like them...I know you have a shirt.......I know you know how to say David Beckham....I digress...
A 3 hour train ride north took us to Kanchanaburi, home to the River Kwai Bridge . We will have had three nights here when we leave tomorrow, it's been good fun. We went to see the bridge, which, despite several bombing raids in WWII remains as sturdy as ever. While on the bridge Alex was asked to take a photo for a family of Thais, then realised they wanted to take a photo of us. I thought this was a bit odd, surely you have seen a tall white man and small brown one before. As we looked around we saw a tall and broad shouldered young man/lady next to us wanting to get into the picture. So we had our photo taken with the young man/lady and swiftly moved on.
We hired bikes for a bit and had a good ride around the town, dodging traffic was vital to staying alive but we managed to just about (we decided to stay in the middle of a group of bikes/motos when crossding main roads as then we wouldn't be the first to get hit - the plan worked well).
The highlight of the stay here was today. We decided to hire a Kayak each. We were dropped off upriver after a 10 minute drive and the cheery Thai man gave us a map, pointed out where to go and said it should take about 3 hours. We thought "yeh ok, three hours for your average beer bellied Brit, we'll be able to do this much quicker"; we were very very very mistaken. After mucking about paddling and spinning around for about 1 hour we passed an Ozzy lady in a house, we stayed and chatted for about 15 minutes and and asked, just in passing, how long it was to the bridge "About 2 hours, but dont worry, the flow will take you quicker". Ok fair enough, about the right amount of time. Nearly 1 hour 30 after we still hadnt passed the first of three bridges. Oh god help. We then saw a large group of Kayakers getting in, they said they were heading for the bridge and didnt think it was that far........
........20 mins.....
....my arms really hurt.......30 mins......
...i have cramp....again....15 mins...
....oh good there's the guesthouse..... 3 hours 45 minutes from the start.
Moral: If Thai man say it take 3 hours, it take 3 hours solid paddling to get the guesthouse.
Now I am off to get some food. I need some energy.
Signing out.
Rob
Best bit: Noodles
Worst bit: The Thai man's honesty.
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