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Published: November 30th 2008
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Squeezing into 1 cyclo
Hard work but we made it! ;) Day 1: Kanchanaburi Province
"Sorry," muttered the taxi driver as he made a reverse down the freeway (!!!) as he had missed the exit. This is the first time I see someone doing a reverse down a freeway. As he made the exit, he went past the road that we had passed by earlier. That was when we realised that we might have been scammed!!! We suspected that he had made a U-ee earlier to deliberately make a big roundabout before we could get to the bus station. We ended up paying quite a bit for this.. plus there was an additional service charge for the driver that was stated on the receipt we did not take note of 😞
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We took a taxi to Sai Dai to catch a bus to Kanchanaburi on arrival at the airport in Bangkok. It was difficult speaking to the taxi driver as he could not really understand what we were talking about and we could not understand him at all, so we ended up being silent all the way, after some attempts on making conversation. So well, I do not know if he deliberately did a roundabout or if he
made a genuine mistake.
We had decided to visit Kanchanaburi Province just to visit the tigers. Being close to one has always been something I want to do, and even though it's such a touristy thing to do, I figured this is the only way. The tiger temple has been criticised for drugging their tigers so that they remained sedate throughout the photography sessions. However it was disclaimed that the tigers grew up in the temple since they were cubs and as such, have been accustomed to human handling.
The bus made multiple stops throughout the journey. We were the only foreigners and we did not know when we were supposed to alight and only did so when we saw everybody alighting. Everything was in a blur and while we were retrieving our bags, a man came up and asked if we were going anywhere. We asked him if this was Kanchanaburi and he said yes, and immediately took our bags on each arm before we could say anything. It turned out that he was a cyclo driver. It was a small cyclo and we were dubious as to how we were going to fit into it together
as we were not exactly skinnies. It was a squeeze but turned out fine.. an inch bigger and we would have needed to split into two :P It was a hot day and I felt sorry for the driver for having to work so hard under such weather with the weight of two persons and their baggage. I left some extra change with him for the hard work when we arrived at our destination.
On arrival at our guest house, we did some unpacking and signed up for a day trip to see the tigers. Not much in this entry so I'll just let the pictures do the narrating. All in all, a great but really tiring day with the rush and inadequate sleep over the last few days.
Day 2: Kanchanaburi/ Bangkok
No sooner had I fallen asleep, I was rudely awakened by the blaring sound of techno music. It was the alarm we had set, oh bother... Not wishing to get up, I laid in the dark for a while before reluctantly getting up for a quick shower. It was then Lin told me that it was only 4am in the morning. She had set
the alarm time wrongly due to a miscalculation in the time difference (...). We walked out at 5am in the morning to the 7-11 on the main street for a quick brekkie. Not surprisingly there was nobody around except for 1 or 2 shop vendors preparing to set up shop.
We went to the floating market that day and took a bus back to Bangkok. We were just in time for the bus but alas, we were short of Thai baht for the fare. By then, everybody was waiting for us on the bus and we were still trying to let the ticket seller understand that we're short of money. The driver was impatient to go and so the ticket seller relented and let us got on the bus with what we could pay. We boarded quickly and apologetically, bumping almost everybody with our packs and apologising all the way as we hurried down the narrow aisle.
On reaching Bangkok, we took a bus to Khao San Road, where our guest house is located. Stepping onto the street is like stepping into a backpackers galore. It was my first time there and although many people raved about it,
it was not really my cup of tea. In fact, I felt a little intimidated by the number of foreigners who were there. We took a tuk-tuk to a temple that Lin really wanted to visit and spent some time exploring the place. After which, 2.5 hours was spent trying to walk back to Khao San Road just to save the Thai baht that we thought wasn't worth paying for the distance. The distance wasn't all that far and the reason we took 2.5 hours was because we got lost along the way. We had no maps except for the one that we took from the airport, which I think was trash anyway. We kept walking and walking, not knowing where we were. And we just didn't ask anyone for directions, don't ask why. A miracle happened after that. We came to the end of a street and were standing there, admiring the sunset when I suddenly saw a landmark that we were all the while searching for, a roundabout made from plastic barriers, there right in front of us. What a relief!
Trying to sleep was a nightmare. It was the weekend and the entire street was pulsating
with pop music. We laid there, trying to sleep and ended up singing along to the songs. I remembered falling asleep with Sean Kingston's Beautiful Girl in my head. To be exact, the music was playing all night till the wee morning. Being a light sleeper, I could hear music all the time while I was asleep, and just when the music stopped and peace settled in, the alarm sounded. @#$%^!!!!!
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rajasekar
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how dare??
How dare you??? playing with tiger!!!! photos are amazing!!!