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Published: February 21st 2015
Having had a great time in Bangkok over New Year's Eve, it was time to get the map out and decide where to explore next. We decided to head about four hours east of Bangkok by bus to the town of Kanchanaburi. The town is situated on the banks of the river Khwae and is famous for its railway bridge spanning the river. The bridge was built by the Japanese during the second world war using forced local labour and prisoners of war, a vast number of whom died in the process. We found a place to stay right next to the river with a huge fish in a tank outside that seemed to quite like it when Liz pretended to scratch its nose through the glass.
As it was late afternoon, we set off up river a kilometre or so to the bridge and arrived in time to see the sun setting over the bridge and a train make the crossing. The train is purely a tourist thing now and only goes a short distance, as the railway, that previously stretched into Burma to supply the Japanese advance westwards, avoiding the dangers of supply by ship, has long since
fallen into disrepair.
Strolling across the bridge after the train had passed we found ourselves chuckling at the floating karaoke bars (yes, floating karaoke bars) that kept doing their circuit up and down the river below. To us Karaoke is something that, thankfully, more or less died out in the nineties in the UK, but here in Asia they absolutely love it.
The following day we caught a little local bus further up into the forested hills to visit the Erawan National Park, which is famous for its series of waterfalls. We'd hoped for some peace and tranquility, however, when we reached the park entrance we quickly realised that we were not going to be alone here as the tour buses were already rolling in. It turns out it is possible to visit the park as a day trip from Bangkok and as you can swim in the pools, it's a very popular spot. So, with many other people, we set off up the trail to the waterfalls.
The seven waterfalls and pools were quite pretty and the fish in the pools would nibble your feet if you went for a paddle (even Ross' feet), which was
quite an odd sensation. However, there was something even more odd than that going on beside this incredibly busy little river. A huge proportion of the visitors arriving were Russian holiday makers. Other than hardly meeting any Russians during our travels so far, this in itself was not so remarkable, however, what did take us by surprise was that many of the Russians appeared to be young, scantily clad glamour models. Clearly on some sort of tour dashing from waterfall to waterfall with their camera man in tow, trying to get that perfect shot for the portfolio. This was definitely not what we expected to see here, although Ross had to admit it did add a certain element of alternative decoration to the park. Liz could not say the same for the large Russian men in speedos.
So, after that quite weird and not very relaxing day out, we visited the very well kept and very sobering war cemetery in town where the approximately 12 000 allied prisoners of war who died building the railway are remembered. We didn't find out where the 90 000 Asian civilian labourers who also lost their lives building the railway are comemerated.
The following day, having said goodbye to the big fish, we headed east to the town of Ayutthaya. Once the capital of Siam, the old town is made up of dozens of ancient temples and palaces, many of which have been partially restored. We arrived in the afternoon, just in time to take an evening boat trip along the river to visit a few of the temple ruins during the warm orange glow of the sunset. We reached one temple just five minutes or so before closing time, which gave Ross the perfect opportunity to accomplish one of his goals in life: bonging the big Asian gong whilst no one was around to tell him off. Conveniently, the boat tour ended up at the night market where we found a tasty plate of pad thai for dinner.
We spent the following day walking around a few more temple and palace sights and taking a ride on an elephant which was great fun. We also couldn't resist buying a little basket of cucumbers to feed the baby elephant as it was not allowed to eat any until someone bought a basket. We had watched it very naughtily slide its trunk
around the back of its dozing trainer to sneak one, so decided to treat it to some of the most expensive cucumbers we will ever buy, but the proceeds go towards looking after the elephants, rescuing mistreated elephants and helping with wild elephant conservation in Thailand.
From Ayutthaya we headed westwards by train to the town of Pak Chong with the hopes of visiting the Khao Yai National Park. The town itself was not what you would describe as pretty, but more functional with a big busy road going straight through the middle. Having arrived we discovered that pretty much all the accommodation options were located out of town nearer to the park some 15 miles away. Staying out there would mean being at the mercy of their in house eateries and tour packages to the park. This is not our preferred type of travel, so after some hunting around we found one of the few hotels in the town which had perfectly comfortable if not slightly cell like budget rooms. Given that there was no public transport to the park other than the organised tour option, we rented a scooter from a cafe down the street and, after
quite a heated discussion (not on our part) about why we could not rent the bigger of the lady's two motorbikes due the restrictions on our travel insurance, we finally set off on our small and not very powerful scooter.
The roads were not the nicest to scoot along until we were well out of town but once inside the park we knew that our own transport had been the right option. The park is huge and is crisscrossed by a number of quiet roads. After a coffee at the park visitor's centre to calm Liz's nerves following the journey there, we spent a brilliant day bimbling all over the park, visiting waterfalls and wandering along short trails. We saw a very long snake swimming through a pool in a river (oddly enough Liz didn't mention fancying a swim after that) and lots of other wildlife including monkeys, deer and an unidentifiable swimming thing but getting towards the end of the day we had not spotted any of the wild elephants reportedly living in the park. We decided to stop off at one more place as we headed back towards the park entrance and walked to a hide where
we could see a small lake just in case we might spot some elephants coming to drink in the evening. After sitting quietly staring hopefully at the lake for about half an hour Liz wandered to the other side of the hide and looked out, and there it was, a wild elephant digging in a hole for what we think was salt and minerals. We were so pleased to be watching it we didn't really notice the sun going down, meaning we had to negotiate the roads back to town in the dark. Fortunately, this was made easier by a scooter pulling out in front of us and going at a sensible speed so that Ross could follow him avoiding all the big potholes.
The following day we jumped back on a very quiet train for a wonderfully slow rumble through the countryside and farm land to Nakhon Rachasima. There wasn't a huge amount to do here but it was a nice enough place for a stop off before continuing eastwards, this time by bus to the town of Nang Rong. Again this was a fairly functional sort of a place, but we did find a friendly hostel to
stay in where we could get plenty of information on visiting the main site in the area which is the old Khmer temple at Phanomrung Hat. Once again, the only viable option was to rent a scooter and go it alone. The hostel had a very old and very cheap scooter which looked like it could just about make it there and back, so off we went. The scooter only conked out once up a particularly steep hill (Ross blamed it on Liz having eaten far too much fried noodle the night before) but after a bit of tinkering it fired up again and behaved for the rest of the day.
The temple ruins were part of the Khmer empire and are linked closely with the Angkor Wat complex in present day Cambodia. The ruins are set on top of an old volcano and are very impressive with great views over the surrounding countryside. We also visited some other temple ruins near by before having lunch and then following our noses back to town via some very pleasant country roads and bumpy dirt tracks only getting mildly lost (although Ross was worried at one point that we had taken
a wrong turn and had accidentally ended up in Cambodia as the border was very close by).
From Nang Rong we took a bus to Surin where we spent a night in what must have once been a very fancy hotel, but was now very faded and therefore well within our budget. The next day we took a small bus for about an hour down the road to the Cambodian border. We had chosen this back water border crossing from Surin to Osmach as it is one of the least busy with tourists and therefore less prone to all the scams and tricks that plague many of the other more popular border crossings. Nevertheless we were well prepared for the Cambodian border officials to demand extra payment in dollars as an "administration fee" which by all accounts is standard practice. But the the officials must have made enough extra cash this day as we handed over just the official visa fee and no more and got our visas no problem. From this isolated border the onward transport options are fairly limited. We haggled with a taxi driver and eventually got him down to a sensible price for the couple
of hours drive to Siem Reap.
Siem Reap is a fairly small but incredibly busy tourist town and everyone is here for the same reason, to visit the nearby Angkor Wat temple and the complex of temples surrounding it. The Angkor Temples site is described by the Lonely Planet Guide as "one of the world's foremost ancient sites, with the epic proportions of the Great Wall of China, the detail and intricacy of the Taj Mahal and the symbolism and symmetry of the pyramids, all rolled into one," so we thought we had better take a look at it.
After a bit more research about Angkor Wat, we organised a tuk tuk with driver to pick us up at the hideously early hour of five in the morning whereupon we made our way to the main temple of Angkor Wat to watch the sun rise from behind the temple. We'd been told the sunrise was unmissable and it was very impressive to see the towers of Angkor Wat emerge from the darkness, but it was an experience shared with several hundred other tourists, which meant a whole variety of cameras and gadgets on sticks being regularly jammed in
front of our faces.
However, immediately after the sunrise most people disappeared back into town for their breakfast, so we took the opportunity to have a good look around the main temple whilst it was empty and sat in awe munching our bread and jam that we had packed.
The rest of the day was spent being taken by our tuk-tuk driver on a circuit to visit a number (but by no means all) of the most impressive surrounding temples. By four o'clock in the afternoon we were absolutely templed out, so asked our tuk tuk driver to take us back to our guesthouse. He seemed pretty pleased to be heading back too. We gave our chirpy tuk-tuk driver a nice tip as it had been a long day, had an early dinner and fell into bed. The Temples of Angkor had truly lived up to their description.
Having visited Angkor Wat and some of its satellite temples in Thailand, we decided that we had seen enough ancient Khmer temples for the time being so decided to head South to the town of Battambang. The town still retains a smattering of French colonial architecture and is a
little less hectic than Siem Reap, so we decided to brave the roads on some bicycles and had a great day peddling through the surrounding countryside, stopping along the way to buy a fresh pineapple and some bread for a picnic lunch.
Battambang is also famous for being the home of the Phare Ponleu Selpak Circus, which we had heard about and decided to go and see one evening. The circus is part of a wider school of arts that disadvantaged kids can attend for free and puts on shows in a number of Cambodian cities. The professional version of the performance is held at Siem Reap, so the Battambang show would be a slightly more raw performance by the up and coming students. We were therefore not entirely sure what to expect. The venue, a small marquee was packed out, and the performance was amazing. It was high adrenalin antics and incredible acrobatics, some of which did not go entirely to plan on the first attempt, but this just added to the suspense. We thought it was brilliant and even though the tickets were a bit pricey, it seemed such a good and positive thing to be happening
in Cambodia, so it was definitely worth it.
After a few days in Battambang we decided to move on and made our way to the bustling capital city of Phnom Penh. Luckily we chose a hotel a bit away from the main backpacker party area as it was far more pleasant and we got rather a lot more for our money. We have never stayed in a hotel where the staff are so attentive. We are usually ignored by a sullen individual who more or less throws a key in our direction and points upstairs. Here, the staff nearly tripped over themselves to greet us at the entrance and one chap was so eager to carry Liz's rucksack up the stairs for her he hardly gave her time to untangle herself from the straps before picking it up nearly carrying her off with it. These guys were a real source of amusement for us over the next few days, but it really was nice, if not slightly overwhelming, to be treated so incredibly well by all the staff. The hotel was also able, by some sort of back door magic we presume, to organise our multi entry visas for
Vietnam for a sensible rate and within two days. This saved us a whole lot of hassle and time meaning we were able to explore the city sites at leisure. This included visiting a coffee stall in the famous Russian Market run by an incredibly friendly guy who has been serving traditional coffee there for over thirty years. We actually ended up there by chance, but soon realised by all his newspaper cuttings, magazine articles and other reviews on display that this guy and his iced coffee (reportedly the best in Cambodia) had been written up in articles all over the world. We had to agree the coffee was very good.
From Phnom Penh now that we had our visas, we decided it was time to head over to Vietnam. It seemed to us that the most attractive way to do this would be to take one of the regular boats down the giant Mekong river, which after the usual border formalities would deliver us straight into Vietnam's Mekong Delta region.
On this leg of journey we have learnt:
- There doesn't seem to be a legal age for driving a motorbike in either Thailand or Cambodia,
as we were regularly overtaken by motorbikes with three or more young kids on board taking themselves off to school. We wondered if it is the combined age of everyone on board that counts?
- Apparently there is also no legal age for consuming alcohol in Cambodia, however, the number of binge drinking children is a concern for the government...
- It's not so easy as you might think to spot an elephant, especially if you are looking the wrong way.
- Elephants really really love cucumbers!
- It's very unusual to see anyone walking along the streets in some of the smaller Thai towns we visited or in most of Cambodia, as a result, dogs have no idea what pedestrians are and are very suspicious of them. However, if you are on two wheels they don't even bother to look up, which is quite different to most places where dogs love to chase bikes.
- Walking around Phnom Penh is a challenge. What looks like a short walk on the map quickly becomes an obstacle course where you have to dodge motorbikes cutting corners over the pavements, climb over goods spilling out from shops,
swerve the carts of street vendors, hop over men welding things and try not to fall in any holes, whilst also attempting to remain patient with the ever hopeful tuk-tuk drivers shouting "where you go?" at you every two minutes. Despite this, we walked everywhere in Phnom Penh.
- Travelling through southern Thailand has been great fun and we loved exploring some of the less visited east of the country. Cambodia has been a bit more of a challenge, as we often felt like we were on a tourist conveyer belt, being viewed by many as a commodity to be exploited for short term gain. Nevertheless, Cambodia has some spectacular things to see and was definitely worth a quick visit. As for Thailand, we look forward to returning to explore the north of the country later on in this trip.
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RENanDREW
Ren & Andrew
Wow!
That must have been a fabulous sight! How lucky are you guys? :)