Kanchanaburi

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Were now sitting on the seventh floor of MBK in an internet cafe which is about 15 baht for 1/2 an hour. Spending 15BHT (about 0.60AUD) was a huge decision as when we got up this morning we realised that we had very little money to last the day as we have to pay 500BHT each in departure tax, 400BHT for a taxi to the airport, leaving us with about 350BHT to eat lunch and find Bianca a t-shirt to buy so she actually has something to wear tomorrow!!!

Yesterday was our big trip to Kanchanaburi which is about 2 hours out of bangkok and about 3.5 hours and a walk during the peak hour traffic back home! We got up nice and early at 5.55am and had some 2 minute noodles for breakfast because our hotel breakfast doesnt get served till 6.30, from there we went downstairs and waited for our tour bus to arrive. About half an hour after it was scheduled to meet us it arrived and turned out to be a old minibus/tarago with great aircon and a non-english speaking, quite possibly suicidal driver who drove us and another 5 people about 1/2 an hour out of bangkok where we met our proper tour guide. Our guide proved to be really funny - fits of laughter funny, especially when talking about his wife and her 'excess baggage'. (when we had first child, nice and thin, second child 70kg!!, third child BIG GODZILLA 95kg!!!!) He called himself Michael Jackson throughout the tour and would ask the men on the tour what happened to the pretty asian girl that they were here with last year. He also turned out to be very interesting on the way home when he talked about his family and his village. He was born in a jungle village with about 200 people and no electricity, running water etc that survive off a staple diet of tapioca and eventually got a scholarship to university to learn english and now lives in bangkok 6 days a week, travelling home each sunday to visit his family and his godzilla.

The first stop on the tour was the War Cemetary, that contains about 6500 graves of english, aussie, dutch, NZ etc soldiers who were held prisoner and forced to work on the Thai-Burma railway. The cemetary itself was very well maintained by the Thai's adn was full of western tourists.
Following the cemetary we reboarded our minibus and headed for the War Museum which turned out to be a bit dissapointing. The museum was randomly designed and had generally pretty poor exhibits. To make up for this outside was a small part of the original wooden bridge, plus the famous steel one over the river Kwai. We walked up the bridge and took some good photos down the river, and then watched as the train tried to cross the bridge which was still covered in tourists.

The next stop was a waterfall in the middle of nowhere. You would never guess that it was there when you drove past but just off the road was a small hill with a really nice waterfall and small streams coming off it. The waterfall was being used by the local kids who would climb up it and then slide down into the pool below. The trees and plants that were around the waterfall were huge and looked very old and are the kind of plants that you imagine you'd see in a jungle area like that. Our guide told us that when he was a kid he would go there and the place would be full of monkeys and other small animals, but now they have all receded deeper into the jungle. Not far from the waterfall Bianca saw a sign for elephant rides and convinced our guide to detour down that road where we both got to pat some elephants and where I got snotted on my arm.

Lunch after this was on a floating restaurant on the river kwai, it was a fairly simple lunch of just rice, egg, a chicken dish and some stir fried vege's but was nice and very much a typical local thai meal. From lunch we broke away from the majority of the tour who were staying overnight and 4 of us headed to the Tiger Temple.

The tiger temple can be basically summarised as - Weird! It was sort of like a private property that had some animals and then who's owners decided hey, lets turn this place into a zoo. So there is a lot of construction happening there, but the animals all just roam around freely e.g. wild horses (pony size), water buffalo, peacocks, pigs, cows etc. There is a large canyon type thing near this, which has the tigers in it being cared for by monks and about 10000000 other staff who literally take you by the hand, one at a time up to the tigers (about 8 tigers when we were there) and let you pat them, and they take photos of you with your camera. Bianca had to change her pants afterwards because she was so excited (shes still excited sitting next to me now).

From tiger temple it was time to drive home again which took much longer than it did to get there in the first place. Bangkok traffic was basically gridlocked from when we got into the city and it turned out to be quicker for us to get out with our guide and walk home.

Our time is now running out so our next entry will be coming from Vietnam as were leaving this arvo for Hanoi.

Hope your all well,

Love S and B

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Comments

[mummy, mum in law]

saturday bloggin'
Hi guys, just read your last entry, just wondered if BC has settled at all since you arrived Scott?Have been receiving your text messages, have you been getting mine? Sounds like you are having a great time, keep the entries coming. Chloe survived her first beach patrol, no BC she didn't get eaten by a shark!!! Kitties are happy, we have reduced mingies tablet again as she was too dopey!! Love from us all