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Published: March 28th 2007
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Fleeing north from Phuket, we made our way to Damneon Saduak where we spent overnight at the only hotel in town 'The Nok Noi hotel'. With only food stalls available, we ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner out of the 7/11. The purpose of spending a night in this small town was to get up early in the morning and view the floating markets before the bus loads of tourists arrived from Bangkok and saturated the canals. It turned out that we had the entire markets practically to ourselves. It was a rather odd and inconvenient experience to shop while being driven around by boat. If you saw something you liked, you had to tell the driver of the boat to stop so you could take a closer look.
After viewing the markets, we caught a local bus to Kanchanaburi. The local bus was not air-conditioned, and the fans ceased to work whenever the bus was not in motion. That made for some sweaty times. Red lights became even more infuriating. Kanchanaburi was been my favorite Thai stop. We were taken by bicycle tuk tuk to our riverside floating guest house. It was peaceful and pleasant to spend the morning
and evening relaxing on the river, gently rocking to an forth whenever boats passed by.
The highlight on Kanchanaburi is the museums and sights on the Thailand / Burma railway that was constructed by the Jananese during World War II. British engineers who had studied the route came to the conclusion that it would take five years to build. With the help of slave labor in the form of 200 000 men (p.o.w's, and conscripted labor from Burma, India, and Thailand), the Japanese built it in sixteen months. An amazing feat to be sure, but 100 000 men (including 10 000 pows) died during construction from malaria, tropical ulcers, beatings, etc etc. We also made a visit to Hellfire Pass and walked and took a train over the River Kwai Bridge, of movie fame.
After spending an extra day in Kanchanaburi, we took a terrifying two hour mini-bus ride to Bangkok. A mini-bus is basically a large mini-van stuffed with 12 people. Our driver managed to condense the three hour trip into two by using the five-lane highway as his own personal video-game. A french lady finally snapped after our driver was maxing the diesel van out at
140km/h while slouching in his seat with one arm behind his head. "Driverr, Driverr. Please slow down". Upon being met with silence from all aboard, she continued, "De Driver is crazy. Eees going to kill us all..." It was amazing how the driver's understand of the english language can dissapear instantly. Regardless, we arrived in Bangkok and made our connecting full-sized bus to Chiang Mai.
Chiang Mai is under a severe haze and NGOs have actually been evacuating any of their workers with respiratory problems. Apparently, it's due to forest fires and the farmers chosen method of slash 'n' burn agriculture. Lack of rain has also been a contributing factor. The dust particles in the air are three times the healthy limit.
We noticed the haze on our village hill trek that we did to an indigenous village. Three hours of hiking in the heat and haze was pretty much our limit. We stayed at a family's very modest compound consisting of three bamboo huts, a bunch of chickens, pigs, dogs, and cows. The children do not go to school. One of our members asked to have a bbq and the guide said he'd ask the owner if
we could kill a chicken. Unfortunately or fortunately dependin on how you look at it, the owner said the chickens were too small. Sleeping on the bamboo floor was rather rough, not to mention that it was absolutely freezing up in the mountains. The next day we went on another elephant ride before bamboo rafting. It was a good trek overall.
The day after was Megan's birthday and we went to the zoo and thanks to her parents, sister Pat and her boyfriend Peet, we spent the night at the Sheraton Chiang Mai. It was a huge contrast to go from a bamboo hut with no running water or electricity to a four star hotel. It was a fabulous break and we ate like royalty. However, all good things must come to an end, especially expensive things, and we are now back at "Nice Place 2". It was a welcome breath of luxury.
We checked out the local night market and made quite a few excellent buys. It was cheaper than Bangkok and we picked up a few souvenirs. Tomorrow we head for Laos. Thailand's been fun!
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Mina
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Living Vicariously
Mom sent me the latest from your blog so i ended up Seeing them all backwards. What a wonderful trip. nice to see pictures of you Megan. You should plan a trip up to Smithers someday. We're an all season town and have lots of musical stuff. Can't wait to see the restmof your trip Mina