Advertisement
Hey! Who chained up our bike?
The police. This reminds me of an old NWA track... We decided to rent a moped for the day, so that we could see Wat Oomong and the Kum Kam ruins. Firstly, we decided to stop at an Internet cafe and parked the moped on the road next to a row of other mopeds.
We came back to find that our moped had been chainlocked by the police - what was strange though was that our moped was the only one that had been locked! We phoned the tourist police, who told us where the nearest police station was. There, we understood that we had to go somewhere else to sort this out - we finally found the place! We were both wondering why we were the only ones to have been chainlocked but when we went in, it was full of locals who had also been caught doing something wrong. There was an Australian there who said that the police probably just ran out of chain locks....anyway we determined that the reason was because we had parked on the road (which isn't allowed). However, when James asked why we were the only one amoungst the 5 to 10 other mopeds (which didn't have a chain on - hence
Penalty Notice
This effectively says 'Beedge is a naughty boy and has been fined accordingly' in Thai. were'nt tourist mopeds) it became clear that the officers english wasn't good enough to work this out without a good 10 minutes of miming and hand waving. The place was full of Thais and not tourists and we paid a standard fine - we were just unlucky and unaware of traffic laws - the annoying thing is its difficult find out the laws by way of anything other than experience (such as this one!)...
It was a 200 baht fine - roughly around 3 pounds 50 pence! Almost worth the price for the experience... 😉
Most of the day had gone by now but we did manage to see Wat Oomong and the ruins - the ruins were a bit disappointing as they were just sites with a few bricks in between houses - the underground temple area was quite fun though. The sites were obviously not protected and hence villages had been built around them, and it was a bit of a rabbits warren. We got semi lost on a couple of occassions...
We left Chiang Mai on the 3rd on the overnight sleeper train to Bangkok - we were sad to leave as we really
The forgotten temple
A temple in Chaing Mai of which we've forgotten the name... we'll have to go back and look at our Rough Guide... liked it there, the thais were all more laid back and less tourist focussed (which ironically means better service and less hassle) and the people at the guesthouse was really nice. The train was quite good and organised - the bunkers were all put out by 10pm but the train was quite jerky so it was hard to sleep! The guy on the bunk below James was knocking back beer and then vodka (from a water bottle!) like there was no tomorrow (maybe a Thai Authur Bent). We arrived an hour and a half late around 8.30am and made our way back to Khao San Road and the 'Lucky House' Guest house.
This is the first time we had been back somewhere and it was nice. We had a few more things we wanted to see before heading off towards Cambodia. Sights we saw were the Golden Mount (we had asked the taxi driver to take us to Wat Arun and ended up here - well worth it for the view of Bangkok from the top), Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn), tried to see Vimanmek Mansion but it was closed due to a national (Chinese?) holiday. We saw
Umong Temple
The underground tunnels lead to a series of buddha's... Spiderman 3 (which I confess was better than I thought it would be), braved the Chatuchak market again (this time we had a map!) and of course, browsed through the malls (mainly for the air con!).
We had originally decided to go to Kanchanaburi to see the bridge over the River Kwai but we were advised that a day trip would be sufficient so we did that. The minivan came to pick us up at 7am and it was a very nice van - deluxe chairs with air con! The journey to Kanchanburi was around 2 hours long - once there the first port of call was the cemetery set up by the Thai people to honour the prisoners of war who had died constructing the railway connecting Thailand to Burma. Seeing the rows of gravestones with the name, rank and regiment of each soldier, along with messages from family was very sobering. The cemetery included prisoners of war mainly from Britain and Holland, but also many other nations from including Australia, Malaysia, US and Singapore. In all about 35,000 POW's died during the construction, and even more depressingly, 300,000 natives (from around the area - incl. Myanmar and
The tunnels
They say that a ghostly figure of a English woman who was bored to death haunts this place. I never saw her, but check out the picture of this empty tunnel! Malaysia also) were used. I believe 100,000 were said to have died by the Japanese, but only a handful of the 300,000 actually returned so who knows what the actual death toll was...
Next stop was the World War II and Jeath War Museum, situated by the bridge over River Kwai. Unfortunately this museum was not very good at all (total rubbish) - there were objects that didn't seem to be connected at all with the war (some pictures were dated 1900 (!)). One example was a random Japanese dental chair or the tens of bikes with Japanese flags painted on them - which _could_ be japanese, but could just as well be allied bikes with a paint job. Not to mention the ridiculous mock-up scenes with life-sized maniquines...
Seeing the bridge itself was worth it though, although it had been rebuilt after the Allies had bombed it.
Next stop - the Death Railway, they say someone died for every sleeper on the line. We had an hour journey, and both James and I did not talk much, I think out of respect for those who died, but whilst it was sad it was also hopeful -
Reading Aesops Tales on the train
This reminds me of the story of the monkey who turned up to book his overnight train ticket late... seeing farmers working the land near the line. That something so bad can happen such a sort time ago and that people can recover from it and move on gives hope, but its sad such a horrific thing happened and some people on the train were treating it a bit like a busmans holiday. Well worth the experience...
We were then taken to the Tiger Temple (we did not choose to do this but as there were not enough people doing our tour we got grouped with those who had chosen to go). It's so called as live tigers roam the place freely - so friends went and said it was good - but we heard since then from several people that they ground the tigers teeth down, pull their claws so they aren't so dangerous if they got out of control. It seemed okay when we got there (from info on the outside), but both James and I weren't sure so we didn't go as we didn't want to possibly encourage this sort of thing...
We arrived back in Bangkok around 6pm after a long and sobering day, but a good one that was worth doing. We
considered going to Patpong and seeing the seedy side of Bangkok, which it is globally famous for, but thought that seeing this last and having such great memories of the city might spoil it... It is essentially a small part of the flavour of the place. Maybe next time.
We were coming up to the end of our stay in Thailand and were sad to go, although we both felt it was time to move on. Thailand is a great place, easy for travelling and safe ....and people do seem to smile all the time!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.104s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0814s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
nath
non-member comment
Bent!!
Dude. et Dudettte. very interesting (and not wishing to egg on Beedge's ego....very funny) blog. But was your reference not aimed to be Arther Dent after the Hitch Hickers guide character? Given the close quarter sleeping arrangement perhaps Beedge was wishing for a Mr. Bent beneath him!!!!! I look forward to many more chances for critisism, although no malice intended. Need mroe time to catch up on your other adventures as reading them in spare moments at present. Good luck my travelling Fraggles. Farewell and Gobo (how appropriate!!!) and Red