hi from the apple guest house

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(written by james)
we woke up nice and early to hear the monks chanting at 4 this morning - there was a monnestry on the hill behind our guest house. we then woke up at the slightly better time of 7 as we had to catch the bus in town at 8. h and i were both bitten lots in the night - they like us a lot! the bus journey took about 1.30 to hell fire pass and memorial museum. this is basically the train line that the japanese forced many allied troups and thai people to buil from bangkok to burma (we are close to the burmese border here). those japanese were really brutal to their workforce and the hellfire pass was about as worse as it got - carving through a huge rockface with many suffering from beatings, malnutrition, often maggots (which makes us appreciate the rice a lot more!) and disease. i did the arduous walk while hayley made the good decision of staying in the nice air conditioned museum.

after this we headed to the local town where we had some lunch and then caught the train that travelled along the route that the POW's built and over the infamous river kwai. the train was shaky and there wasn't even air conditioning which made me fall asleep (as i have been doing a lot) but the views were amazing, finishing off travelling over the famous bridge. when we got to our destination, Kanchaburi, we were greated with individual rickshaws which were great, although the poor drivers had to pull me and my luggage all the way to the hotel, makes me think gap wasn't so bad! h and i then rested in our little room alough the guest house itself is really nice, recommended in the lonely planet guide! tonight we have decided to treat ourselves to a thai massage although we have learnt that in thai 'ouch' actually means i need more, so we might be in for a painful evening...

until nextime, sawadee!

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Comments

[Linda]

Sounds like you are having lots of fun! really looking forward to the pictures!!! Hope the bites do not get any worse!! Enjoy the massage!!! xx

[trisha]

Another excellent blog - a different style to yours Hayley but both very informative and entertaining. The trip sounds amazing but too ardous for me (I know hard to believe) the only bit I would really relish would be the massage. And the mosquitoe bites, as C would testify I become obsessed with counting and rating them in terms of pain, itchyness and scaring...pathetic! Anyway love and miss you loads...look forward to hearing about the waterfall! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx