The End of Bangkok and Kanchanaburi

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The End of Bangkok!

We spent our last few days in Bangkok seeing the last few sights, tying up a few loose ends and enjoying a few relaxing days before our (hopefully) funfilled trip to Kanchanaburi!

I (maria) treated myself to a bit of pampering in a spa and a brand new haircut. Made the most of having my hair straightened as it would be another few months til my hair looks presentable again!

On our last day we visited the Chatachuck Weekend Market, possibly the only thing i'd reccomend to do in Bangkok! It was about half an hour on the bus from the centre of Bangkok and was a huge undercover group of market stall type shops with anything you could possibly want, from clothes, handicrafts, food, things for the home and even pets!

Ready for our 3 day trip to Kanchanaburi we got up at the ridiculous hour of 5:30 ready to catch the minibus. Our first stop was the WW2 memorial graveyard, huge but only including english, dutch and australian soldiers who lost their lives building the River Kwai bridge, very sad 😞

The next stop was the Jeath War Museum, probably the wierdest musuem i've ever been too. It was like an abandoned half demolished building, full of dusty artifacts and clippings of information about the River Kwai bridge. Interesting but 0/10 for presentation! The leftover stump of the original River Kwai bridge was also on the side of the river beside the museum. A few wooden planks, rotting away with nothing to protect it or anything to stop people clambering all over it!

Just 100 metres along the river was were the 2nd River Kwai bridge was built, but was still very old and the walk over was a bit scary as we were careful to avoid the rotting planks of wood that the walkway consisted of! One wrong move and we'd plummet 50 metres into the water below!

After lunch on a 'floating restaurant' our next stop was the contraversial Tiger Temple. A large enclosed space where for many years the monks at the temple have been collecting and looking after many animals, tigers being the most popular with tourists! Every afternoon you can queue up to have your picture taken with lots of the tigers who although chained up hardly move anyway and doze in the sun. The leaflet said that they are naturally sleepy in the afternoon but we heard afterwards that there are rumours the tigers are sedated so that hundreds of tourists a day can have their picture taken with them. Sad 😞

Our home for the 2 nights was a small floating hotel, about 15 rooms and all the mod-cons, shower, flushing toilet, airconditioning and even a bar! We made the most of the beers and riverside view both nighs and met lots of interesting people from all over the world.

The other highlights from our 3 day trip to Kanchanburi were the Erawan falls, a seven level waterfall, all great for swimming (if you ignore the fishes following you around and nipping at your skin!) and one with particularly convenient smooth boulders to slide down which we took advantage of!

We did lots of other things like caving, elephant riding and bamboo rafting down the river and on tuesday afternoon we set off back to Bangkok to catch the sleeper train (along with 4 ozzies we had met) north to Chiang Mai.

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Comments

[Laura]

Wow!
Some fantastic pics guys - and Maria, the hair looks hot! xx

[rik]

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those photos look mint. that tiger is massive and i like the ones of you sliding down those rocks, that looks fun. I get this blog emailed to me now, its well nifty. You see any weird lady boys out in bangcock? i bet theyre all over the place. it looks like a strange place. you've probably heard the news, england are through to the european cup next summer and are bookies favourites. steve bruce has left brum to manage england, and blues won against villa 4 nil. not bad. xmas plans are starting to shape up. everyone wants to go to the forest but im trtying to dig my heels in and claim wilsons but its looking unlikely. shag bag or ellora on after whatever. ive got a miserable cold and have exams in a couple of weeks so as you can imagine, im full of the festive cheer at the moment but in a couple of weeks ill be loving it. Good to hear from you guys, take it easy,

[Laura]

Blues beating villa 4 - 0.....funniest thing I've heard in ages!!!! Almost as funny as the look on the blues noses faces when Gabby scored the winner!!!! Shame - you can always enjoy next years local derby with West Brom! xxxx P.S. Adam - incase you didn't know - Liam Ridgwell scored an own goal....classic!