Kanchanaburi

Here are a few highlights from our weekend (May 11-13) in Kanch...

Friday night we drive from the Piya Pat apartments to our hotel called Pong Phen, which was very close to the Bridge over the River Kwai. That night we walked a few blocks down and grabbed a beer at a street bar called the "10 baht bar" - really shots were 10 baht there, but I didn't dare.

The next morning I got up and did a short run and grabbed a slice of french toast from the Pong Phen resto (amazing!) and jumped on a tour bus for 8am.

Our first stop was Erawan National Park, an amazing set of 7 tiered waterfalls. We spent 3 hours walking from the bottom of the mountain and walked up stopping and swimming in most of the waterfalls.

In my opinion, the 3rd waterfall was the most beautiful, although the 5th one you could slide down on your bum. The 7th waterfall was well worth the hike, what an amazing view!

After Erawan we were taken to the rafting portion of the tour, when they pulled us up the river and let us go. I thought it was going to be a white water rafting experience, although it ended up being a relaxing current ride down the river. 

As soon as we got of the raft we jumped up on some elephants and went for a ride. Riding the elephants was an awesome experience, although I don't think that I will do it again during my stay in Thailand. For some reason it seemed unethical for those huge animals to be stuck giving foreigner a ride around. Apparently the place we went to was actually more of an ethical camp for them. None of them had tusks because they were adopted after having been abused by poachers and stuff. I still felt bad (although my face does not show it!)

After the elephants we went to catch a train at a station on the death railway. The death railway (from Kanch to Burma) was made by slaves that were starved to death in the second world war.  They say that more than 90,000 people died in its construction. 

The train never came to get us...

Apparently it broke down that day and our driver had already left. So we had to walk along the tracks across a few bridges that were VERY high and not safe in the least - fun and scary!

Last stop on our tour was the Bridge over the River Kwai which was bombed in WWII. They rebuilt it and still use it today (when the train is working).

For the rest of the day we relaxed and sat around and ate. Many people went out on the Saturday night (a few of which got some Bamboo tattoos), but tame little me went to bed at 8:30.

Very fresh, I woke up the next morning and went for a long run. I ran along the highway and through ton. There are not nearly as many dogs in Kanch. :) During my run I saw a huge bull and a beautiful track, where they held some sort of Asian Championships! I almost wanted to run on in, but no there were guard dogs!

For the rest of the day I walked to the Kanch market and bought some jewellery. It was a great place to buy nice gems and such.

All in all I really enjoyed this trip. If I were to go again I would have seen the tigers at the "Tiger Temple" as well as doing the elephants the first day.