We’ve had a lovely few days in Kanchanaburi. It’s a funny place with an entirely separate tourist village away from the main town. It’s a funny mix of World War 2 history (it’s where the bridge over the river Kwai was built), backpackers and middle aged men searching for Thai wives. We have done our best to avoid the latter which hasn’t proved too difficult as they only hang around in bars which also sell egg and chips and steak and kidney pie!
Our guest house has had bikes to borrow, inckuding a pink tandem with an extra child seat on the back. In the absence of any other bikes to fit, Phil has cycled this with Luke and Susie on the back while Emma and I have had our own bikes. We spent a day exploring the area including temples and war cemeteries. Very sombering to see the scale of them, and they are only for the allied troops and not the 100,000 or so local drafted labour.
We also fitted in a visit to the Erawan waterfalls – seven tiers, although we only climbed as far far as number five. Stunningly beautiful and somewhat eerie with a pale turquoise colour water. We swam in pool number four where you can slide down the waterfall like a theme park slide. Lots of fun, but none of us much liked the very large fish which nibble you in the water. Rather like a fish spa only a full body version with fish 10 or 20 times the size. Rather disconcerting and uncomfortable if not actually painful. Luke was particularly bothered by them and didn’t manage to swim.
We took a tour which took us for elephant riding andbamboo rafting. The elephant riding was more successful than our last experience witha trip through the jungle and into the river. It feels very precarious going up and down hill on the back of an elephant! We were able to feed the bananas at the end of the trip.
The bamboo rafting was nice but not amazing. We were towed up river and thenfloated back down. Pleasant enough.
We also rode on the tourist train across the death bridge and on for about 30 minutes. It’s a popular tourist trip and as such was very busy. The river is in flood at the moment because its rainy season. We’re lucky that we haven’t as yet been too impacted by the rain. It seems to be mostly in heavy showers in the late afternoon early evening and we haven’t got significantly wet so far.
Today we leave Kanchanaburi and head, first by bus back to Bangkok and then by overnight train up to Chiang Mai.
I loved it here – one of my favourite places! We made it to the top at Erawan but also walked through a spider’s nest in the process so I wasn’t too impressed! Lovely memories – thanks for sharing (though I quite enjoyed the fish!!)
:o)