Day 6

As I’m a solo traveller getting to areas out of town can be expensive, so I booked a day mini-bus tour taking in some of the main attractions of the Kanchanburi area. There were only two other people on the tour; some German students, and we were whisked off straight to the Bridge on the River Kwai. Our tour guide’s English accent was so bad you could only understand a quarter of what he was saying!

Tally ho wot wot don’t let the Japs get you down son!

As an attraction it’s boring but still cool to walk along the same place that the Brits slaved over. The place is a tourist trap but we only hung around for ten minutes before continuing to the Sai Yok waterfalls about an hour away. The falls were nice, just one set, but didn’t rate compared to others I’ve seen.

Setting up a tripod on underwater rocks with a broken shoulder is not the easiest of tasks!

Then it was off to Hellfire Pass, up in the hills. This is a section of the wartime railway that had to be manually hacked out of the rock. The conditions were appalling especially when the timeframe for the completion was brought forward and prisoners were working around the clock. Many died and this outdoor museum is an audio tour as you walk through the cuttings and hear first hand interviews with ex-POWs. It’s really well done and amazing to imagine what you are walking through was hacked away by hand and explosive. Some of the stories from the POWs are quite horrible. Further along the railway the jungle opens out to this amazing view over the jungle to the mountains (Burma lies behind these).

The weather was scorching, at least it wasn’t raining as usual! We continued to an elephant centre and had an elephant ride through the jungle including wading through a river. When we were going through the river the second elephant decided it would be fun to have a wash and sprayed mud with its trunk behind it, spattering me completely with chunks of mud. Brilliantly one bit landed smack-bang in the middle of my camera lens!

This elephant’s manhood is the length of my arm.

Next was a short bit of bamboo rafting. You sit on a tiny plank a few centimeters above the water and a guy poles you along the river. Good fun. At this point I was wishing I’d brought my waterproof camera as we slammed into rocks and went through rapids. Oh well, I thought, at least my camera would die happy if the worst happened!

We collected some girls afterwards who had done a jungle trek and stayed overnight in the jungle. They had seen tarantulas and sampled the killer local homebrew whiskey. Then it was off to the “Death Railway”, a stretch of the original WW2 railway which is still in commercial use, over a cool cliffside bridge. As we waited for the train we explored a nearby cave shrine.

Jumped out of the tracks as the train arrived but still failed to get a good photo of it! Then stood on the steps of the doorway to get a great view. There are handles so it’s safe as long as you don’t have a death wish. The train journey took us a few stops through the countryside.

One of the girls from the tour

Then it was back to Kanchanburi. I was determined to try and get some decent golden hour shots of the river piers so, knackered from the day, I got my first motorbike taxi. We bombed through the streets dodging traffic but unfortunately I had shown the wrong place on the map and we ended up at the ferry pier. It seemed interesting so I stayed to check it out. Locals were fishing from the pier and the ferry was just a basic flatbed boat which people and motorbikes piled onto, chugging across the river every few minutes. Unfortunately the poor weather meant there was no good light, but it was nice to experience the place.

I wandered back as it got dark, through a busy food market and picked up some kebab things. I had trouble finding a motorcycle taxi, since then I’ve learned that they always have a numbered top on. Eventually one turned up and the driver, not speaking English, turned off in a wrong direction. I thought I’d wait and see what he was doing as the map I’d shown him was quite clear. Turns out he took me to his taxi rank and handed me over to a driver who spoke English and they split the fares. So sometimes it pays to put faith in your foreign help! Had a restless night thanks to the overwork I’d given my shoulders.

Day 5

Mark had recommended some towns in the west, so I hopped on a morning local train to Kanchanburi. Fortunately getting on was painless as the staff spoke basic English. There was only one other Western couple on the whole train so I felt immersed in the experience. The carriages were 3rd class, quite rickety with fans on the ceiling. An old chap befriended me, he seemed to be a tranny without makeup or maybe he just had a weird fashion sense. He spoke a few words of English but we managed to communicate through signs.

A drinks hawker patrols the train

The 3 hour journey took us past rice fields, temples and towns, towards the end large forest hills dominated the landscape. On arrival I lugged my stuff to a recommended guesthouse, annoyingly realising afterwards I was next to a building site! Many of the guesthouses have rooms over the river on stilts. The tourist part of Kanachanburi is a characterless concrete strip filled with touristy bars and shops, so I went wandering into the main town. I found one of the big war cemeteries for the prisoners of war who died building the Burma/Thailand railway. Kanchanburi is the location of the Bridge of the River Kwai. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners and labourers were enlisted to build the railway and something like 90 thousand died due to the terrible conditions.

I found a traditional Thai cemeterary next door and explored it. Some graves have photos of the inhabitants which is quite touching.

Further into town I saw a big school music show going on, some of the kids were excited to see a farang around. I came across a fresh food market and put my photography to the test in dark conditions. There were lots of fish (some huge), eels, and even frogs.

I headed down to the river past some impressive temples and discovered loads of floating restaurants. As it wasn’t the weekend or evening, they were all moored up in rows. They are quite big and some are two storey. Apparently at the weekend there are floating discos which cruise along the river, sounds great. I found a road bridge which gave a good vantage point of the nice river scenery and rafthouses.

You can see a floating building being tugged there on the right.

A long walk back to the tourist area and I managed to get to another bridge to catch the end of sunset, the image at the start of this post. The blue lit up bridge in the distance is the Bridge on the River Kwai.

Keeping this blog updated and staying on top of my photo management is proving harder than I thought! Often I’m just too tired or don’t have the time or internet connection. So once again here’s a bunch of posts at once!

Day 3

Lugged my bags to a guesthouse right next to Khaosan Road. Then I roamed the streets determined to eat some street food for breakfast. I stopped at a likely stall and realised as it was a “made to order” place I didn’t know how to explain what I wanted (there aren’t obvious things to point at at these stalls). As soon as I started miming the guy immediately pointed to the next stall down the alley so I went there. The guy there spoke a few basic food words so I ordered noodles, chicken! I was annoyed to fail at the complicated stall but happy to get something authentic and cheap – street food is at least half the price of any restaurant. Whilst I was scoffing my delicious dish, a passing guy gave me a friendly punch and smile, clearly impressed to see a farang (foreigner) eating as the locals do!

The easy kind of street food, you can just point at what you want!

Spent the rest of the day chilling out in my room and sleeping. A proper monsoon hit in the afternoon and this was the first of many to come in the following days. Never seen such heavy rain even in Costa Rica. Unfortunately having slept too much in the day I couldn’t sleep at night and woke up at 5am!

Monsoon

Day 4

I walked North for a few hours in search of a palace where there’s a free traditional dancing show. On the way I found a small Wat with some nice shrines inside. People in the Wats tend to be quite friendly and say hello, and there were a few monks around, some of who were giving blessings to visiting Thai.

After getting a bit lost (glad I brought that compass now!) I found the palace. Unfortunately an armed guard explained to me it was closed today! Gah, a gruelling walk wasted. Still the place was good to look at from outside and next to it was the zoo which I wanted to see. Outside the palace there were hundreds of policemen gathered for some training or induction or something. There were street vendors selling them belts, badges and other bits and bobs, guess the police here have to equip themselves!

As I was taking photos of the palace some nutter was running laps around the statue in the huge area in front of it. The sun was blazing down and the guy was baretopped and looked like he was about to die. After about twenty minutes he gave up and stopped to pray at the statue. Maybe the gods are punishing him, because you wouldn’t see me do that madness!

Just then I ran out of battery and to my horror discovered all my spares were out too. Novice mistake! I headed back to the guest house to recharge and met Mark for some refreshment. Later he took me for dinner to a local place over the river and we ate some firey Northern Thai food including a great herb soup. I got the local bus back, complete with roof fans.