Kanchanaburi

Today we went to Kanchanaburi - it was a completely awesome day (apart from the amount of time we spent driving). Had an early start, got up at 7 and had a buffet breakky at the hotel. The breakfasts here aren't that great. None of the western food is quite the same and I still can't quite stomach thai food for brekky. The fruit isn't quite as flavoursome as in Oz but it's edible. At the buffets there is always a person cooking eggs, you just go up and ask them what you want. The coffee here is terrible, I have to put in lots of sugar, but the sachets of sugar are huge!

So after our breakfast we spent a little bit trying to arrange how to get to kanchanaburi. We thought it wouldn't cost that much and were going to get the bus ($3 each) but when we asked people where the Southern Bus Terminal was they had never heard of it. So we thought we'd just get a taxi. The taxi's here are so cheap. We ended up getting a lovely taxi driver (Saipet I think his name was) who drove us around the whole day (I'm talking close to 10 hours here) for 3000 baht - $100! Bargain! He took us first of all to the floating markets. I think he must have got a commission for taking us there because we didn't ask to go there and he kind of insisted on taking us. We thought, oh well, may as well it looks kind of cool.

So the floating markets were cool!! We got driven around these little canals around the markets for about an hour. The stalls are all either on little boats or by the side of the river. The boat driver stops at each one for you to look at what they have for sale. It was actually quite disappointing that most of the stalls sold the same thing - souvenir type handmade things. We bought a book of postcards, keryn got some wooden hand carved coloured pencils and I got these little wooden bookmarks with dolls on them. At the end of the boat trip I bought a plate with my photo on it and Floating markets written on it. I will post it home soon so I don't have to carry it in my backpack.

Next stop - Tiger Temple!! This was cool. We went in and wandered down this quite long dirt road until we found the tiger area. We went down and the staff held our hands and took us to sit with each tiger while they took photos of us with our own cameras. It was so cool. The tigers are so beautiful!! After we had our piccies taken we wandered around and looked at the other animals, there were a few deer, buffalo, horses (tiny ones) and really skinny cows. All the cows here look anorexic. Maybe that's why there's not much milk in Thailand.

I was almost passing out by the time we finished here as I was so hungry and it was so hot, so we got the taxi driver to take us to a 7 eleven and we got some food. I thought I'd try some asian stuff so I got a packet of coconut cream coated peanuts (which were tasteless), some honey-looking chips (which turned out to be fish-flavoured... vomit) and some salt & sour chips (I thought they'd be like salt & vinegar but they were gross) - ended up giving them all to the taxi driver. We all got a pork bun, which turned out to be custard inside hahaa...

Next stop - Bridge over the River Kwai. At the bridge here we decided to go on a boat trip. We hopped on another super-fast little boat and sped on down the river. We made 3 stops. First stop was a cave. It was quite cool. We hopped off the boat and climbed up this little track up the hill, through some markets in a little wooden walkway and at the top found a big gold buddha. Not that big in comparison to some here, but we're still go see the really big ones. So we took a piccie of us and the buddha and the river. The view was beautiful.

We wandered on down the path to the cave. There were signs along the way pointing us in the right direction. These were hilarious - they read "The way to see a cave" and "The way to enjoy with a cave" - you can see these in my smugmug. Once we got to the cave we had to pay a small admission fee but the guy gave us each a little friendship band which was cute. We went down into the cave, being escorted by two little thai boys - about 7 years old - eating their bowls of noodles for lunch! I was glad they were there showing us the way because the cave went down really deep and I started to get a bit unsure if we were supposed to go down that far! Some of the crevices we had to duck through were really small! There were buddhas around in the cave and little shrines. We were really puffed when we got back up out to the top again, and the little thai boy said to me "You - sit down over there" and pointed to some seats. hehe... We started to head back but the girls had to go to the toilet so we stopped into some really disgusting toilets, half of the cubicles had stray dogs asleep on the floor of them and most were really dirty. They had a basin full of water next to them and a bowl for you to scoop water out to flush the toilet - yuk!! See pic in my smugmug.

Next stop on the River Kwai boat tour was a monkey school! We hopped out and went up to see the monkeys. Most were on little leashes but the guy came up with a monkey and let us hold it - he put it on my shoulders and it held on to my head!! I shrieked because I wasn't expecting him to put it on my shoulders and 'rabies' was going through my head but Keryn had held it so I just let it sit on my shoulders while the girls took my photo. We didn't have time to see the whole show so went back to the boat and moved on to the War Cemetery.

The war cemetery was sad but interesting. There were hundreds of rows of graves of all the soldiers, and we wandered among them looking at how old all the men were. Lots of them were around 22, 23, 24, 25... so young! We signed the visitors book and headed back because we'd taken too much time and the taxi driver (bless him) was waiting for us. We got the taxi driver to take our photo on the famous bridge and then told him the destination was Bangkok! We were glad to be heading home as it was such a long day, and all groaned when he said to get comfy because the trip back would be at least an hour due to peak hour traffic.

That's something worth mentioning here - I thought Brisbane traffic was bad. Bangkok traffic is a nightmare. The traffic lights once they turn red stay red for about 5 whole minutes. Next to the traffic light is a counter counting down the seconds until the light will turn green again. On the way back it rained for the first time.

When we got back we went straight down to the net cafe which was quite useless as it was so slow. Most of the ones we've been to have been really slow and in Thai which is a bit difficult.

For dinner we went to an authentic Thai restaurant near the hotel - The Sukhothai. We ordered dacquiris and Mana and I got green curry and Keryn got a red curry. I thought I really should try an authentic green curry. Holy mother of god it was hot. We all had steam coming out of our ears. I ordered 3 extra serves of rice and milkshakes. It was quite funny though.

Keryn and I then went to a net cafe - it was a gaming one full of thai nerds fragging it up for the night. We uploaded some pics, sent some emails and blogged a little then went to bed as we had to get up in 3 hours for the plane to Ko Samui. What a day!!