Thailand!!! It's been a pretty weird last 2 days... I spent only one day in Bangkok before leaving the city for Kanchanaburi, a small town to the north west of Bangkok. Bangkok seems pretty cool from the very little of it I have seen. The huge city is broken up into 7 main districts; Old City, Thonburi, Chinatown, Pratunam, Downtown, Sukhumvit, and Silom. So far we have barely made it through Old City! We arrived at our hotel on Monday at about 9 o'clock at night so basically just got dinner and walked through Khaosan road, spending our time looking at all the clothes and various souvenir shops. Khaosan road is a backpackers paradise - cheap accommodation, street food amongst bars selling drinks by the bucket, thai massages on the street and the most concentrated collection of young travelers you will find anywhere else in the city. We stayed for 2 nights at a hotel 2 blocks from Khaosan road, giving us the atmosphere without the noise until 5am. An added bonus, a street cafe outside our hotel serving amazing dragon fruit smoothies and food all night long. Perfection achieved. On Tuesday we slept in until about 10am and got out of the hotel with a plan to see the Grand Palace. We were walking along the side of the road when a woman stopped us to tell us how beautiful our white skin was (only in Asia...) and then kindly asked where we were headed. To the palace we told her!
went to standing Buddha temple, promptly taken to the travel agent, succesfully left one only to be brought to another which we left unsuccessfully from... then onto Wat Benchamabophit (beautiful gold buddhas with 3 monk statues in front of them, then to the grand palace and temple of the emerald buddha. Tuk tuk drivers name was what sounded like Boy but somehow 2 syllables. Then went to a great street market for some food, ate overlooking the river. Tried to get to Wat Saket, a temple on a hill overlooking the city for sunset but b/c traffic is so bad in Bangkok around 5pm no tuk tuk driver would take us for under 80 Bath which we thought sounded too pricey for something only a few blocks away. We set out but shortly realized we wouldn't make it on foot before it closed so headed towards home and a shower instead. We thought that once we had showered we would be more invigorated and ready to face some night life. Walking back to the hotel, however, we saw a massage school giving full body Thai massages for 180 Bath (about 6 USD) and decided we could spend an hour being pampered. It was awesome!!! a series of stretching positions while being given a vigorous massage then they walk on your legs and put their knees on your back. good thing Thai women are so skinny, I couldn't help but think if this were popular in the West, you'd have to be very careful not to get someone overweight to walk on you. the whole thing could go very wrong very easily. But as the woman who massaged me was about 4 foot 11 inches and weighed probably 90ish pounds, it was very relaxing. We shopped for a bit then dinner at our favorite street cafe where we planned the rest of our time in Thailand and did some research in our book about what sites we really wanted to hit.
Woke up early, around 6:30am so we could have time to get breakfast before being picked up by the service. Got in a big white van that might as well have had tourist written on it in huge block letters. We picked up a few other tourists and then were off. After about 1 1/2 hour drive reached the WWII war cemetery. Then went to the bridge over the river Kwai. from there we hopped on a train that rode for an hour and a half through the jungle side. along the railroad built by the allied POW forces. We went passed Hellfire pass, supposedly the most grueling part of the RR to build, I was told 12, 399 men were killed in the process of building the railway. We were met by our tourist mobile and taken to our floating river hotel where we had lunch. Lunch was super quick and we were rushed into our next activity which was advertised as bamboo river rafting but was more like water drifting. I had imagined white water rapids, or something of the like but we were pulled up the river and then let go and allowed to drift down it until we were caught by the boat and taken back to the hotel. We were then driven to the Sai Yok National Park to see a beautiful waterfall. The water was cool and was a great relief from the heat. We spent about an hour in the water. Then we were driven to the elephant reserve where we jumped on an elephant for a 20 minute ride. Then back to our floating paradise. Ainhoa and I were brave and took a dip in the river even though there was a sign saying no swimming as the current is extremely strong. We didn't really swim, we hung on to a hook off the side of a raft and let the water pull us about for a few minutes before struggling to get back onto the safety of the bamboo raft. We watched the sunset as we ate dinner (really nice larb, sounds awful but a nice traditional chicken dish). As there was nowhere to go but to hang out at the hotel we talked with other tourists for a few hours and made some good friends. Then time for bed!
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