Kanchanaburi...guajira Kanchanaburi...
Part two of the 'I Heart Thailand' series
To be read after part one (scroll down) for those of you who may be a bit dense

So we stayed at a place called Sam's River Raft House in Kanchanburi. It took a couple tries to get to the right guesthouse (our taxi/sawngthaew driver was a moron). We got there really late, like midnight. It was a pretty spartan room, but it was kinda cool that it was on a raft on the River Kwai. The walls looked thatched. We had hot water and a normal flush toilet, which was a plus. However, replacing the geckos as our living companions were cockroaches. Ew. Mind you, we didn't see them too often...but heard them a plenty skittering around in the walls at night. It made it kinda difficualt to fall asleep since our beds were flush up against the walls. At night and in the morning when you'd open the bathroom door you'd usually see a cockroach skitter out of sight. Joleen had to flush one down a hole in the floor with the shower nozzle. Oh well, I've seen my share working in Chadbourne. It was also a bit hard to sleep at night because of the floating karaoke boats that drift down the river blasting horrid music being sung by horrid tone deaf Asians.

So the next day we had a big private tour lined up (just Joleen and I and a tour guide and a driver). First up we went to Erawan National Park, which has a 7-tiered waterfall. So we hiked up that, which I think was about 2 miles. It wasn't too bad, but I was wearing flip flops (jandals) so by the end I had nasty blisters on my toes. It was pretty. And afterwards we had some awesome food. It was great, man. oh, we saw monkeys on the hike which, at the time, we were thrilled about. Little did we know that in not too much time we'd be attacked by a gang of monkeys. But I get ahead of myself.

Next up on the tour we went to an Elephant Camp to ride some elephants. We rode a big 'ol elephant with apparently one tusk (which we didn't realize until looking at the pictures later). It was nothing like riding a horse, but it smelled like a horse. Elephants are cool. We rode through this poverty-stricken village. It was both interesting and awkward. They had a baby elephant there that was doing tricks for us. Then they had it kiss me, which meant it shoving it's trunk on my eye socket and attempting to suction my eye out. It was really stinky. But at least I can say I got kissed by an elephant. For what that's worth. We also got our picture taken (for 20 baht) with a 76 year old elephant. He was old.

Then we went on a bamboo raft ride down a river. It was this giant bamboo raft that only 4 people were on. Kinda funny. This wasn't too exciting, but the whole bamboo raft thing was kinda cool and it was relaxing. I guess all the raft operators were Burmese refugees. I don't know if the Burmese are bamboo raft experts or what. After the raft ride we found out that the car we were being driven around in was in a car accident while we were rafting (not surprising if you see the drivers here). So we had to tag along with this other random group for the remainder of the trip. Slightly awkward.

After the bamboo raft ride we went to the Death Railway. This is a railway that was built during WWII. The Japanese made all their POWs build the track. A lot of people died because it was on a cliff, etc. It should have taken like 5 years to build, but the Japanese forced them to finish it in 16 months. Then we rode in an old-ass train down the Death Railway. When you think about it, who would want to ride in a train on a railway called the Death Railway? Yoinks. We then visited the bridge over the River Kwai. Which was a bridge. And it has a movie named after it. It was funny because there were no side rails and you could totally just fall off of it into the river, especially since it was pretty crowded at times. But we didn't. That was the end of that tour. Then we went back to the raft house and ate a really nice dinner at another guest house (Apple's Guest House). We ate breakfast there the next morning as well since they apparently have the best banana pancakes in Thailand. They were good. Then we took a bus back to Bangkok. It was funny because on the bus they were showing Thai music videos. Every single one of the videos was really sad and depressing. One girl committed suicide, one girl was dumped then run over by a car, one girl's boyfriend was killed by shrapnel, etc. Man, and Thais seem like such happy people...

I've included this next picture of a sign we saw in Kanchanaburi just for Liz, as I thought she'd appreciate it. I enjoyed it, anyway.