Where to next?

With my application done and sent away, I suddenly feel like I have a massive amount of time on my hands. I’m not sure if this is just emphasised by the fact that I’m not in work today (Monday) due to illness (and now, today being Tuesday), but other than being ill, it feels good. Thank you to all who helped tweak it and check it, it’s very much appreciated.

I was going to write about teaching the younger groups today, but we have had two blogs already on teaching and if I’m going to be perfectly honest, the teaching methods for these last two groups don’t really change that much over the time in Thailand. For the most part it is teaching new sets of words or very simple sentences. So I shall talk about teaching them another day.

Instead I find myself with an urge to write about Ayutthaya, the second place we visited. As I said in my Kanchanaburi post, I hadn’t really done my research. I was rushed and made a sudden decision and the things on my mind were mostly sorting out the flights, get a mosquito net and all the other things I needed to sort out in the two or three weeks between confirming I was going to going. And on top of that, I was working full time. And on top of that still, what the hell am I going to teach? How am I going to teach it? Can I do this? I’m very scared! So ‘nice places to visit in Thailand’ was not top on my priorities.

But during the week I did some research. I looked at more local places and wanted to visit somewhere more cultural. Kanchanaburi was an adventure break, but I didn’t manage to see all the museums and other such sites that I wanted too. So this time around my concentration was on another place. Vanessa didn’t seem to mind too much where we went either, she was going to be visiting the places she really wanted to go and see after her time at the school was over.

So after a few days on the internet and reading my various guidebooks I settled on Ayutthaya. This is a city with rich cultural histories. Founded nearly a thousand years ago it was the old capital of the Siam. It was destroyed about two hundred and fifty years ago by the Burmese army. The old part of the city is surrounded by a large moat that is fed by a river. Here are where all the old ruins are.

Sounded good. Now, finding a place to stay. When we went to Kanchanaburi (and I just realised I didn't tell this story in that blog) we just looked through the guide book, picked a place, and literally on the bus there called and said, do you have rooms tonight? And that worked out. This time we decided to book a little more in advance. I say in advance, first of all, this is just a week after Kanchanaburi. Really not even that... we got back Sunday night and would be leaving Friday afternoon. And we didn't decide on Ayutthaya until Wednesday. There were also other factors going on this weekend, Sunday was the kings birthday. So it was going to be a long weekend with no school on Monday. But we had to be back by Sunday for a festival thing. So, since not only would the tourists be out, but the Thai's would be out. Might be an idea to book a place.

Vanessa wanted to stay somewhere decent. A hotel, with hot water and soft beds and air con. After speaking with someone she met through the teachers, we got a discount on a... four or five star hotel. I was uneasy with the price. But she's leaving next week, anywhere I stay after this will be cheap and I have hardly spent any money yet. It's still less than twenty quid a night. So we booked it.

Friday and we set off, a minivan on that totally suicidal "bus stop", same as before. But this time, we learn why these minivans can be more uncomfrotable than the buses. Just because there are nine seats, doesn't mean it will just fit nine people. More than double the numbers, easily. Firstly, two people per seat. Secondly, no where to put large bags... or sacks of rice other than on you. Then once you literally can't fit anyone else on the seats there is the floor. And the floor has various steps to sit on. You can stand in the doorway as well. So there is plenty of space. Oh. Em. Gee. O.M.G. Ohhhhh myyyyyy god! It's not comfortable. It's a squeeze. Fun times. but they drop us opposite the hotel and this two hour journey has cost less than two quid. Mint.

Hotel ain't half posh. I don't belong here. I like my room. Two beds (on my own here, not sharing). Which one is bette... oh my god this one. It's so soft. I literally melt into it. I feel like Charlie Sheens face when he's on Charlie Sheen (that's new... I've added that). We actually arrived here early, Friday, because of the kings birthday, was not a teaching day. So in the midday heat a swim in the outdoor, rooftop pool seems like a good idea. Except this pool is freezing because it has sun blockers all over it, not allowing it to heat up properly! So I give up after just putting my feet in (don't forget, I have cold showers every day, this water was seriously cold).

Went for a look around, a bit of a walk. The map shows a floating market somewhere. After about an hours walking we realise we either went past it, it doesn't exist or we went the wrong direction. It's starting to get dark now, lets head back and along the main road the hotel is on is a lot of eateries and I could do with a beer.

A Heiniken sign in what looks like a trendy bar. Lets go for it. Wait, no. We have our beer and ice and they do food. There is discussion on which menu to hand us. We get a Thai food menu. No idea what any of it is. The pictures are the same on every page so I don't know what I'm looking at. Do you have "Pad Thai?" "Mai" (no). "Cow Pat?" "Chai" (yes). Pointing at myself, I order a rice dish. As does Vanessa. Waiting for the meal a lot of... dodgy looking women start to arrive. Then one of them takes a picture of us sitting drinking our beer. The food arrives and I have to say, best rice I've had in Thailand, some of the best food I had out there it was amazing. More dodgy women and now dodgy men arrive. Vanessa turns to me "Do you think this is a brothel?" "Yes. Yes I do." Moments later a lady comes up with an over-friendly demineur and asks if there is anything else we would like. "No! I'm fine! Thank you though." She leaves. "I gotta say, the food here is fantastic! Maybe it's like before you go for a run and eat a load of pasta before hand." My god. Drink up. Let's leave. "Bye!!!!" We get from everybody while paying the bill.

Back at the hotel I need a real drink. Cocktails. I don't care that they are expensive (like, 5 quid a drink, so actually, yes, not just expensive for Thailand. Expensive!) I had a fair few of them, went and checked out the very disappointing and completely empty Karaoke bar that I had been looking forward to since hearing the hotel had one. Big day tomorrow. Time to melt away in my bed! Oh yes.

Teaching Class 5/6

Well before I begin, apologies if any of you were offended by the last post. In one of those moods. I am aware not all of you were to busy, since that's what some of you said to me, but you were inaccessibly (hence the extra bits). To a large degree, the inaccessibility is my fault since I can't get out of Stratford on a Friday night and can't finish work early to leave in the afternoon. Anyway, apologies made, just wanted to have a bit of a rant.

Teaching! Can't beat a bit of teaching. The second week consisted mostly of working on what we thought the weaknesses of the various classes were. One thing they all shared right across the ages was pronunciation. They could all sing the alphabet, A B C D E ext. Sing it to yourself, until you get to G. Now say the word 'egg'. Say the word 'egg' as if you believe all G's were pronounced the way they sound in the alphabet song. You get something like 'ejj'. So we worked with all the classes on saying the sounds as they sound in most words (obviously it varies and is very difficult).

Today I will be concentrating on what we spent the week teaching Class 5/6. These were the oldest of the students and one of the most enjoyable (and by far easiest) classes to teach. I want to start including more pictures in my blogs. I don't have many from this week of teaching, but here is one of my favourites from the week before. There is more information in previous blogs about the game, but put simply, they were standing on a raised edge of the play area and had to move themselves to be in the right order for the words they were holding to make a sensible sentence. They couldn't touch the grass behind them or the pavement in front. It was all about fun and team work, as the other team watched on, trying to both help and hinder them.

In Thai, they don't have the word sets that we do for building sentences. For the most part they just have the specific nouns, like 'table'. They do not have words like 'I' 'me' 'you' 'they' ext. So for them building up the basic sentences are very difficult. In the first week we had them saying "I like football" after we asked them "What do you like?". They didn't know what the words 'I' and 'you' were, and what the difference was when you use them in sentences. So Vanessa wrote out some cards, the idea behind them would be to mix and match them to create sentences that made sense. Each card was double sided, with one side containing the 'opposite' of the other. For example; "he" on one side and "she" on the other. There were the 'who' type words (I, you, he, she, we and they). Another group of joiners (am, are, is). Finally, the feeling, keeping it simple with just 'happy' and 'sad'.

We spent the whole week working on this, not just throwing them straight into the deep end. So we began with the difference between 'you' and 'I'. We pointed at one of the students, saying 'you'. And then another one, again saying 'you'. Then we pointed at another, but didn't say anything. They pointed at themselves and said 'you'. Jumping in, we pointed at outselves and said 'I'. Then he repeated, I. As did the whole class. We pointed at some more, and everyone was shouting 'YOU!'. Then I had one of the boy point at himself, and he said 'I'.

With 'you' and 'I' done, we moved on to 'he' and 'she'. We had two boys and two girls stand up. We repeated 'you' and 'I' one more time. And then pointed at the boy and said 'he'. Everyone repeated. Then pointed at the girl and said 'she'. Everyone repeated. We then pointed at the other boy. Everyone was silent. One person shouted out 'you'. "Yes! ... but... what else?" pointing again and again. One girl, probably our favorite, Panadetta (not sure on the spelling), said 'he'. "YES! He!!" And then we pointed and the second girl, Panadetta once again got it right, with 'she'. Repeating this with more boys and girls, and more people joining in.

Now on to 'they' and 'we'. Divide the class into a three groups and have them standing in the groups. I took one group, Vanessa the other. Pointing at the other groups we established 'they'. Then we waved our arms in an encompasing 'we' way, and said... shocker... 'we'. This worked well we thought.

In the next lesson we worked hard on linking each of these with the appropriate joining word. So 'am, is, are'. This is pretty self explanatory. After going through them, and running some practice games where we pit class five against class six. We would say for example "we". There would be two children up at the board, one from each group, and they would have to point at the appropriate joining word. The first gets the points. It works well, and after a couple of games they know it all very well. We introduced the cards, and started having them produce these small sentences.

More games and words were introduced and played throughout the rest of the week, reinforcing all the work we had done with them. They picked it up very well and almost all of them knew it. I really enjoy teaching this class because they are not only so good, but enjoy working on new things and really put a lot of effort in. But you really do need to keep them busy because when they get distracted they quickly disengage and it can be very difficult to win them back.

In the next blog, I will talk about the other two classes and what we did with them and the games we played, the words we taught and techniques we used.

Teaching in the Morning

Finally writing my teaching segment! I didn't keep detailed diaries this week, just segments here and there. This would be another pretty mammoth blog and I want to go into real detail here, so I'm splitting this whole segment into different sections and publishing them separately. So today, a typical school morning.

A nice early start of between 6 and 6.30 to get a shower after a very hot night. Apparently the temperature does drop a lot, and the fan isn't needed as much. I don't notice this and it just always feels hot to me! After getting showered and dressed, there is breakfast. This for me was generally a bowl of cereals with milk from a carton. It was actually good. Some days we were taken shopping in the evening (or even afternoon) and could buy some fresh stuff, so fruit and breaded foods could be on the breakfast menu.

We would normally eat at the table outside while students sat and watched us, refusing the offerings of food we gave them. From around 7am the students would start to arrive at school and any of the kids who were not kindergarteners would have a cleaning job somewhere around the school. The cleaning would normally continue until the music sounded for assembly in the main part of the playground.

There was singing of anthems, playing of music, raising flags and prayers every morning. I actually have a video of it somewhere, should really upload it! Then the morning exercise. Normally it was me because Vanessa would never lead it. I would just look like a fool. In the first week there was talk of YMCA, which I loved the idea of. Shouldn't have shown so much enthusiasm because it became my morning exercise song for six weeks. Every, single, morning.

Fully worn out and feeling like I need a drink and a sit down, it's off to the hardest lesson of them all. Every morning, first thing, kindergarten. Vanessa had various flash cards that the kids loved, so we would get them in a circle and do some nursery rhymes, then sit down in a circle and try and get the kids to say "Hello" to each other, shaking hands and going around the circle. Then would play with the cards for a bit. On a couple of days we read a book. Most days there were sheets with letters on for them to practice their writing and knowledge of the alphabet. Generally this would take up most of the half hour of teaching. Once the kids were finished we had a tub of biscuits that were shaped like letters, we would give each of them one and get them to say the letter and "thank you" before they could eat it. After the teaching, the second half of the lesson was play time. Some of the kids during play time would still want to do English. Some of the toys had numbers, letters and pictures. In nearly every single lesson the same kid would spend an extra ten/fifteen minutes practising English. He was great, but he tended to spoil it by drop kicking girls.

I loved teaching these little guys, but it was very difficult. And I am not ashamed to admit that without help I would have been lost and may never have gotten the confidence I was able to steadily built to take the class on my own longer term.

In the next update I will be talking about teaching group 1/2, the second hardest, and maybe even the hardest class at school.

Kanchanaburi - Part 3, Thai Massages Hurt

You bet your ass I slept in today. Tossing and turning through the morning I woke up several times from the sun shining in through my thin curtains. Each time I fell back to sleep. Check out wasn't until midday. I have no idea what plans are for the rest of the day, there are things I want to see around the town, mostly various museums.

Knock! Knock!

Urg. Yea... I'm awake. "Nick, I'm going to get a massage, do you want one?"

What went through my mind was something like, I feel sore and I ache all over. My feet and legs feel like death and my arms... I can hardly lift them. A massage would actually be amazing. Okay, lets do it!

No time for breakfast, just heading straight out there. Walked passed some impressive Wats and a museum. Will check those out on the way back. Find what we think is the recommended place, but it's closed. After asking a few people, we give up and head back. I was really looking looking forward to that. So we made our way back. Had a glance at the Wat, but were not wearing appropriate cloths and felt a little bad for it, so decided to enjoy from a distance. Then went to one of the museums. This one was a recreation of an old POW hut that held British POW's as they built the famous death railway. It was filled with pictures, news paper articles, paintings, letters and photo's that span the 65/70 years since the war.

It was very moving in parts and brought back memories of the museum in Hiroshima. There were some horrible stories. The museum also included smaller huts with old items from the war, helmets, weapons, working tools, uniforms and a lot more. It was small, but very interesting.

We slowly made our way back to the guest house, where we told the guy who worked there that it was closed. He was surprised and called them up, finding out that they were now open. So he gave us a lift on his bike. This was my first bike ride... ever (I think! I can't remember any others). My sandal fell off just as we were pulling up, that was fun!

Inside Vanessa decided she wanted a two hour massage, even thought check out was in one hour. The owner said it was fine, and two hours it was.

A traditional Thai massage is not like... well... what I thought it would be. I thought it would be... well... the relaxing kind, that lets you relax and feel good. Nope. Not a Thai massage. Thai massage seemed to work on the theory of 'if we hurt you, your body heals you, and you feel better'. My god it hurt. Why did I agree to two hours of this? The foot part of the massage, and scalp/head/ears (lol... yes ears) was very nice. But everything else... oh my god. It really hurt. And left me feeling far worse that before I entered the building.

Everything after that was rushed as we quickly made our way back to the guest house, packed and had to get to the coach station quick. A second ride on the motorbike, I don't like these. I had my bag and felt very unstable. But the guy was amazing, so friendly and helpful. He literally dropped us off at the coach we needed to get.

The coach took us to the same place as a few days before for the changeover. We had to get a coach up to Hin Kong (near the village). At this stop over we realised something... it was Bangkok. So we had done some serious extra travelling to get here, probably some 40% extra going out of the way compared to other places. Didn't cost much though. Five hours or so on coaches came to less then two quid.

After we got back to Hin Kong we checked out some food markets, and ate some real food. We bought some food to take back to the room for the next few days, but most of it was shut down and had been sold. After a couple of hours shopping and looking around, we got a lift from the director of the school back home.

Kanchanaburi - Part 2, I Fell Over... Twice

It's a weekend... am I really getting up this early?? In fact... it's only my second weekend in Thailand. And there is no janitor to wake me at 6am to remind me to shower and take me to breakfast. I'm actually like, on holiday, away from 'work', in a beautiful guest house floating on the freaking river. There is little noise, nature noises and the occasional boat passing. The loudest thing is my alarm going off in it's usual rude manner that leaves me hitting the snooze button.

No. I have to get up. I'm off on a trek. I need to shower and get breakfast and be ready for when these people arrive to pick us up. I have a feeling that they won't wait around too long. They will be here at half seven. I have an hour. It's all good. My alarm was set for 6.30 and... okay I did that thing where I fall asleep, but don't realise I fell asleep and twenty minutes pass. Dam it! I'm getting up now.

The shower was cold. I'm used to that. But for some reason, it was still a shock. Maybe I just wanted it to be hot because it was a weekend. But not worth the extra money (plus there was only 1 room with hot water, so didn't have much of a choice). Out the shower, and within minutes I'm dry. I love how warm this country is. It's after seven when I emerge from my room hoping they are serving breakfast. They are. Grand. I grab a menu and have a peruse through it.

Food this first week, and in all future weeks, will generally consist of rice, rice, rice. With some chicken on the side, usually fried, and various helpings of soups and vegetables and even some fish. About half of the food I liked and there was a good choice at lunch. Not so great on an evening. Breakfast that first week wasn't great to be honest, with little choices and options. So when I saw a variety of western style breakfasts my mouth watered.

"You're in Thailand! Have Thai food!" Yes. I'm in Thailand having REAL Thai food every day. Weekends I'm going to eat like one of those annoying tourists that even I hate on holiday. I don't care. I have a good reason. And right now, I'm having some banana pancakes with chocolate. I also had a fruit smoothie. It arrived quickly, and I took the food into the other volunteers room to eat on the balcony as the sun rose over the river just behind the mountains.

We (well, I and mostly she) were ready. They arrived a few minutes late to pick us up, but we were off! Exciting stuff. There was (another) minivan that took us to the various hostels where we picked up more avid explorers (tourists). There was a fair collection of nationalities and on the long drive to the first stop we chatted away with some people sitting close to us.

First stop, Erawan National Park. We were heading straight to the waterfalls after being told where we were meeting in the afternoon. This was a seven tier waterfall and a bit of a trek, it took about an hour and a half to get to the very top. Obviously going down was a lot quicker. Some of the views were amazing, and the water looked like it had been coloured blue to look so much nicer. To be honest, once you get towards the top, with the last two or three, it's like, 'oh look, another waterfall'. They stop being so special after a while.

On the way down I had to go swimming. We went to the one where you could actually swim down, like a slide. The water was amazing, it was cold, but no colder than my shower. The thing that was hard about getting in was the slippery rocks and once you go about ankle deep you had to keep moving if you didn't want the fish to bite you. It didn't hurt, but they were big and it's more of a shock when they do. It forced me to just jump in once I knew I wasn't going to just smash into the rocks. As we were getting in Vanessa recognised some of the girls getting out, who just happened to also be doing OV, the same volunteer group as us. So they took pictures for us which was cool. I swam around for a bit, climbed some rocks and went down them, that was a lot of fun. Then swam back and climbed out. Again the fish biting away and was a bit of a shock.

But I made it out of the water, off the rocks and to the safety of the sides where I started to get dressed again. After putting my sandals on, I slipped and dropped onto the rocks at the side. That hurt a little, but I gritted my teeth, put the rest of my cloths on and got my stuff together. We had spent too much time and were probably going to be late back. My sandals were really bad and on the walk back I dropped again. God I felt like a fool. I went into the bathrooms to take a shower and clean off all the dirt and get changed.

I walked into the bathroom and through to the showers. I was shocked to find the showers were in fact outside at the back of the bathroom. In view of everyone who was walking back toward the car park. So kept my shorts on and showered, getting changed inside the bathroom. I walked up to the restaurant where we were meeting up with everyone else, arriving about ten minutes late. Since we were eating there I thought it wouldn't be too bad. I got there to find no one there, except the woman leading the tour. I'd raced there, falling over in the process (that second fall, not a new, third fall... yet). I got some food and waited for more people to arrive. Spoke to some people from Israel who were very nice. The food was good too. We piled back into the Van and headed on to the next destination. A raft ride up the river followed by an elephant ride. Both actually really disappointed by both.

Bamboo rafting sounds cool right? In my mind it could have been a number of things, a canoe/kayak type thing made from bamboo. Or a actual raft (which is what it looked more like), made of (shocker) bamboo. But if it was just a raft, I don't know, I imagined we'd be paddling away, maybe a few little rapids, but a bit of fun. It was a raft, but it was just tugged along by a little motor boat up the river, and then let go and the guy paddled it back down the river, on his home. It was over after just half an hour. It was also unbelievably uncomfortable. Just disappointing. Some spectacular views, but too sedated.

Then on to the elephant ride. To be fair, you can't come to this country without having one. As you can see, it had a big old bench on it. It was so uncomfortable, moving around so much that I had to hold on for dear life. Couldn't really take any pictures, I tried, they didn't work! Also spent the whole ride with desperately trying to stop my sandal (just one) falling off. If if fell, who knows what would have happened! Towards the end the guy who 'drove' it jumped off and took our cameras and took pictures for us. Some actually came out really nicely. The ride ended kinda quickly, though from discomfort I was glad.

Another point, I felt quiet uncomfortable (not just in a physical way). The 'tool' that was used to control the elephant looked like a mini scythe. Though at no point I saw the guy use the pointed end, he did use the butt to hit the elephant on the side of the head. I don't know how hard it was or anything like that. But it happened early on and left me feeling quiet bad for the rest of the ride.

Side note at this point, when I had my second ride up in Chiang Mai, I actually spent ages trying to find one that didn't include the elephant ride, but they all seemed to. I also wanted to pick white water rafting, and all the proper rafting ones included an elephant ride. Though they also had this tool there too, the elephants seemed a lot happier, there was no hitting and no using the scythe in any way, compared to Kanchanabury.

We all had a quick wash, as the ride left you surprisingly dirty! After I came out the woman leading the tour asked me basically what the deal was with me and Vanessa. Obviously an odd couple for this sort of thing. I found that funny and the guide seemed embarrassed that she didn't think of something along those lines herself.

How massive is this post?? Probably the longest I've done! Glad I didn't try and cram the whole weekend in a single post! Hope you are all still with me!

So swiftly moving on to the Death Railway. I know, sounds like a nice place! This is the famous railway built by POW's, mostly British but also others from the common wealth and a few other countries. The conditions were horrible, and the railway (and obviously, the bridge) was made famous in the movie; Bridge over the River Kwai. We were dropped off at one of the main tourist stations. There were markets and various other tourist stuff there. At the end of the market a freezer filled with ice lollies fell over. I help pick it up and lift it back into place. I was then refused a free ice lolly. I was then refused a cheaper ice lolly. I swallowed my pride and bought my calippo for the full price of 5p. Outrageous really.

You could walk along the track of the railway as it crossed various small bridges along the side of a sheer cliff. Scary stuff to be honest. They also have a cave in the side of the cliff, trying to show the typical conditions the POW's lived in. Cramped and crowded by the looks of things. There wasn't much time to look around, though to be honest there wasn't a massive amount to look at if you didn't want to be heckled by people trying to flog you cheap crap, before the train pulled in. Jumped on and (apparently amazingly) got seats. I got a window seat and as we set off against the cliff I was very lucky to be on the river side as a pose to the cliff side, and the views were simply amazing. It was a little freaky passing the wooden tressels, hearing the creaking of the tracks, many feet in the air over nothing but a river or jagged rocks.

I love travelling, not just like going around places, but the actual action of travelling, being on the move. I loved this train journey, it lasted about forty minutes and was one of my favourite events of day. The journey however ended early (not earlier then scheduled, but earlier then a standard day) because the bridge (the famous one) was closed. It was been covered in fire works for a festival that took place every night for a certain time. This was the end of the tour as the group piled back in to the van one final time and took us back to the guest house.

To say I was a little tired would be an understatement. We got to the guest house, had dinner, a mixture of small Thai dishes like 'noname' (no idea what it actually was... but it was good!). Had a single bear and just collapsed, first on the sofa, and then into bed and fell asleep within minutes of my head touching the pillow (as you may imagine). We passed on the fireworks because we would have had to leave the guest house straight away and the bridge was actually far from the guest house. I was happy to recover quietly as my cuts and bruises from the various falls were starting to actually hurt.

Sneak peak of Sunday; my first Thai massage, first bike ride, and realising 'oh... it was Bangkok this whole time!'

Let me know what you thought of the post! Hope you enjoyed it.

Also, check out the pictures

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=266821&id=620438469&l=7d625ac1b9

Kanchanaburi - Part 1, Travels There

Kanchanaburi was the only place I had really read about and knew anything about before I arrived in Thailand. It was all so rushed sorting things out, and obviously other things on my mind at the time, that I just hadn't really done my research. I figured I could do it out there. Which to be fair I did. This blog is proving so long to write that I'm going to write it as the days seperatly, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, since they were both very long days. I don't want to over-flow people with information!

So we were told that we could leave early on Friday, and we left just after lunch. Taken to the coach station near the village. Hardly a station really. Picture a double duel carriageway with cars travelling motor way speeds. The coach station is simply one of the bridges going over this massively dangerous road (a road I had seen multiple bike crashes on). So there are five lanes in each direction. From the edge of the road the first two, slightly slower then the rest, is where the minivans will stop to pick us up. After the two lanes there is a divider, giving us the remaining three lanes of the single direction. Here the cars don't slow down and it's basically like a motor way. This is where the coaches stop. Once the coach stops you run across the first two lanes, hop the divider, with all your bags and suitcases, and get onto the coach. Health and saftey eat your heart out!

We got a coach to somewhere we had never heard of. My guess was that it was somewhere about half way between Saraburi and Kanchanaburi (obviously), since we were getting a change over. We got there, and I didn't recognise it. We spent about an hour or so looking for the right coach. We kept getting sent to the minivan lot. But we wanted a coach, which would be cheaper. Eventually we found out the coach was more expensive then the minivan, so went to get the minivan.

Minivans are a blog in themselves. I'll be brief. Standard, just like you see here, 9 or so seats, reasonably comfortable and air conditioned. They will, with enough warning, drop you off at a stop at your choice. I don't mean, oh the coach station please, I mean, this specific hotel please. Very cool. We were the only two people in the minivan when it left, but it picked more people up along the way. It didn't get full though. I remember reading that these could get very uncomfortable when busy. I was thinking "not as bad as a coach, there were people standing on the two coaches I'd gotten before!" I will later be proved wrong on this. But that is another storey. The driver was watching a DVD while driving too, as will most of the minivan drivers I will get in the future.

We thought we were being dropped off at the right place. We weren't. They dropped us miles from our guest house. It would have been closer and easier to get off at the coach station instead of staying on. So various cabs and tut tuts offered us a lift up for a couple of quid and we said 'no, to much'. After walking in the right direction for maybe half an hour they dropped the price after a bit more haggling, knocked maybe 30/40p off. In the grand scheme of things that was so pathetic really, back home in that half an hour I could have earned more than ten times the amount we just 'saved'. But we got the tut tut to the guest house, which seemed to be much further away then we first thought. We drove past a lot of western style bars, clubs and other venues that actually looked pretty tacky and awful. I wanted to come here for the charm of a smallish Thai city/town with museums and various tours. I had an imagine in my mind of what this play would be like. I didn't think, stupidly, that it would be like this. I was very disappointed and wondered if this was all this place had to offer.

Nisa (or Nita... spelling and pronunciation was different and now I can't remember which was which) guesthouse. It was a floating guesthouse on the river Kwai. It was beautiful. We walked into the main 'room' and waited for someone to show us our rooms. There was a lot of wrangling of which rooms we had booked and now wanted if they were free. I spent an extra 50p a night (splashing out big time) to get a room with an en suite bathroom, instead of having to walk the plank across the river to the shore where the shared bathrooms where, outside with the bugs and the bats and chance of falling down the slope into the river. In the end it was worth it. My companion on the other hand, splashed out dearly on a room with a hot shower and air-con, paying something like three or four times a night more than me. In my opinion, not worth it.

We decided to stay in the guest house instead of trying to find a 'decent' bar. The guy who ran it was really chatty and very nice. I was really hungry and they did beers there, so win win. I ordered some sweet and sour style dish. It was amazing, incredibly well cooked and flavoured. We got some drinks on and talked with the manager and then a French girl who arrived. We also book our trek for the next day. More on that in the next post.

We would be getting up early for this trek, so I went to bed fairly early after just two Chang's. It had been a long day of travelling and it was going to be a very, very long day tomorrow. I got my stuff prepared that night. Bag packed with spare cloths, no towel, even though I was going to be swimming, and my camera's batteries all on charge and ready for the off! I turned the lights off and dozzed of to sleep with a mixture of the sounds of the gentle waves and the feel of my room gently moving side to side and a little up and a little down, and Mark Steel (at this point, rediscovering the legendary old Mark Steel lectures and solutions and revolutions that I hadn't listened to in years).