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
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