Kanchanaburi Paradise

Hi from Chiang Mai (already!)

So, since I've written, only three days passed. I had such a fun time, that I really like to share it with you. My actual plan was to stay in Bangkok till monday morning and then I would go on to Kanchanaburi, but I met three really nice ladies who had a bit different travel plans then I had. For we would liked to stay together for a while, we adapted our plans a bit and travelled to Kanchanaburi together. It was a pitty that Janina became ill, so she had to stay in Bangkok in the end to recover a bit...

The three of us (Steffi, Sanne and I) went to Kanchanaburi by train, the train was delayed by one hour as we could expect in Thailand. It was great fun to see the countryside from the train. We entered Kanchanaburi around midday and searched for a nice place to stay. We eventually ended up at the Jolly Frog, it looked like paradise. Our own small house at the riverside of the Kwai, flowers everywhere, long tale boads passing, only 400 bath, so around 3 euro per person.The only uncomfi thing was the toilet that we had to flush with a bowl of water and at night we got to know why the hostel was called 'the Jolly Frog', cus a couple of frogs in the river kept us from falling asleep easily (even with earplugs).

That afternoon we still got some time left to visit the memorial cmentary where about 7000 allies of WW2 are burried, because they died during the construction of the death railway that runs through Kanchanaburi. We also went to the death railway museum. It was explained that the Japanese, who occupied Thailand during WW2, wanted a quick connection between Birma and Thailand. Thousand and thousands of people died during the construction because of bad working conditions and malnutrition.

The next day it was first time for a great experience at the Erawan National park. There flows a waterfall of 1500 meters in lenght with seven different terraces. I've never seen such a sight in my life. The whole track is so pretty... the water is incredibly clear and blue... unbelievable and the whole nature around it also stands out. On several levels it's allowed to swim and we took the opportunity to take a dip almost everywhere. In the water there were small but also big fish. For the fact that I'm not such a hero according to fish, I'm very proud of myself that I went in. I uploaded new pictures to the Dropbox where you can see me swimming with a couple of maybe a hundred fish around me...! They even nibble your toes! Haha, I can't deny that a small scream sometimes slipped out of my mouth, but it was so great to be near a waterfall or to dive in the clear blue water serounded by great nature. On top of this, we also spotted some wild animals, like a tarantula spider :O (a very small one, but still) and... wild monkeys! At first it was great to see them, but then a lady passed with a plastic bag and the monkey wanted to take it from her. Her husband slapped the monkey for he would try to avoid it from stealing their stuff. I was really afraid cus monkeys can get very agressive if something like this happens. Luckily it turned out fine..! And in the end I saw my first wild monkeys :))

In the afternoon, we went took the train that rides over a lart of the remainings of the death railway. Really impressive if you know what happened there in the past. At the end of the journey, we visited the bridge over the river Kwai that was contructed and bommed during WW2. Then another adventure started: we booked tickets for the night train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, so we firt had to get back to Bangkok. We booked a minivan in advance, but according to one staff member it should take two hours to reach Bangkok from Kanchanaburi and according to another it can take up to 3,5h. For the fact that our van driver was a completely crazy driver, it only took us 2h and 15 minutes on the overcrowded roads to Bangkok. So we made it to the night train from where I'm currently writing this. We (should) reach Chiang Mai at 13.00. I think that there I'll take some time to relax, to process all the nice impressions and experiences of the past days.

A big hug from Thailand, hope you like my pictures. Check out the Dropbox for new pictures through this link (It might take a while before all the new pictures are uploaded): https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ejpwmguunb7idv0/t15lotHqD9

Danouck