Raft houses, waterfalls and 3 bottles of Thai rum…

Well when I last left you I was waiting for the end of the alcohol ban to get a beer and attempting to see the temples. I managed to achieve both the following day so hooray for me! I ended up having to walk the to the temples as I couldn’t get a tuk-tuk driver to take me for love or money – well to be honest and fair I didn’t offer them any love but given that I’m a dirty white fat farang I’m pretty sure I would have had the same success rate anyway – which was zero. The comment “no shopping” really does piss them off. To be fair, the temples were in reasonable walking distance anyway so I copped it sweet and took my life in my hands and crossed the crazy roads to the Grand Palace.

The temples were nice – the one that houses the Buddha made out of one piece of jade is at the Grand Palace and to be honest, I was struggling to find it in the mass of gold it is so tiny. It doesn’t help that it is wearing a gold shawl so it’s all gold gold gold and you are saying ummmm where is the green thing??? Anyway, Buddha was located however sorry no pics – pics are banned inside the temple and I couldn’t get a good one outside. I went to a couple of other temples – one I got to by river boat which was pretty cool and only cost me 3.50B each way (that’s 12c AUS people). The last one was the best one – it is called Wat Pho and houses the gold reclining Buddha. That thing is huge and absolutely amazing! On my return from the temples I still couldn’t get a tuk-tuk so ended up taking the public bus which cost me a grand total of 8B (28c AUS)!!!!

That night I went to Patpong – the land of the ping pong girls and also a pretty good night market – with Eoin (pronounced Owen and from Ireland) and Sarah (UK). To be honest it has absolutely nothing on Kings Cross if you are talking about red light districts – it’s much smaller – however it was good to visit and no, I didn’t see a ping pong show. I think one day I will as the things that I hear these girls can do just blows my mind but I’ll save that for another trip…

On Tuesday I left on a 3 day, 2 night trip to Kanchanaburi which I was a little dubious about – not for any reason other than the fact that I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to be on a tour but I got lazy with the planning and thought why not, I’ll give it a go. Well 3/4 of the way into the first day I was seriously regretting it. They just pushed us from pillar to post and all I could think was this is not the way I intended to travel on this trip. I have time – use it. I was about a cats whisker away from leaving the tour altogether and getting a bus into Kanachanburi itself and just doing my own cruisy thing. I stuck it out though and had a great time. This is where the raft houses, waterfalls and 3 bottles of Thai rum come into play!

On both of our nights we were staying in a raft house on what I affectionately named the ’shit’ river. The river was basically open sewerage. You could even hear stuff hit the water as you scooped water into the loo to help it on it’s way. Mmmmm nice. Every time I got on that thing I thought oh my god can I just not ingest any of this! As it turns out I’m glad I stayed as I met some awesome people. On the first night we set ourselves up on a separate little raft that was attached to the raft house and started our drinking and getting to know you conversations. You know how it is when you travel – where are you going next, where have you been etc. The people running the place were so lovely. I think the guy running the little bar area got a little concerned with how much we were drinking when I went to buy the 3rd 750ml bottle of Thai rum for the evening. In my defense, there were about 7 of us drinking together that night. Anyway, he asked me if I wanted to buy water so I said yes and he gave it to me for free. We then shifted to another area (they moved us from the raft – I wonder why???) and he came over with all sorts of snacks for us for free as well. He really wanted us to eat more with all that rum. All in all it was a great night!

The highlight of the trip was definitely Erawan Falls. This is seven step waterfall and it is really beautiful. You can trek up to all the 7 steps and swim in the little lagoons in front of some of them as you go. The water was so clear and refreshing. Absolutely beautiful. Thanks Mon for the recommendation!

The final day involved some elephant riding (scary) and some bamboo rafting (fun but on the ’shit’ river again) and also the Tiger Temple (a little concerning). There is great controversy about whether or not the tigers are drugged to allow that many tourists to come and have photos with them. The temple argues that tigers are nocturnal animals and therefore are sleepy but you can’t tell me that I can go up to a sleeping tiger during the day in the wild and not have them try to attack me. I know they have lived with the monks for years but in my mind that only makes them obedient (some of the time) not so sleepy they barely move. After a few pics I asked them to stop taking them as I felt it was hypocritical of me to be involved any further once I’d taken a position on the whole thing. As it was, one of the tigers did stir and I say stir as that’s all it was, while I was with him and it scared the shit of of me. You’ll see the look on my face when my photos finally appear (they are on their way – promise).

I ended up in the same mini-van as Jimmy from my tour (Swedish) on the way back so that was pretty cool. The drive left a little to be desired as I got put in the middle seat in the front between the driver and the passenger and I’m telling you, that’s the last place I wanted to be! I’m scared to death of the way Asians drive in general, it’s basically a death wish, so my policy on trips like that is to hide in the back of the mini-van where I can’t see out the front and hope for the best. If I have to die, I don’t want to see it coming! However, this time I had pole position! Hooray for me! I wanted to nap and I did try but it was a little hard given that I was the only seat without a headrest in the entire van!!! Fun fun!

On our return, Jimmy and I had to do the trawl of the area trying to find a decent guest house with two single rooms left available. After trying 8 places we finally had success! Let me tell you, I am living it up now. I am paying 250B (8.95AUS) as opposed to 170B (6.10AUS) at the last place but for the extra I am getting hot water, a king size single, no annoying roosters, soap and toilet paper provided and a tv (which I don’t watch but it means I have power which I didn’t before except for the light at the last place which meant I had to leave my camera and phone with reception for charging). Oh and let’s not forget the towel! A proper towel! Hooray! I bought two travel towels with me for the trip and it turns out that one is the size of a pea and the other the size of a walnut so to have a real towel at this place is awesome. It also means I won’t have to pack a wet towel in my bag when I leave tomorrow for Ayuttaya – hooray!

Anyway, that about brings me up to now. Sorry, I know these blogs are long – I’m trying to keep it as minimal and as interesting as possible. I might update them more frequently than once a week as this will result in shorter stories as some people might prefer. I promise, photos will be up soon!

On a final note, I posted the last blog at the end of an alcohol ban and I am posting this one at the beginning of one…we have no alcohol for election again from 6pm tonight ’til midnight tomorrow… Lucky I had a beer whilst writing this one :-) Until next time…