Lost

Day 317
I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself when I woke up. I could stay and visit a tiger sanctuary but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do that or not. After thinking about it I decided to head to Ayuthaya.

I packed after breakfast and before I left I ran into Rob and chatted for a bit before leaving. I got lucky and managed to get a bus just a few minutes before it departed. I had thought it was a direct bus and when it terminated I took my time finding a map and picking out a hotel. That’s when the ticket taker on the bus found me and asked where I was going. When I told him where he motioned for me to follow quickly. Soon I was on another bus and really on my way. I have no idea where the first bus stopped at.

When I finally got to Ayuthaya it took me a minute to get oriented and when I did I found that I was just a stones throw from my hotel of choice. They had space and I got a massive four posted bed. It was one of the prettier rooms I have stayed in.

I was pretty hungry and found a cheap place close to the bus station for some really yummy soup. What I didn’t get is why chopsticks are used for soup. I’ve gotten used to them with everything else, but soup is still a challenge.

After lunch I wandered a bit but my direction of choice was no mans land and there wasn’t much to see. I got bored after a while and simply went back to my hotel. After showering I spent some time online and had dinner. I was feeling friendly and went out looking for some people to chat with. I found a group of Americans who were in Thailand teaching English who were celebrating someone’s birthday. I joined them for a bit but didn’t want to stay out too late so after a couple of hours I headed back to my hotel and went to sleep.

Highs and Lows

Day 316
It was another early morning but at least there was time for breakfast today. I really hate skipping breakfast. I got lucky today and three out of the other five people in the group were also traveling alone. I met Heidi from Germany, Rob from England and Olle from Sweden. The last two were a German couple that Heidi had met before and didn’t like. I think that we all decided to dislike them based on that. They pretty much kept to themselves anyway.

Our first stop was the 7 tiered Erawan Falls. At the entrance a sign warned us about fierce monkeys. I usually think of them as cheeky so this brought to mind monkeys in couture. It didn’t matter anyway, we didn’t see any monkeys.

The hike was quite nice and not too difficult. There were loads of waterfalls, but only the biggest seven seemed to count. The water looked enticing, but my legs were not so hot looking with my healing sunburn so I decided not to jump in. When we reached waterfall number 5 we were beginning to run out of time. Olle and Rob decided to skip the last two and go swimming at number two. Heidi and I kept going and the going got rougher. At one point we had to climb up ladder like steps where half of the rungs were missing. It was all for nothing as well. The last two falls were nowhere near as impressive as the others had been. Still, when we had got back to number two and found the boys we told them that they had really missed out and teased them a bit for being lazy.

Lunch was early, at 11 am, but was pretty good and I was hungry after almost 2 hours of hiking. Our next stop was Hellfire Pass, part of the Thai-Burmese railroad. This area was named for the unearthly apparitions cast by the nightly fires apparitions cast by the nightly fires of the laboring POW’s. There is a 4 kilometer trail of the former railway that you can walk, but we were just here to visit the museum and the pass.

The museum was quite well done but much like the one I had visited two days before. This museum spent more time on the Asian laborers than the previous museum. Many of them were forced into labor or tricked with promises of large salaries. They had a 45 percent death rate compared to the 21 percent for the POW’s. I think that the previous museum was really remiss in not talking about them more. Of course, there is less information on them as no records were kept and there are very few current accounts available.

Hellfire pass was built during the time period know as speedo. The railway was completed in 20 months when it should have taken double that amount of time. Today 130 kilometers are still in use. The allies had no idea that this was happening until after the railway was finished. Several POWs were rescued from a sunken Japanese ship and were able to tell what had happened.

After the museum we walked down to the pass. It was very sobering after a morning of fun in the woods. Some of the tracks and sleepers were still in place. There was a memorial and we spent some time reading the signs and having a moment of silence before heading back up.

Next we headed to Krasae Cave. There was a large oddly proportioned Buddha and the cave went back a bit. Right next to this is what they call the death railway. I have no idea why this is a tourist attraction and would have preferred to not have done this. It’s a bit of what is left of the Thai-Burmese railway. We all climbed in what could have been a WWII era train and went for a thirty minute ride. The train was so packed that we couldn’t sit down. The only redeeming quality was that there were some really nice views out of the window.

I think that almost everyone fell asleep on the way back. Our last stop was the famous River Kwai Bridge itself. I didn’t realize that you could walk on this when I saw it before. It’s still functioning and there were places to stand if a train came by when people were on it. The whole thing seemed rather unsafe to me. By leaning over the edge a bit some of the bomb damage was still visible.

Once we got back to the hotel we decided to meet for dinner and drinks a little while later. I tried to find the Canadians hotel to invite him to come but wasn’t able to. I felt bad about it because he had mentioned that he had been lonely for a bit and I really didn’t want to ditch him.

Everyone but Heidi was a bad traveler that night by ordering pizza. We played a bit of uno and drank some funny tasting Chang beer. After a bit we moved on to another bar and chatted until closing time. Everything closed around midnight so we were not out very late.

Floating Away

Day 315
The day before I had booked a couple of day trips and had to be ready to go at 7 am for the first one. I was headed to the Damnoen Saduak floating market, about one and a half hours away. I had thought about doing this from Bangkok but decided to skip it. Kanchanaburi is much closer which meant that I would get there before all the tourist groups leaving from Bangkok.

There were two others in my group, but as it was really early no one was really feeling chatty. When we arrived to the market we climbed into a small motor powered boat. Almost right away we were passing boats overflowing with fruits and vegetables. It wasn't long before most of the none boat shops were only selling souvenir's. The people working there had long poles with hooks and would pool the boat in. We only had to pass a couple of the stands to realize that all the stuff was the same. None of us bought anything.

The central part of the market was the best. Some of the boats operated as food carts and there were noodles and other street foods to be eaten. Several people tried to sell us beer. It was only 8:30 in the morning! I was disappointed with how small the number of foodstuffs that were being sold. The place was really taken over by souvenir boats and stands. The only saving grace was that the tour groups hadn't arrived yet, my prediction had been correct.

The other couple on the tour grabbed a bus to Bangkok and I fell asleep on the ride back. When I got to my hotel I grabbed breakfast and decided to take a nap. There wasn't really much left for me to do in the town so I decided to just hang out and spending the rest of the day reading.

For dinner I tried to catch the movie again but once again couldn't really hear. There was a Canadian guy sitting at the table next to mine who was very loudly wondering what tiger balm was for. I answered and we ended up chatting. We went to a bar with a pool table for a beer. As it turned out we were both horrible and the game lasted ages.

I had another early day so we didn't stay out late. Before we said goodnight we made tentative plans to meet the next evening.

Bridge Over Troubled Water

Day 314
I was up early and grabbed a cab to the bus station. I was in luck and the next bus to Kanchanaburi left in just 15 minutes. None of the writing on the buses was in English and a nice woman waiting for her bus helped me find the one that I needed.

Unlike the bus to Bangkok I was the only tourist. This was more like it. When I got to the bus station in Kanchaniburi a pedi-cab driver offered me a good price but then lied about how far away the town center was. This was pretty annoying and I got him to lower the price when I pointed out that I had a map and I knew just how far it was. If he hadn't lied I wouldn't have even bothered bargaining.

At the hotel I wanted to stay at all the super cheap rooms were full but I went ahead and took one of the slightly more expensive rooms when I found out that I would have more own bathroom.

Kanchanburi probably wouldn't even be on the tourist map if it wasn't for some sad history. This is where you can visit the river Kwai bridge. My first stop was the Railway to Burma Museum.

In 1941 Japan invaded Thailand, shortly after Thailand was forced to declare war on the US. The Japanese needed a way to quickly move supplies and men from Thailand to Burma. To build a railroad 60,000 POW's from all over the Japanese controlled areas were brought in along with 200,000 Asian workers.

Conditions were appalling, most of the men were packed into cattle cars and were not fed for days. When the railway ran out they were transfered to trucks they were forced to march miles through dense jungle. Often there wasn't enough food and what was there was rotten. The men were beaten and worked to exhaustion. One of the rules of war is that detailed information on POW's must be kept. The Japanese did a very good job of this. A privilege that the POW's had was to hold funerals. They would bury their own records with the bodies. This allowed for almost all of the bodies to be identified and found.

After the museum I headed across the street to the cemetery. All of the scattered camp cemeteries were moved here. There are mostly English and Australian soldiers here. Just over 600 Americans also died, but all the bodies were shipped home. I wandered the rows a bit, but I didn't stay long. It's quite hard to read just how young everyone was.

I decided to carry on with the museums and went to the WWII museum. This was more a collection of random things. There was even a pile of old tv's in one room and an ancient history museum. It was very strange. There was a wall of famous people that included Einstein, Hitler, and Truman. I was a getting a bit bored of museums at this point and gave up after a bit. There is a really good view of the Kwai Bridge, so I climbed up to the view point before leaving.

On my way back to the hotel I checked my email and explored the small town a bit more. After reading a bit I went to see the nightly movie at my hotel. I couldn't hear well and gave up after a bit. I ended up in my room and reading for the evening.