Kanchanaburi:

January 16th, 2005 - January 17th, 2005

Greetings...

We just returned back to Bangkok after spending all day Sunday and Monday in Kanchanaburi, which is famous for the Bridge on the River Kwai and the "Death Railway" that was built by the Japanese using allied POW's during WWII to connect Thailand to Burma (Myanmar) via railway.

We got to see the actual Bridge on the River Kwai and even walked across it. We also saw memorials for the soldiers (mostly British and Australian) who died making the railway. Following that, we took a local train along the same line and got off at Namtok station, which is an original station from the wartime.

In the afternoon we took a long tail boat ride along there river and did a short hike into some cool caves with stalactites and stalagmites.

In the evening we experienced our first ever Thai Massage. I preferred it compared to the Ayrurvedic massage that we had in India.

The Thai massage uses a lot of stretching techniques along with massaging of the muscles. At some points, they put their whole body weight on you to loosen the muscle. It was somewhat painful, but felt fantastic.

We got quite lucky at this place because our room was on a floating barge on the river. It was quite nice to sleep in, except that when the tide went out over night our place ended up slanted on quite a steep angle and we both nearly fell over when we got out of bed!

The following morning we took an elephant trek following another boat ride down the river. It was weird riding on an elephant. They are so big and somewhat awkward, but quite friendly.

Our elephant kept stopping and eating every tree in sight. At the end of the trek Jess fed it about a dozen bananas. They take them out of your hand with their trunk and shove it in their mouths. All the while, it looks like they are smiling because of the shape of their mouth.

Following the elephants we took a peaceful bamboo raft ride down the river. The water was moving very slow and it was a nice chance to relax. We ate a picnic lunch on the raft before getting back to shore where we got back on the bus and returned to our hostel in Bangkok.

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