Rever Kwai Honeywell Resort Kanchanaburi

... to throw a tour brochure in my face. By the end of the journey the rickshaw was probably considerably heavier.
The rickshaw driver shoved me in the direction of Sugar Cane guest house, which was 150 baht a night, in a nice room in a wooden bungalow on the river Kwai. On the river mind - with stilts.
I looked at the expensive tours available, and like in the Cameron Highlands I decided to just steal the information on the locations and go there myself. Tours are for ...

... was stunning, displaying an ornate 3D dragon at the enterance and intricately painted walls and ceilings inside.
Back on the bus then for what we thought was our journey back to Bangkok. This is Thailand though and we should have known better. We were on route to the tiger temple. It sounds great but it wasn't something we wanted to do as we knew that the tigers would be chained up and we so want to see tigers in ...

Karnchanaburi was the trip that everyone had been looking forward to since we had arrived in Bangkok. It was a three-day, two night trip in the jungle where we would go caving rafting, elephant riding, go to waterfalls, and hike through parts of the jungle. Everyone knew it was going to be fun before we left and I definitely was not disappointed with how things turned out.
We left Rangsit at 6 a.m. because it was scheduled to be about a two hour drive to the ...

... today and took a 25 min ride over very narrow viaducts that were built 66 years ago by the POWs. After this we saw the bridge over the River Kwai....made famous by the film starring Alec Guinness, check it out. As it was blown up by the Americans at the end of the war, only some of the original bridge remains but again is worth seeing after finding out what the POWs and Asian workers endured in building it.

We headed back and went for kip and ...

... of around 20 people......and one BIG CAT leads each group to the canyon where the Tigers will laze around in the midday sun........having been well fed just before our arrival!!...which is comforting to know.....en route to the Canyon you are able to walked up to the Tiger and pat them while one of the handlers takes photos with your camera .....it is a nice informal intro and good keepsake.........after all groups arrive ...

... thoughtful that monks are taking care of tigers, but the place is a bit too pricy in comparison with other places of interest.
Erawan Waterfalls (see pictures) - was a great adventure. I went with a group of other 4 people. Waterfalls have 7 levels, so firsly we were trekking up to the top level and on our way back we stopped for a swim. Simply wonderful, I didnt want to get out of water. 
Elephant trekking and bathing (see pictures) - my favourite ...

... job of building a beautiful lake, and then controlling the flow of water to run a beautiful river through the valley. We promised ourselves to return and rent one of the many houseboats we saw out on the water. It was so calm and peaceful there, and we didn't want to leave. A few heavy clouds, though, edged us on our way. We had assumed throughout the day ...

... another kind local alerts me along the way how much longer it will be and again when we're coming up to the Kanchanaburi train station. Kanchanaburi is much more traveler oriented, and there are lots of westerners here. After checking out a couple of guesthouses that wanted to sell me air-con rooms (more expensive) rather than the cheap fan-cooled room I wanted, I found a hostel where I get a single room for about $2 a night. The bed ...

... crawling around too. However, because it was next to a river, there were mozzies everywhere! They didn't seem to bother us tat much because we were all dowsed in insect repellent, but they were nearing ever closer as the evening went on, and Toom found out the following day that he had been bitten several times. It was a very nice chilled evening. Day Two: On the second day we headed right down to the far side of the town ...

... bananas, put them in a basket on a stick and pass the stick across the boat to the waiting hands on the sidewalk. The customer dropped the money in the basket and back it came to the waiting hands of the vendor! We wandered and watched and took photo after photo, entranced by the life, the colors and the textures of the market. For a while, we just sat at the intersection of two canals and watched. For the locals, it was a social function. Women sat in clusters in ...