Chatachuk market / Kanchanaburi
Trip Start
Jul 29, 2003
1
3
31
Trip End
Dec 01, 2003
Bangkok/Kanchanaburi,
Thailand
Sunday, August 3, 2003
Met Natalie from Crawley, who's 19 and also travelling solo so we teamed up to go exploring together. Nearly every street and side alley in Bangkok is rammed with food stalls (noodles, fruit, etc) and is so cheap (about 30p for a plate of noodles and chicken, 15p for an entire pineapple!). They also have a weird drink here called "Young Coconut" which Natalie decided to try. It is literally what it says, an unripened coconut, but it looks really funny (see photo).
Saturday 2nd August...
Met up with Natalie on Saturday to go to Chatachuk market where there's about 8000 stalls of various stuff from clothes to food to animals to random pieces of rock! Managed to get a tuk tuk (quite scary, they weave really fast between the traffic) for just over a pound which isn' bad considerng it takes a good 20/30mins
"Death Railway" train
! One thing I'll definitely remember about Bangkok is the fact it stinks! Not just the pollution and traffic but they seem to have a lot of dried fish which absolutely reeks, along with some kind of fruit which doesnt smell good either. Went to Erawan Buddha shrine on the way back where loads of people were putting incense and flowers at the shrine, and also had traditional Thai dancers (although their singing has a weird off-key sound...its probably meant to be like that...!). Walked to Lumphini Park which is similar in its exercise ways to Central Park in NY - loads of people running, rollerblading and massive group aerobics and tai chi classes.
Briefly went to Patpong market on the way home, passing by all the strip clubs/lady boy bars, and managed to avoid getting dragged in. Tried to get a taxi home but they were all insisting on us paying 200B which is about 3.30 - sounds cheap by english standards but we reckoned it should be about quarter of that. Put it this way, we asked one taxi driver to take us back to Banglamphu by meter and he said no way. Eventually got a metered taxi but he took us the longest possible route, charged us 85B and pretended not to have change!
Sunday 3rd August...
Allied War Cemetery
Me and Natalie had booked a tour to Kanchanaburi which is over towards the Myanmar (Burma) border, about 2hrs from BKK, which was only about 8 quid for a whole day, including all transport, train ride, elephant trek, bamboo rafting and waterfall visit.Only hitch being we had to leave at 6:50am...hmmm...
Started off at Allied War cemetery where thousands of prisoners of war are buried (mainly British and Australian) who died when constructing the Burma-Thai railway over the River Kwai - a nice cheery start! Then went bamboo rafting and tried not to fall in. Went really slowly - probably because there were 8 of us heavy westerners on it with one tiny Thai man trying to manoeuvre the thing with one paddle!
(Note: even if you're average build in England, you feel very fat out here cos all the Thai people are so small and thin!)
Then rushed to catch the train on the "Death Railway" (Bridge on the River Kwai) as apparently it was leaving very soon. "Very soon" turned out to be about half an hour...
After quite a long journey we arrived...somewhere...and me and Natalie got whisked away from the rest of the group (they have so many tours going at once which are slightly different in length and activities so they keep switching you around!) and went off with a German couple to do the elephant trekking
Bamboo raft
. It was 2 people to an elephant so Natalie braved it and got on first. You basically sit on a platform tied to the elephant's back and the "driver" sits on the elephants neck with a leg behind each ear. Apparently the way to steer an elephant is to nudge it behind the ear with your foot whilst muttering at it in Thai. Our elephant didnt seem to be very well trained though cos it kept stopping to eat and wasn't listening to the "driver" in the slightest. The trek was going well until the "drivers" turned round and showed us where the elephants were going - down quite a steep drop! The look on the German girl's face was pure terror. But luckily they were going first! It actually wasn't that scary as the elephants have such big feet they still feel quite sturdy. Natalie wasn't so sure though! The driver kept saying stuff to us which we didn't understand but at one point he threw something into the water and pretended it was a fish. I only realised this because for some reason I had remembered the Thai word for fish. How useful is that?! The only English the "driver" spoke was to ask us for a tip at the end, although we pretended not to understand...We thought it had been a nice peaceful trek but just before we were about to climb off our elephant, the German couple's (they have names but I could barely say them let alone spell them...) elephant decided to headbutt another elephant up the bum, causing this one to break through a wooden fence which was secured in concrete. It may as well have been secured in quicksand cos it ripped right out. Thankfully the couple had got off the elephant but were standing nearby. I've never seen anyone run so fast!
Afterwards we were taken to the waterfall, which wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be, as there hasn't been much rain here. Also it was packed with school kids, being a Sunday.
That's all for now - I'm sure you've read enough anyway. Not sure about internet access while I'm working for the next month so I may not be able to update this again till I return to BKK in September...
xxx
