Mattandnicole's travel blogs:
|
|
  | |  |
No tourist mini buses for us
Entry 24 of 144 | show all | print this entry |
|
This town is famous for the River Kwai and the bridge over it. We started our day with a songshaew ride (on seats in the tray of a dual cab) from the bus station to the area with all the guesthouses, traveling with the locals. We visited the railway museum and the cemetry. Many Australian, and other allied forces, POW's worked and died on the consturction of the railway. Even more Burmese and Malaysian workers died as well at the hands of the "Japs" (as they are referred to in the recounts by the vets).
The lawn cemetry was a respectful tribute to these men and a few women, who mostly died from malnutrition, exhaustion, torture and tropical diseases. A visit to the town wouldn't be complete without a trip to the bridge. Surrounding the bridge are lots of stalls with tacky souveniers, but it was cool to walk over it.
Next day we headed to "Hell fire pass" a particularly difficult stretch of the railways construction. We took a local bus there and saw a few things those on the tourist buses wouldn't, like a thai lady-boy, who wasn't very feminine at all. Big thai guy, with tats on his chest, with a pink lacy singlet on and jeans. Not sure who he was trying to fool. At the museum, which is a joint innitiative of the thai and Australian govt's, I ran into Deb a girl I went to uni with. Now, I knew she was in Thailand too, but she was on a tour so I figured she wouldn't have much spare time, or a chance to catch up. It was great to see a familar face, and we caught up with her, her sister and the rest of her tour group for dinner and a few beers that night.
From Hell fire pass, we made our way to Nam tok to catch the train back to Kanchanaburi on the "Death Railway". The regualar ticket for the 2hr trip is 17 B, however, as it is so touristy, they have seized teh oppurtunity and the tourist ticket is 100 B. Now, maybe duble would be fair, but over 5 times the regular price is a bit silly. Anyway, we still paid, and there were a few stretches of the railway that were very impressive, plus the chance to go across the bridge on the train was cool. On our last day I went to the Tiger Temple. Matt decided against going, as he had read some awful things about the place. But I chose to take it for what it was and headed off to get my pics with the tigers. It wasn't the wildlife haven the brochures alluded to, the tigers were kept in very small cages when they weren't being paraded for the bus loads of tourisbut as you can see by the pics you get to get pretty close to them and get some nice pics. All in all, it was ok, the state of the park leaves a lot to be desired and you wonder where the entry fee is going. A lot of very rich "monks" (we aren't even sure if they are real monks).
Today we are just chilling out, we have a few things to organise in Bangkok tomorrow before we fly to Myanmar. That's all for now. More thumbnails ...
|
|
If you like this entry, search for other entries by mattandnicole, from Thailand or try a new search. |
| |
Back to Entry - Back to Home
|
14 votes 
