Fish & Elephants

Heading back in a southern direction we made a 2 day stopover in little visited Kamphaeng Phet. The hotel was terrific, run by a exceptionally friendly man who was very happy we chose to stay at his place. Looking at his sign-in book we were the first check-in for 1 full week. (staying off the beaten track – yep!). The first night we gathered up some amazing food at the night market, a couple of beers and ate down by the river with the locals.

The following day we rented a couple of 30 year old bicycles and headed off to a UNESCO world heritage site surrounding the town. It was a collection of many ruins and temples stretched through 10 km of pathways in the forest. It might sound boring, but it was actually very enjoyable as we were the only 2 tourists there. We found one other person, an employee giving his weed whacker a break by having a nap on the middle of the sidewalk.

Next on the itinerary was a journey to Kanchanaburi. The journey involved 3 different local buses totaling 9 hours. A bit long and hot, but these travel days are where we come across the funniest and most authentic interactions with the locals. During a 20 minute stopover we decided to grab a quick lunch getting the “very spicy, are you sure?” comment. Renee and I get that all the time, and usually it isn't too bad, so go ahead with it....And she was right. It was so hot it felt like a prank someone was pulling on the dumb tourist, but nope, all the locals were eating it too.

In Kanchanaburi we decided to splurge on a tourist packaged day trip to see some of the area attractions. In the National Park we climbed a 2 km series of 7 waterfalls up the mountain. We stopped for swims along the way, however all the pools were full of little surprises (and big). They were 8 - 20 inch long river fish who swarmed your legs and nibbled on you under the water. They didn't have teeth, but they liked to suck the dead cells off your skin (For Free!). Funny to see all the tourists (us included) huddled around the edge of the pools watching the few brave souls swimming and screaming their faces off. Unlike regular fish that avoid people, these swim up close to your body resulting in a few getting smacked around by arms and legs, sorry fish.

Next stop was the elephant rides which was good but Renee and I only covered about 100 m as our elephant was more keen on eating the nearby trees than walking. This was followed by an elephant bath that quickly turned into 'Renee and Colin get thrown off an elephant into the river' but all in good fun. Later in the afternoon we stopped at the “death railway” site where under Japanese Occupation in WWII thousands of POW's died building a railway from Bangkok to Myanmar. A train ride along this railway back into town concluded our days activities. Tomorrow we venture the mega city of Bangkok.

COLIN