Written by Luke, with comments from Nicola
Summary
Interesting town with some pretty amazing national parks nearby - very hard to travel without a bike - most tourists were Thai’s, not westerners so public transport was limited!
Day 4-
Travel to Kanchanaburi
Sweaty walk around town
Gave up and went to war museum- great idea
Bridge on the river Kwai
Night market
Day 5-
Erawan Falls- pretty lush
Nicola falls over
Tried and failed to go to Sai Yok NP
Relaxed
Day 6-
Wat Tham Suea temple
Got stuck unable to get taxi
First motorbike taxi - squeaky bum time
Coffee to settle nerves and wrote blog
Back to Bangkok
Tried to go to Kao San road but it was torrential downpours all evening so sacked it
Chronicle
Travelled from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi which was a 4h minibus that arrived at roughly 2pm but it was airconned and not too horrible. Bit tight on space and our backs came away a little sore. It’s taken me only 5 days to be back smashing some Excel magic - 2 hours of hardcore MS sheets (sadly not excel - much much harder) with ifs, vlookups et al to create what I believe to be a wonderful budget and live tracker. Yes it brought me real joy. The keyboard attached to my iPad made it all possible.
The walk to the old town in Kanchanaburi started strong - down past the old gate, to the river and sky walk (which was sadly closed) but we quickly realised walking around at 3pm in the blistering sunshine was a bad idea. Quote from Nicola ‘I have never been this sweaty before’. Quick walk to the main road as we failed to hail a taxi, so got a grab taxi (like Uber) and headed over to the war museam, logic being it was inside and cool.
Kanchanaburi Town
Only had about 45 mins to walk around the war museum but it was honestly a great surprise. Unbelievable collection of WW2 items and telling the story of the River Kwai Bridge - built by allied POW’s held by the Japanese. Had to rush around in the end but was very enjoyable. The heavens opened up so ran to ‘Amazon’ coffee and chilled for a bit.
Once the rains cleared we headed over to the River Kwai Railway Bridge to walk along it. Good fun with a great view and we even had the train go past us to top off the novelty.
Rode our first Tuk tuk over to the night market. Huge selection of food, Luke was always thinking ‘what can I eat…’ whereas Nicola has too much choice and gets weirded out by some of the things with floating feet in or bugs. Settled on chicken skewer rice and chilli sauce then half ate a chocolate roti before being unsure of its peanut content. It was actually fine and probably was just getting in my head.
The next day had a 7am start but an easy walk over to the bus which is turned out to be rickety old thing. About 1.5hrs one way to Erawan National Park.
Once in the national park we started the relatively straight forward hike up to the 7 waterfalls - it was only about 1.5km but it was hot with insane humidity. Nicola ended up smelling like ‘cheese and onion’. Decent enough waterfalls. Swimming was allowed in waterfall 2 & 3 so we decided we’d come back afterwards as everyone was required to wear an orange life jacket when swimming. Uneventful climb up but there were some beautiful butterflies and trees! We managed to swim around at the top and 7th waterfall. Changed into swimmers, photo shoot and had a load of fish start nibbling us. Many a yelp from Nicola - they were “very nippy”.
Back down Nicola had a bit of a fall and cut the ol’ knee. Number 1 for the trip - she’s a pretty clumsy soul (appropriately named her Bambi a number of years ago after the first few incidents) so will be keeping track of these going forward. But wasn’t too bad.
Bus back to town and tried investigating a day trip to Sai Yok national park which was recommended - unfortunately was far too expensive for the 3 day 2 night trip, online prices were a rip off and the travel agent in town didn’t seem to want to open during the day so a bit of a wasted trip. Made the decision easy however.
Back at the hostel for about 4pm which meant we actually had some down time during the day for the first time this trip. We napped, listened/ watched the lighting and birds going nuts on the roof before Luke got a double portion of Pad Thai for dinner.
The next day was a leisurely start to the day with a bit of a lie in. Luke’s decision to wear eye mask and ear plugs helped dramatically as he is a sensitive soul. Good thing Nicola doesn’t snore.
Leaving the hostel the plan for the day was Wat Tham Suea / Wat Ban Tham / Giant Raintree.
Got a grab taxi to Wat Tham Suea - easy enough. Temple was pretty cool, decided to get the cable car up for the lols despite it being really short.
The issue came trying to get anywhere else. The place is pretty remote by Kanchanaburi public transport or taxi standards… so naturally we were pretty stranded. Getting to the Tree would have taken a while, then a 30 minute drive back and we were templed out. The executive decision was we just need to try get back to the city centre as we didn’t fancy a 3 hour walk. No grab taxis we're available so a local at the temple was willing to shuttle us for 400bht on her bike - which turns out would have been pretty reasonable for the 45 minute 2x round trip it would have been but before setting off Nicola managed to get a grab bike taxi. In turn I also then managed to get one.
Cue me shitting my pants straight for 20 minutes. My first time on a bike, started off alright, but the lack of foot supports meant I was trying to crush the back seat of the bike with my pathetic audit legs and grab hold of the back of the bike for dear life as this guy effectively tore it up on a motorway. Legs started shaking uncontrollably and forearms cramping by the end which gave further indication that all work and no play (especially exercise) is not a great ethos for life.
Nicola was tracking my phone as she was quite a bit further ahead; her own problems involved being wedged between the driver and effectively a dominoes pizza style box at the back of the bike with a largish rucksack on - her big worry that she was effectively speed grinding on the driver. Also a severe lack of helmets made for a lot of worry…
Both with a rather severe amount of adrenaline pumping, a slight insight into what being stabbed by my epipens would feel like, we wobbled over to an Amazon coffee joint for cheap coffee, WiFi and aircon. Now composed (albeit my body was still shaking from the very slight 20 minute workout) so began our first attempt at writing the blog before catching the bus back to Bangkok at 3.10pm.
Very little happened in our evening. Got back on the tube and once home, rushed out for another round of shopping mall Japanese. Decided to go to Khao San Road but it was raining a fair amount so after arriving there we ran back home with our tail between our legs. Right decision in the end as it continued pouring for hours.
Next stop Ayutthaya!
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