Kanchanaburi scooter roadtrip
16 – 20 December 2009
After a night train, a 2hr wait at 5am in a small city (we had savoury food with chilli for breakfast at the market) and another train, we got to Kanchanaburi, which is 200kms west of Bangkok, at around midday.
We ended up hiring two normal scooters (I wanted to get manual/motorbike, but they didn’t have any available and I just chose the easy option). We left our big bags with the guesthouse and scootered 65kms to Erawan Falls National Park. There we hired a tent for 50baht (around $1.50). The lady told us we wouldn’t need blankets as it didn’t get that cold. It did really. We slept without matts in all our clothes on and under sarongs. I luckily also had my silk sheet liner thing. Got a bit chilly and uncomfortable by early morning. But you know, we saved a few dollars ;)
The 7 tier waterfall was very nice, and we swam in one of the pools and let the fish bite the dead skin off our feet (free fish spa!), which is ticklish and creepy but you get used to it. And luckily the big fish stayed away.
The awe factor of the waterfall didn’t come close to that of Thilawsu near Umphang further northwest though, where you can see all the different tiers at once and it’s just so much wider and higher. But after that, every waterfall in asia probably won’t match up, hehe.
One our early morning walk along the river on the ‘nature walk’, Raf spotted a lizard in the water. It swam underwater and then stayed really still while we took photos.
In the evening we had dinner at the cheap market stalls near the entrance, and chatted to some Tjech, french and english people.
The following day we rode on, and got off the beaten track a bit. Had lunch in a non tourist town, by signalling with out hands for food and two words and we ended up with fried rice with pork, vegetables and of course chilli. Unfortunately my mobile phone dropped out of my pocket somewhere. I was using it to take photos as my camera is broken. Damn, I’ve never lost anything important like that! Luckily my phone isn’t *that* important to me, and my australian sim wasn’t it. Most annoying was losing the photos on it, as Raf hasn’t taken that many photos. And for example the photo I took of her driving in the campsite on the scooter with the tent in one hand flowing behind her.
We made it to Hellfire Pass, which is one of the many passes on the Death Railway(Thai-Burmese railway built by Prisoners of War in the Second World War, ordered by the Japanese), hacked out by hand in 3 months. The site is now a museum and memorial site, run by the Veteran Affairs Department of the Australian Government. We did an audio tour.
We also saw some small tree snakes wrestling in a tree and one fell out.
We asked around about accomodation in the area but most things were above our budget and the one cheap one we were told was gross and had lice. So we ended up riding back to Kanchanaburi. Ended up riding about 150kms that day. Sore asses. Dusty. Watering eyes from the wind in our eyes. Good times :D
That night we had an awesome steamboat/bbq buffet dinner at the night market, but unfortunately Raf got sick really quickly and spent the next day in bed.
I went out on the scooter in the afternoon and visited Chung Kai War Cemetery and a temple cave just outside Kanchanaburi. The Lonely Planet said that in 1995 a tourist was killed by a crazed monk in the cave. I walked into at 5pm, alone. No other visitors around. Bit creepy! But halfway through I bumped into a scottish lady who turned out to be half Dutch. She was glad she didn’t know about the murder when she went into the cave on her own!
The last morning I rode out further, picked up the pace on the highway towards Bangkok, then turned and crossed the river at a dam, and looked at some temples, but didn’t have time to go in.
Checked out of our accomodation and went to visit the Bridge over the River Kwae, part of the Death Railway. It’s just a memorial/tourist thing now. Made famous by the book and movie. But pronounced like square without the s.
