Slightly backdated post.. and hopefully I will have some pictures up soon for this too.

We went on the classic Kanchanaburi tour today - taking in the Erawan waterfall, which was amazing, also the death railway, and the bridge over the river Kwai.

The waterfall was probably the highlight of the trip - seven levels, all linked by a rough walking track. I was impressed that at the first level security staff would check your bags, and mark any plastic bottles you had, and charge you a deposit for them - this to ensure that all rubbish type stuff is taken back out of the national park. Apparently no snakes in this area (phew!), however the mozzies apparently carried malaria, so care had to be taken. We went swimming on a few of the levels, amazing! The water was full of fish - cichlids even, which would come up and have a nibble of you if you stopped moving! Nothing painful, but it tickled Sadly we got to the top level, and found a whole busload of people, which wasn’t the coolest, however it was still very beautiful.

We then moved on to the death railway, which was just amazing, we rode in the train over the original viaducts they built around the edge of the river, you could hear the wood creaking as the train went over it. There was also an amazing golden buddah in a cave near this railway, which Marie wouldn’t let me flail in front of

After that we got taken to the bridge itself, we hoped that the tour would include a train trip over the bridge, but in classic tour tradition, it didn’t. We did however get to walk out over the bridge, and take some pictures, which was cool.

We also met some cool people on the tour, and then checked into the Jolly Frog backpackers, which was an amazing place. After a quick trip to the pharmacy to get some things to “Help sleep please” we ended up with some hardcore antihisthamines, which also listed “mild tranquiliser” on the packet.. they weren’t wrong I woke up hallucinating in the morning, which was kinda fun, and a great nights sleep was had by all. The $8 room was fabulous, with just a fan, but a private bathroom.

Amusingly when we asked the tour people about trains the next day, they told us there were no trains out of Kanchanaburi at all the next day, and if you wanted to get out of town you would need a private transfer to another town, to get a train there. Turns out they were lying, and just wanted to sell us a private transfer So we took the train happily the next day, and got back to Bangkok