Saturday, July 23, 2005



Yo, Currently I am in Kanchanabur. So far as I know this is a little town north of Bangkok.

I started my trek this morning, after about 1 hours sleep. It first involved alot of standing about due to a major lack of organisation. Eventually I was on my was in a minibus with a bunch of japs and one english girl. The first stop was a war cemetery for all those service men who lost their lives in the building of Death Railway.

The railway was ordered by the Japanese to link Siam with Burmah for supplied during WWII. The result of this was that hundreads of thousands of POWs and civilians lost their lives due to mistreatment and malnutrition. The weird thing was that most of the tourists at the cemetery were Japs. Very strange. Kinda like going to the Imperial War Museum in London and finding it full of German toursits. Anyway, after that I went to a very interesting museum about the Bridge over the River Kwai and the building of the death railway. After that I got to walk over the bridge.

Walking over the bridge is one of these things you will never see in a western country. It is very trecherous! The bridge is way to busy with tourists and the walk way is only a meter wide. If you slip it is straight into the water! Following the bridge we went for lunch on a floating restaurant made of bamboo and then had a look at some elephants. After that we went to a waterfall. This was cool. There were lots of Thai people here, all the kids were swimming and diving off the rocks. Had it not been for the fact I was carrying a digital camera, ipod and mobile phone I would have joined them. I was on my own as no one on the bus spoke english, except for an english girl who was quite strange. So I took a walk up the waterfall.

There were a couple of young Thai girls laughing and pointing at me and then they came and started talking to me. I had no idea what they were saying but they kept pushing me about. I eventualloy realised they wanted to get their photo taken with me so I happily obliged and got a photo for myself to. Kinda reminds me of my PR days in Magalluf where all the holiday makers wanted to get a pic with the most fantastic PR on the strip on the last night of their holiday =).


I had some time to kill so I bought a beer and watched the kids diving into the plunge pool. Some thai people kept trying to shout me over but I reckon they were after money so I just smiled and waved. We then headed to the train station for a ride in the train on the death railway. This was very cool. The train was so old. The carridges were all made of wood on the inside. I took a seat next to the strange english girl and grabbed a beer. She was nice enoguh but seemed very antisocial. She said she had come over with 18 friends and spent most of the time in Vietnam. When ever we were with the tour guide and were told to go somewhere the english girl would just go off on her own. Maybe beause she was so used to being with people she knew. Anyway I got her talking and told her how sad I felt when we were in the cemetery. All the graves had messages from the family about the person who had died and those they had left behind. Stuff like "In the light you shall be remembered and in the darkness you shall not be forgotten." As well as more personal stuff like "Goodbye Ron, you died for your country but your wife and son will never be complete without you."

Reading the graves was quite upsetting and the english girl told me that her grandfather was one of the POWs who had died building the death railway. After a few stops the english girl got off as she was only on the one day trek and I am on the 3 day. I sat on my own, feeling kinda lonely, so got some beers from a guy who kept waliking up and down the train with a bucket of drinks. Unfortunately I had afew too many and fell asleep and missed my stop.

I don't think it would have mattered if I had been awake as I didn't know where my stop was, all the station signs wew written in Thai, and our tour guide had disappered. I got off the train at the last stop with some Japs and realised I had no where to go. Luckily I had my mobile and the number for the tour company. I gave them a call and they send someone to get me. They guy took me to this guest house on the river kwai and sorted me out with a hut to stay in. It was only about 7pm tho and I was feeling bored. I chucked my bags in the hut and asked the guy on the desk to give me a motorbike.
He took me to a little rental place and they took my passport and 150baht (about 2 pounds) off me for 24hours use of a bike. The guy asked if I knew how to ride (although never even asked to see my licence) and I said yes. He gave me the bike and said on you go, anf then I realised it wasnt anything like a UK bike!

The bike has 4 gears arranged as N1234, rather than the usual 1N234. To put it up a gear you pressed down on the gear shift rather than pulling it up and there was a seperate pedal for changing down. There was no clutch either and I was very confused. It didnt take me long however to get to grips with it and soon I was flying round the streets beeping the horn like a regular Bangkok taxi driver.

I stopped into a Pizza place and got some pizza, garlic bread with cheese and a beer, then headed off to find a petrol station as the bike came with an empty tank! The woman at the petrol station filled the bike up from a cocacola bottle full of petrol which was quite worrying! But everything seemed ok and I went for a drive along the banks of the river and eventually eneded up in this net cafe.

I think tomorrow I am going caving, treking in the jungle and riding elephants in the river. I'm not 100% about this tho as the people dont speak much english, but I will see tomorrow.

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