To the jungle we go!

We just got back from Kachanaburi this afternoon. It's in central-western Thailand near the border with Burma. We actually saw the mountain range that is the border. The trip was pretty neat... except for our "accomodation". We were in bamboo rooms floating on the river and there were holes in the walls where geckos would come through at night and wander around. We stuffed the holes/taped them over at night and in the morning they were eaten through. Our bathroom was also weird... it was a metal floor, the toilet had no flush (we had to pour buckets of water down it to flush it) and the shower was just a showerhead sort of near the toilet. (Both the toilet and showers like that are actually common for bathrooms here.) Our bed was also as hard as a rock. But that's normal, too, as we've discovered from our other rooms!

Everything else was great, though. The first day we stopped at the cemetary for all of the Allied POWs who died while being forced by the Japanese to build the railway from Thailand to Burma (to get supplies to them). Then we stopped at the bridge over River Kwai to go to a museum and see the bridge/walk over it. The train still runs across, but very slowly. Then we went to Tiger Temple, which is an animal sanctuary started by a monk. We got to take our pictures with real tigers in a canyon (who apparently were drugged, although it was also insanely hot and I'm sure they'd be sleeping during the day anyway in that type of heat), hold a tiger by a leash and have our picture taken while we "walked" it up toward its cage, and hold a baby tiger!!! and feed it. It was so cute. Then they

fed all of the other animals, who are just allowed to roam free, and we were surrounded by a couple hundred cows, boars, peacocks, horses, and one giant, pink, scary looking water buffalo. It was crazy.

The next day we woke up early to go to Erawan waterfalls. There are 7 levels and we hiked all the way up to the top one. They were beautiful. The water was turquoise and we were able to swim in two of them. We wanted to swim more but there wasn't enough time :( There were a lot of fish in the water that kept nibbling at our feet, which freaked me out. In one of the waterfalls we were able to climb up a rock and slide down into the pool of water. I saw a spider that was the size of my palm and a "crocodile" (that's what our guide called it... it was really just a large lizard). I was in the water at the time he yelled out "crocodile!!" and started thrashing around because I thought it was in the water with me and I wanted out! By the end of our hike, we were soaking wet (and not just because of the water). I can't believe we were hiking in the crazy humidity.

After the waterfalls most of our group left to go back to Bangkok, but Sergio and I were staying a 2nd night. So we went to see Hellfire Pass, which is the area of the Death Railway where the POWs had to cut through rock by hand (and with explosives) to level out the train tracks. I think about 200,000 people worked on the railway, which was 415 km long. Most were romushas (Asian laborers), but the rest were American, Dutch, and Australian POWs. They cut through Hellfire Pass in 12 weeks, working day and night with makeshift tools and only eating rice with maggoty meat (if they were lucky) for each meal. They were beaten and tortured and forced to work even when sick. It was terrible, and I had no idea this ever even happened. Sergio and I walked the section of the track that they opened for visitors as a memorial/museum in about 45 min. We were alone on the trail and our guide was waiting for us at the end with his truck to take us back to our accomodation. We started to feel a little creeped out because we were alone, the cicadas were buzzing loudly, and there was REALLY loud and ominous sounding thunder. All that was around us was jungle. Then toward the end, it started POURING, and I mean pouring rain!! We had to run the last bit and made it to our guide's truck just before it amazingly started raining even more. I have never seen so much rain. And of course, we were sitting in the back of a covered truck, so we got soaked on the ride home! (It was a songthaew... I'm not sure how to write it, but it's basically a pickup truck with a metal frame in the back that has 2 benches facing each other and is covered on the top (and sides if needed). The ride home was about 30 min. Haha. By the time we got back, we were actually COLD.

Then today, our last day, we got to wake up a bit later. We rode a bamboo raft down the river and then we went riding on an elephant through the jungle. A little kid, maybe only about 7 years old, was the elephant driver. He sat on the elephant's head (at one point, he was just sitting cross-legged up there) and we sat in a seat on the elephant's back. The elephant kept stopping to eat the bamboo leaves and the little kid kept pulling weird bugs and bright green caterpillars out of mid air and showing them to us, laughing. At one point we thought we heard a tiger growl, but realized later it was just the elephant breathing through his trunk. Haha. The only English the boy spoke was at the end when he said, "Tip?". After that we had lunch on the floating restaurant (where we had all of our meals) and then took a huge air-con van back to Bangkok.

One of our guides was named Sam and he was pretty amusing. He taught us a bunch of Thai phrases, including "lady boy". All of our guides kept joking

around and calling all of the male tourists lady boys. I guess there are a lot of gay Thais, or so it seems from what they were saying. Our guide talked about them nonstop and taught us how they talked and said hello ("Sa wa dee haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"). The bathroom by the restaurant even said, "Men... and Lady Boy" on the sign.

1 min left again. We're at Khao San Rd now for the next few days. Will write again later!