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HI Everyone.
Right here are the pictures (hopefully this time) and a bit of an update to follow as i have been pretty busy since my last group email so you'd better get comfortable!!!
On wednesday we went out to bangkok to a massive shopping centre (7 floors) which was really interesting.Its a totally different feel to bluewater, and is a little chaotic, but you could literally get anything you can think of under this one roof for about a quarter of the price of back home! There is so much stuff you can buy, the designed gear is cheaper than new york probably, (althought blatently fake) and the quality seems pretty good.
We had a very busy day on Thursday, which included Elephant trecking, bamboo rafting on the river Kwae, Swimming in an amazing waterfall, and visiting the site where the bridge was built over the river kwae in the 2nd world war by POW's. Thousands of people died in the building of this bridge that linked the two sides including many British. This earnt the bridge the name of "the bridge of death". We looked at the bridge and visited the museum and war memorial which was all very interesting.
http://www.kanchanaburi-info.com/en/srisawat.html#erawan - Waterfall
more (and possibly more accurate info) : http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-battles/ww2/kwai.htm
After this we went on a train that took us down the railway about 30 mins down the side of the river, there were many excitable Japanese tourists loaded with cameras that seemed to get all excited at certain intervals taking pictures of things so we joined in and got some pretty good photos in the end. We think that some of the sites we saw may have featured in the film, but having not seen it we were at a loss!!
Next on the list was elephant trecking which was interesting.You cant help feeling sorry for the elephants, it feels pretty cruel and you cant help feeling that they are probably not being treated all that well. After a short walk around the woods we got a chance to buy banannas to hand feed them after which really cool..hopefully that helps to make it worth it in a small way to them.
Yesterday we started the day by walking round to see the Royal palace and the national museum. These are both pretty spectacular buildings covered in intricate patterns and massive amounts of gold! It is interesting for such a poor country to have so many buildings and statues covered in gold. It kind of makes you wonder where there priorities lie!? (nevermind...) at around 6pm we started out what turned out to be a 20 trip to Ko samui (a small island off the coast of Thailand mainland) in the Thai gulf. We had a 12 hour bus journey then a 2 1/2 hour ferry ride. The coach was pretty comfortable, but i didn't get that much sleep. We then had to wait for 2 hours for the connecting bus to take us to the ferry docs. All of this only cost 4quid all in so it was an absolute bargain, so we cant complain too much!
I think thats pretty much it really. We are sitting on Ko Samui :
http://images.google.co.th/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&q=ko+samui (to give you an idea)
and its really impressive. Its so nice to be out of Bangkok,although it was interesting we had really had enough after 4 days. The island is pretty small, but still very busy in the main touristy parts. The sea is clear blue, and with many bars and restaurants we are looking forward to spending the next few days chilling out (excluding the night of the full moon party! hehe :D)
I think there are a few trips that we can do from here but we are not going to do anything to manic as we fly out to Phuket on wednesday where i will hopefully be learning to scuba dive. (For those of you wondering i am not doing it in Koh Tao anymore as the weather isn't great there so i am going over to Puket which is just as amazing!)
We are eating really well with all the food being (along with everything else) ridiculously cheap. We just had garlic bread, a coke followed by spagetti bolognaise for around 200 baht each (just over 3quid). The hostel is nice and clean and about 1 minute from the beach. The owners seem really friendly and it sleeps all three of us which has saved us money. I think that we are paying around 3quid a night...madness!!
Anyways, i am just off to have a nice beer on the beach so i had better be off. I will try and get the photos developed that i have taken so far although there are not loads. Apologies to those of you who i have not responded to your emails individually.
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