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Choppers Travels
Alright there my old pals, it's a long e-mail but bear with it. Cheers
Done loads since i last checked in. On Wednesday the 19th we went out on a hardcore sight seeing day, unfortunatley down to bad planning we missed all the organised tours to see the river Kwai, we were gonna hire a taxi till they said it'd be about 3,000 baht (42 quid) for the day, definately too much money when you're skint. We were a bit gutted till we went to see out travel agent fella (i say travel agent, more of a man in a little shack who smiles a lot and nods) who managed to get us on a minibus to the river Kwai (get in) so were very happy.
Anyway we got there and didn't really know what to do, we soon realised that as we were late we couldn't actually get a train over the famous bridge, so really we'd just wasted half a day so that we can just look at a bridge (i'm not really that keen on bridges, i bought a spoon from Iron bridge on a school trip once, but that's about it. Anyway my favorite bit about that day was having a whole pack of jammy dodgers to myself, i loved school trips for that, anyway back to the point). In order to salvage the day (and my dignity as i'm supposed to be showing Ellen and George a good time, ooh errr!!!) we went to the tiger temple.
THE TIGER TEMPLE IS AMAZING. It does what it says on the tin. Basically it's a temple (buddist) full of bloody tigers, 17 of the b*****s. And they are massive. We were lucky enough to meet the bloke (monk) who started up the temple years ago as a way to breed tigers to be set free back into the wild (the tigers of Thailand and Burma have nearyl been wiped out by poaching). For 100 baht we got to stroke a tiger (see pictures), it was propper scary, they keep them at the bottom of a canyon and when i walked round the corner and say them it literally took my breath away. They aren't tied up or in cages or anything they are just lying around in the sun. It's hard to describe the feeling, a mixture of bling panic/fear and utter awe. Astounding, something i will remember for ever.
In the evening we went to the thai boxing. Just blokes kicking eachother in the shins.
Yesterday we visited the prison (Bangkok hilton). I know it's a strange thing to do but Ellen is really interested in the prison system. We just turned up to see if we could maybe see a brit and have a chat. We managted to see a fellow countryman by the name of Johnathan Wheeler, in for 50 years for trying to smuggle 9kilos of cocaine into thailand from burma, he admits that he is (was) a drug smuggler, he's about 40 and has 38 yrs left so he knows he'll probably die in there. He seemed to be taking it ok but you could tell that it was getting to him, it's hard to know what to feel in that situation, i still don't know how to feel about it but the fella seemed happy that we'd come to see him.
I also talked to another bloke from Pakistan, i saw that he was on his own and shouted him over, he'd been in for 9 yrs so far and didn't want to go back to his home country because the prisons were WORSE, it's mad. We bought him some food (rice, oil, tuna) and he was well chuffed (just so you know the english man asked for Fags, coffee and pens? Not what you'd call sustinance but ho hum, that's what he wanted!)
All in all it's been a bit mad.
We're currently in Chang mai, arrived this morning at about 6.30am after a 12hr bus ride (200 baht, well cheap). We're off on a three day treck tomorrow (i know.. Devlin swore she'd never do it again. This time she's not doing it in wellies!!) involving bamboo rafting, elephant rides and i think we're visiting a long necked tribe, you know the ones with the long necks.
All in all things are great, and i've bought myself a gadget (a playstation portable, it's great).
Will update again soon.
have a gooden
matt
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