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So, we started off in Khao San Road, Bangkok, as everyone does, which was good apart from being slightly ill - (we went to go out one night, and I felt a bit rough but went anyway, came back an hour later really bad and threw up water all over my feet in the middle of KSR! Bit embarrassing. Was then constantly sick for the next 4 hours!!! The next day we went to the hospital and I saw a lovely american doc who gave me some cipro, so all good again!) We also had the most amazing electric storms there, torrential rain and awesome lightning. It was so hot we spent the days by the pool (yes, we had a tiny roof pool!) and just went out at night.
We then met up with poppy and dave (friends from home, for those who don't know!) which was soooo lovely. We spent a couple of days in KSR then headed to Ko Samet, a little island with very noisy frogs! We stayed at a place with a café right on the beach, with perfect white sand and the sea metres away, and a fire show every couple of nights. Unfortunately the second day it rained all day, but it was still so nice and peaceful. (I actually now quite miss those frogs, despite them being an out-of-tune trumpet group!)
We headed back to the city with the guys, had to stay in the ‘expensive’ hotel cos ours was full (the air con and hot shower was such a treat tho!) And then said a sad farewell to the guys.
It was funny getting to south-east-asia, after having been on a fairly tight schedule so far, and suddenly having 4 months to do whatever we want. For instance, the island was in completely the wrong direction for us, but as you will see we have become 'following' travellers, as we just seem to find good folk and follow them!
So, with our lack of plan, we headed over to Kanchanaburi where ash & rachel (who we’d met in KSR) had gone back to work. We stayed in a great little backpacker place called the jolly frog, that had a lovely little garden, with hammocks right on the river.
While there we went to the tiger temple, which was cool, (and where the guys were working) where we got to stroke some very big tigers and also got to play with some amazingly cute 8 week old cubs! We also hung out with some very interesting monks (all tattoos and aviators - only English they knew was ‘Beckham’!) and I play fought with a cub tiger about the size of a collie! It was really good, but…while they were really well looked after, I couldn’t help feeling they should have been running round in the wild killing things.
We also went to the death railway museum, which was all about world war 2 and and how the japanese used POWs and locals to build the bridge over the river kwai, and the horrific conditions, which was really interesting. Then in the evening we walked up to see the bridge (by the way if anyone has seen the film apparently its highly inaccurate!) which was cool, and a lot more interesting having been to the museum - also smaller than I expected.
From ‘buri we headed NE to Ayutthaya, only stayed there for 24 hours but we ended up getting talked into a tour of the temples by ‘Bernie’, a lovely tuk tuk driver, which turned out to be great! He took us to four temples (they’re all in the photos), the big golden Buddha, the one with the reclining Buddha, the ‘Cambodian’ style one with the headless buddhas (cut off by the Burmese in a war) which was the most impressive, I thought, and then the single large white one.
We then jumped on a night train to Chiang Mai, ending up in second class as that was the cheapest they had (apparently…) which was the poshest night train iv ever been on!! (also the jerkyest - i kept waking up in the night thinking we'd gone off the rails!!)
Having arrived in Chiang Mai we found somewhere cheap to stay (unfortunately no longer owned by the mad Scotsman we were promised by the rough guide) and hung out with james and kat who we’d met on the train. They managed to talk us into a three day trek thru the rain forest (again a bit over our budget, but hell, you only live once!) so we signed up and got a good nights sleep.
I was slightly sceptical about the trek, I have to admit, but it was great! We had such a lovely bunch of people, there were 7 of us and 'the Dom' - it was so much fun. We stayed in little huts in the rain forest (in clearings tho) and showered in waterfalls. On the second day I was quite ill (yes, again!) and thought I wasn’t going to make it, but everyone was so lovely and I was fine by lunch. That evening it was mikes turn, and he was burning up so much - I was in quite a panic! But despite both episodes, and the amount of weird and wonderful creatures we encountered, we are both still alive!
On the third day we got to ride an elephant…which was amazing. I got to actually ride on her neck which was absolutely terrifying, cos ours was quite mischievous and ate constantly, and every time she leant down I felt like id fall off!! Very clever animals tho - when I was on the seat I had my flip flops by me, and didn’t even notice id dropped them, and she picked them up and gave them back to me!! (She also stole a huge bag of bananas off me, and ate the whole lot - bag and all!)
After the elephants we went on 2 bamboo rafts, which started off fairly tame and I was thinking, this is gonna be dull. But Jacka, our ‘pusher’ (they are powered by just pushing off the floor with a bamboo stick - so there was our guy at the front and then one of us at the back, usually j), was a bit mental - went to introduce himself and shake my hand, and pushed me in!! Its ok tho, I held on tight and pulled him in too. He also kept hitting the water with his stick and being like ‘snake, snake!!’ and I was like yeah, whatever, and then suddenly there was a snake and it swam right across our raft!! I was screaming like a right little girl!! In my defence tho, I didn’t know at that point if it could eat me or not. (And no, it couldn’t hurt us, apparently!)
That night, back in the city, we all went out for Kats bday which was great fun, and a lovely way to end the trek.
Yesterday we hired bicycles (the sort you see in films such as 'pride and prejudice' etc) with the canadian couple from the trek, which was really good, quite dicey driving the streets of thailand - nearly got taken out a few times, but survived nonetheless! We were heading to a temple, but ended up going to a national park instead which was lovely/good/etc (running out of positive adjectives here!!) and had a waterfall at the centre. We strolled round, got a bit stuck so had to improvise with some mild rock climbing, and then headed back, downhill, with a distinct lack of brakes!
So all in all, have really enjoyed Thailand! Have had a lazy day today, and will be heading to Laos in the next couple of days, although it seems that 'how to get there' is kept a big secret, so we are just going to 'go' and hope for the best!
Hope you are all well, lots of love xxxxx
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