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Hello!
I've had 5 hrs sleep and feel knackered! The end x
Only joking! :-)
The next 3 days I'd booked myself on an amazing tour with my very own chauffeaur (I think that's how you spell it!) with air con (woooooo, I hear you say!). My driver was called Utom and he's a friendly chap (well he asked if he could take me out for dinner after only meeting me for the second day....tempting, but NO thank you!). Our first port of call was to pick up my guide and them make our way to the Floating Market. I had in my head everytime I think of the floating market of that TV ad back in the UK (I think it's Barclaycard), when they're in Thailand on the river selling things and you automatically assume they would speak in Thai, instead they spoke with a cockney slang way ('ow ya doin...not Joey way!).
I was sat in the bus all on my own thinking that other 'travellers' would join me. It turned out that I was booked onto a 'private' tour and that it would just be the three of us. There's me thinking I could make new friends..... :-(
We arrived at the floating market and got into our little boat (gondola...not the skiing type!) and made our way to the market. It was MAD, truely and utterly mad....people shouting and barttering. Boats selling every kind of Thai tourist tat you could think of, beautiful old Thai people in there hats selling delicious local food to be tried. Utom (my driver) stopped at one ladys boat as she was making these tiny coconut milk and spring onion pancakes (it sounds gross, but it was actually very yum!), boat jams and boats crashing, it was alot of fun and I loved it! So many vibrant colours, smells, and art all around us. I was told to soak it all up (by Amy) and I did, every second of it. And, yes, (as usual) I did take loads of photos ;-) I didn't buy anything Lee, well not yet anyway!
It was time for my next stop...the tiger temple. I've been looking forward to this since booking this tour. We arrived at the tiger temple and all I can say is WOW. The temple is set in a canyon and the tigers are trained daily by the monks. The monastery was built in 1994 by the Abbot: Pra Acharn Phoosit (Chan) Khantitharo by order of his teacher. The objectives of the monastery are to propagate Buddhism and to conserve forests and wildlife.
Surrounding the monastery are many mountain ranges, waterfall and natural forest. The Abbot shared his food to the wild animals since his first arrival. So many wild animals kept on coming and hanging around expecting food. Soon after, a wild boar whose back was broken when he was hit by a car, was brought to recover in the monastary. Villagers and locals of the area came with unwanted pets and animals they found injured.
The first cub to arrive did not survive. Her name was Chao Phayu (Thunderstorm), when she was only a few months old, her mother was killed by poachers. The tiger temple currently has 17 adult tigers/tigresses and 2 cubs (just 2 months old - I was lucky enough to see them and how cute they were too.
When I got to see the tigers, I was stunned how big these wild animals were and that I was going to be touching them (check out the photos). I was not able to be let loose in the temple, but had to hold hands with the staff as I went round to see each tiger as they took my photo with them, even though the tigers were chained up. One woman got to one tiger and knelt down to have her photo taken - the tiger was not happy at all and roared at her - the staff splashed some water on its face and it calmed her down again (the tiger not the woman!). The woman did not want to hang around for long after that!
I was so overwhelmed with the tigers that I just sat and watched them, just feeling quite spiritual and calm in the setting and surroundings, taking it all in and how fab it would be if I could work with these tigers. I was so keen to see the tigers again up close and personal, that I queued to go back into the caynon area to spend more time with them. Being so close to the tigers did not scare me and their behaviour was not as normal as tigers would be if they were in the wild. I dreamed about this and thought I'd never get here...dreams do happen if you really want them enough.
After a few hours, we made our way to the Elephant orphanage camp, not far from where I was going to be staying in the 'jungle river hotel'. We arrived at the camp and these elephants were HUGE! I was there and wanted to have an elephant trek in the jungle...and river, so I hopped on (well not exactly) and sat in a very royal like seat - not the most comfortable rides I've ever had and it felt like I was going to fall off, so I was holding on for my dear life! The guy walking the elephant in front of me asked if I wanted to swap seats and if I wanted to 'drive', so I did :-) - it was fun. The elephant skin is so dry, thick and wrinkly with thick black brissles as hair and I had to grab hold of this elephants neck to hold on...nice!
We were going through a jungle and we'd spotted a mother and baby elephant tagging along, how cute (look at my photos), it was so nice to see a little one.
We'd got to a hill and were making a descend down to the River Kwai overlooking the River Kwai Bridge. At that time what was going through my head was "this elephant is going to fill his trunk and splash me with it", but he didn't...phew! We walked through the river at elephant knee height link to link with the elephant in front of us and I was trying to take photos as well as ride him - not the easiest positions (ohhhhhh errrrrrr!), but a very memorable experience,it was truely amazing.
My day wasn't quite finished. I was taken by boat with a river raft on toe out quite far on the River Kwai and this poor Thai guy had to row me back to the camp, bless him - it was a good hour row - if he had another awe, I would have given him a hand. The views were stunning and the jungle was lush green all around me.
This country is very poor. They wake up at the crack of dawn for a busy day ahead of them, whether it be working in markets or manual labour, but I saw with my own eyes that they worked for the food they would put on the table to feed their families. It made me think how lucky I am with what I have back home and what I'm doing at the moment by travelling the world.
My long day was over and I made my way to check into my hotel for the night. I arrived and was shown to my room - I was surprised how nice it was. A massive bed for little me, an outdoor shower (just like the one we had in the Maldives Rob :-) ).
The next morning I packed my things up again and headed to breakfast waiting for my tour guide for another day of jam packed activities. We went to the Hellfire Pass Museum. This museum is located just above Konyu Cutting or Hellfire Pass. The pathway from the museum will take you down and through the cutting built by prisoners of war and Asians during the second world war. This museum contains little in the way of phyisical artefacts as the men who worked and died here carried virtually nothing with them and took what few possessions thay did have when they moved on. The walk was 4km long and took about 30 mins (I think I exhaused my tour guide as I was power walking up the stairs and along the rail track!). After the museum we got back into the lovely air conditioned bus and stopped at the local market and Saiyoknoi Waterfall, a beautiful place where lots of families socialise and have picnics with their children (and adults) playing in the waterfall - if I had my bikini with me, I would have had a dunk too! I had a browse through the food market and at one particular stall, a lady was slicing very thinly (what I thought were vegetables, but in fact were bananas) just like Tyrells crisps, so I bought a big bag of banana Thai sweet chilli flavour ones, very tasty!.
Time had run out with my 3 day guided tour, so I planned to visit The Grand Palace the following day. I called for a taxi and when it arrived at my hotel, I insisted with the driver that I have the fare on a taxi meter to the Grand Palace (and it was advised by the Lonely Planet!), he was quite a hard guy to barter with, so I got in the car and he convinced me that 500 Baht would be the fare because of the traffic, so I accepted. When I got to the Grand Palace I met a woman - Meena from Melbourne - we were both on our own so we chatted and decided to do the tour together. We got to see the worlds famous Reclining Buddha which represents the Buddha after his death. This gold plated buddha is 46 metres long and 15 metre high - it was very large and impressive too. After spending a few hours walking in the heat and getting very sweaty, we'd decided to share a meter taxi back to the hotel and the journey between us only cost 75 Baht, so I was well and truely ripped off by the taxi driver on the way earlier on!!
I'm think I've seen enough of Bangkok and am ready to move on to my second stop...Australia, and am looking forward to seeing some familiar faces and a big welcome at Sydney airport by my cousins who I haven't seen for 5 years.
Thanks for all my messages so far and keep them coming.
Missing you loads.
Teresa xx
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