On Wednesday after class, we headed to the bus station to catch a ride to Kanchanaburi. Kanchanaburi is a town west of Bangkok that is the location of the famous bridge on the River Kwai and numerous beautiful national parks. We ended up getting a van from the bus station for just 100 baht each and since we were the only passengers, the driver agreed to drop us directly at our hostel. We arrived at around 7:30 pm to "Sam's Place" where we had reserved several bungalows which were connected by bridge walkways. After getting settled in, we headed out to see the town. We ended up at a bar with a live band that was mostly percussion so Atara joined in on the bass and had a nice jam session which was really cool to see. We then headed to another place where we met tons of other travelers from Canada, Britain, and other countries. We also made friends with a very nice Thai guy our age named Day who gave us tips on places to go on Thursday and even said he wanted to come with us and hang out.
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| Sam's Place |
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| Jam session |
We woke up early on Thursday morning to head to Erawan National Park with Day as an unofficial guide. We hiked to several gorgeous waterfalls. My favorite was one with several large rocks that we could slide down. We stayed there for a while and then headed to a waterfall farther along the trail which was absolutely beautiful. While we were sitting there, I got a little hungry so I decided to sneak a few handfuls of potato chips from my bag (although food was not permitted in the national park because of a littering problem). Seconds after I closed up the bag, a monkey came out of nowhere and tried to steal my entire backpack.. evidently littering wasn't the only reason for forbidding food...
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| Natural Slide |
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| Fighting the monkey |
Next, we headed to the Tiger Temple, which was very touristy but very cool. We got to take pictures with the tigers and walk one as well. Almost none of us realized since it is actually a temple, we would need to have appropriate clothing... as a result I ended up wearing Dylon's basketball shorts because my shorts were too short which made for an entertaining outfit.
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Waking up from a little tiger snooze
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We headed back to Salaya after our trip to the Tiger Temple in order to get some sleep before going to Koh Samet for the weekend with the Thai students who would be joining our class starting Monday! Kanchanaburi might have been my favorite of all our adventures thus far because we got to escape the pollution of Bangkok and see some beautiful countryside. Meeting Day and having him show us around on Friday just further confirmed my idea that Thai people might be the friendliest people in the world.
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