Kanchanaburi

Friday I began the day heading to Silom Road to go to orientation for my new job with Wall Street Institute. Midway through orientation I get a text from Joe asking if I wanted to hop on a bus to head out to Kanchanburi to see the waterfalls. My answer was of course yes. So as soon as I finished with orientation I hurried home and made my way to the Sai Tai Mai Southern Bus Terminal. Of course it was the most inopportune time to travel because traffic was horrible all over the city. Just when you thought that you had gotten out of a traffic jam you would get stuck in another one. It didn't help that my driver was very impatient and had one of the worst transmissions I have ever seen so the ride was very bumpy and uncomfortable. When I finally made it to the bus station I met up with Joe we found our "gate" and bought our very inexpensive bus tickets to Kanchanaburi. It was about two and half hour bus ride so we made it to Kanchanaburi at about 11pm. We had no idea where we were going to stay so we had a taxi take us to the place where all the guest houses/bars were located, we would hopefully find something there. After a little bit of walking we found a room at this place called the Sugar Cane. We wanted the cheapest room possible which ended up being this room that was on a barge on the River Kwai. It was a basic room with two fans, a basic bathroom, bed, and paper thin walls. It would do since all we planned on doing was sleeping there and it was only $10 a night.

View from our room!

We dropped our bags immediately and went out to the bars. The first place we went was this little Rastafarian place that had live music. The band was a group of Thai guys who played a range of American songs to Thai songs. They were decent and it was a great first place to start. When the band took a break Joe befriended a lot of the band members and was asked to play a couple of sets. They did pretty well the mic was a little shotty, but they sounded good. The guys did have a little trouble with some songs that they were not familiar with, but that is understandable. Eventually the band had to stop playing it was too late and live music had to stop so we decided to start walking down the street to maybe find some foreigners. As we journeyed down the street we were called to an outdoor table by a very flamboyant Thai man. He immediately knew we were American and wanted us to sit at his table. He then spent the entire time we sat with his telling us how much he loved America and all the cities in America he had visited. He was extremely drunk and kept repeating the same stories over and over. Thankfully he eventually left after he finished his drink and we were free to go. Next door there was a group of foriegners, mainly British college kids who were traveling around the country. They were all pretty hammered when we got there but they were having loads of fun. We joined the group and were able to sit and talk. We ended up talking about the widest range of subjects from politics to scientific theory to cultural differences. The best part of sitting at this bar was it was the first place I had been to in a while where I wasn't hassled to buy a drink when I first sat down or told to leave because I hadn't bought a drink. We sat with these new found friends for hours and even though some were still partying when we left at four we needed to get sleep because the next day we had a busy day of exploring waterfalls. Surprisingly I had a good night's rest, for no A/C the room was quite chilly and the bed wasn't that uncomfortable. We were woken up pretty early by motor boat engines and some odd sound rolling on the floor boards outside our room. We ventured to the restaurant to get a quick breakfast before heading out to the waterfalls. I had some amazing chocolate pancakes while Joe was boring and had a traditional breakfast of eggs, bacon, and toast. Since I was traveling with Joe that meant we were getting a moto so after breakfast we went to scout out moto prices. We found this one guy right outside our guesthouse who was very knowledgeable and nice. When it was all settled our guy told us how to get to the waterfalls and get gas for the moto. We decided to go to the Erawan waterfalls which was 65 km away. The drive out to the waterfall was pretty tough. It took us about an hour and a half to get out there and I had forgotten my sunglasses so I had to keep my head down most of the journey because the wind was brutal on the eyes. Also the seat on the moto was not too comfy so we couldn't wait to get off the bike when we finally made it to the waterfall. The Erawan waterfall is actually seven tiers of waterfalls since neither Joe nor I knew that before we ventured out there we were super excited to get started. We were worried when we started out because the bottom tiers there were lots of people picnicking and we thought the rest of the journey would be just as bad.

When we got to the second level waterfall there were monkeys! We were not suppose to feed them but they would come down the trees and steal food from picnicking people. One walked right in front of me I never thought in a million years I would get to see a monkey in its natural habitat. There was even a baby monkey up in the trees and all the other monkeys were helping it get to new branches or higher into the trees. As we finished up with the second waterfall we found out that we were not to be greeted with picnickers the rest of our journey. No food or drink was allowed beyond the second waterfall. I realized how out of shape I was when we began climbing to different levels of waterfalls. It was not an easy climb there was no clear cut path sometimes there was steps and sometimes you climbed up and over a branch and then over a boulder. It was so much fun trying to figure out how to get to the next waterfall. Joe and I spent a lot of time exploring each level of waterfalls. Sometimes we would venture out on downed trees or climb up waterfalls or climb over rocks. A lot of the times Joe and I were the only two people at these waterfalls which was so cool.

We finally made it to the seventh waterfall and boy were we exhausted. We didn't spend too much time there because of all the people and the bugs were horrendous. We spent way more time at the lower waterfalls and had an amazing time so we didn't need to spend a ton of time at the seventh one. The walk down was so much easier than the climb up. We didn't realize how dehydrated we were until we made it to the second waterfall and downed two bottles of water. We grabbed something to eat and decided we would try and make it to one of the caves before heading back to town. The cave was about 12 km away which wasn't so bad but when we turned down the road to the cave it turned into gravel. Joe can drive on gravel he just doesn't feel to comfortable doing it. So we made the decision to forgo the cave and just make the journey back to town. This time we took our time to observe the scenery and to stop and take pictures.

One of the cool things we saw on our journey back to town was this group of Thai men herding cattle down the road. Only in Thailand would you see something like that. The whole journey back was great we traveled along the river where we saw mountains, dams, and lush green countryside. As we entered town we made a quick stop to the bridge over the River Kwai. Both Joe and I didn't know the significance of the bridge but we knew it was important and it was made into a movie at one time. It was pretty cool bridge with great views. I didn't know how important it was to cross this bridge but I did find it really cool to walk across a river on railroad tracks. After spending some time on the bridge we decided to head back to the guest house. We didn't realize that we had missed our turn so we ended up 10 km outside of town and had to turn around. By this time we were very anxious to get back to our guest house because our butts were killing us, we were running low on gas, and it looked like a rain storm was coming. Right before dark we found the turn and were back to our guest house within minutes. Not even 10 minutes in our room there was a loud clap of lightning and the torrential downpour followed. I hadn't been in a thunderstorm that bad in a while I actually jumped a couple of time because the thunder was that loud. Eventually we couldn't stay in our room any longer, we were starving, so we faced the elements and ran to the hotel restaurant to get something to eat. We ended up sharing tables with other guests because it was an outdoor restaurant so some of the tables were soaked and all the guests stayed in so it was a little crowded. Eventually the rain stopped and we went back to our room to watch a movie on Joe's computer and go to bed. I couldn't believe how tired I actually was it was very hard to get up the next morning. We returned the moto, had breakfast, and booked a ticket on a van back to Bangkok. This time we had the van drop us at Victory Monument. Even though the ticket was more expensive going back, in the long run without the added use of a taxi to public transport we would save so much more money. It was a pretty cramped van ride but we made it to Bangkok in about three hours. Once we departed the van Joe and I said our goodbyes and I went East he went North. After finally getting home I uploaded all my pictures and videos then decided to take a quick nap before heading out to grab some dinner, that was at 6 pm. I woke up the next morning at 6 am I think I was a little more tired than I thought. It was a great weekend I am so happy I went. Now I have to start my week or training I am not sure how this is going to go.