Kanchanaburi for Christmas

A few of the people in our TEFL course wanted to go to Kanchanburi for xmas so I went back for another round. It really is a great part of the country. I would have really enjoyed teaching out there. There is an awesome little stand on the street where you can get drinks for only 10 baht (10 baht is about 33 cents!) We got motorbikes for 24 hours to go out to Erawan National Park on xmas eve and a few other sites around town the next morning. Below is our farang biker gang.

The picture above on the right is the Bridge Over the River Kwai. It's the infamous one from the Death Railway constructed during WWII. The last thing we did before leaving was a trip to the museum in town. (If you visit, it's the one across from the cemetery) I had been there years ago, but it was even better than I remembered. It's a terribly sad situation, but the museum was really well put together. This is the railroad that was built when the Japanese moved into Thailand during the war. The Japanese wanted a railroad between Bangkok and Burma to transport supplies overland instead of sailing all the way around Singapore. They used POWs and locals to construct it. Thousands died during the construction because of the horrific conditions.

This was the first time Christy drove a motorbike and we went over 120 km. Not bad for her first day out! The second day I found a few dirt roads to explore south of town. The monkey and waterfall pics were both taken in Erawan National Park. The park has a series of seven waterfalls. That's waterfall three and you can swim up to it and crawl into the cave behind the water. It's sick.

This was my first time out to the Giant Monkeypod Tree. It was really impressive. I biked out to it Christmas morning and ate some breakfast under it. A dog joined me so I gave him about half of my food. In the picture on the right I am the red dot standing next to the trunk...it was massive!

There were some beautiful horses along the ride, unfortunately most looked underfed. There were a few underfed cows too. I am not sure why, but it was sad to see. Below is a video of Bobby and Christy playing around on waterfall four at Erawan....