Kanchanaburi, Floating Market, Ancient City

We have been busy being tourists for the past couple weekends. Last weekend we went to Kanchanaburi because Jess won a night's accomodation at a hotel there. We left right after school on Friday night and made it there in 3 hours. (Going anywhere after school on Friday is always tricky because of traffic.) By the time we made it there though, we had just enough time to have some dinner and then go to bed. On the Saturday I went out to Erawan National Park and walked up the 7 tiered waterfall. It was beautiful! Very clean and quiet. You could swim in each of the pools if you wanted to and in some there were those fish that eat the dead skin off your feet so you could also treat yourself to a pedicure! (They are very tickly at first.) That afternoon I did the toursity stuff around the Bridge over the River Kwai. So the story goes that the Japanese wanted to make a railroad from Thailand to Burma and they used POWs to make it. Heaps died in the process and there is a great big war cemetary in Kanchanaburi (which is an immediatly odd sight because you don't see cemetaries here since everyone is Buddhist.) The original bridge, made during the war, was destroyed by the allies near the end of WWII (the Japanese knew the bridge was supposed to be bombed so they filled it with POWs in hopes that this would stop the bombers) and the one that is there now is the replacement. There is a great war museum with heaps of stuff that the POWs and Japanese troops left behind. After walking back out to the resort, the rest of the day was spent lazing around.

We decided to leave early on Sunday morning (mostly because there was nothing left for us to see) and stop at the Damnoen Saduak floating market. We got there and hired a long boat to take us around the market. It was quite pretty but very touristy now - mostly souvenirs for sale. Worth doing once...

Yesterday we decided to go to the Ancient City. Apparently, a wealthy Thai man bought the land for it in the '60's and started making replicas of important sites around Thailand. It's kind of like a giant, open-air museum now. There are a lot of "creative designs" from Thai buddhism as well. You get bicycles for the entry fee (300 THB for foreigners, 50 THB for Thais) and we spent the morning cruising around the place. It's well worth a visit if you come to Bangkok.

I put picutures of both Kanchanaburi and the Ancient City on my Flickr page.

2 more weeks until we head out to Nepal. We are very excited. I will try to make another update before then but it will most likely be after we return. Stay tuned.