Shelly and I took off a day from school to celebrate her birthday and to explore Kanchanaburi in more detail. We spent a day in Kanchanaburi during our orientation week riding elephants and bamboo rafting, buuuut still felt there was plenty in the area to explore.
We checked into our river raft room on Friday night (imagine a large floating mobile home with 8-10 partitioned small rooms) and enjoyed a great sunset from our riverfront balcony. The room was basic with a manual toilet (Matt gets to dump water in to flush) and springy beds. But, the room also had A/C, a fan, small table, and best of all, the aforementioned balcony with two chairs. All this for the low, low price of $13 USD a night.
View from the guesthouse restaurant
Deep in thought down by the river
We spent Saturday exploring the 7-tier Erawan waterfalls, about 65km outside of town. There is a local bus that takes you to Erawan in about 90 minutes. The hike can be done in less than an hour, but the real draw is to stop at each level and explore each tier of the waterfall. You can see why right here:
Tier 0 (I confused this one as one of the seven tiers). Pretty nonetheless.
Tier 0.5. Awhoops.
OK. Here we go. Tier 1 at a distance.
Tier 2
And Tier 3.
Only shot we got at Tier 4. Some Frenchie couldn't manage to snap a photo as we slid down the rock slide.
Nice group shot at Tier 5 (apologies for the gratuitous nudity)
Tier 6 (not all can be seen) was secluded and probably our favorite
Very end of the waterfall at Tier 7. Again, not all of the waterfall pictured.
The full return hike took us about 5 hours, with plenty of time to stop and swim at a few tiers. Most of the tiers have fish that ‘exfoliate’ your feet when you jump into the pool at the bottom of the fall. Some of the fish are the size of tadpoles, others the size of a small trout. How much they nibble on you depends on how gnarly your feet are. People pay good money for that in Bangkok (like us).
By the time we finished the hike, it had started to rain lightly and Shelly was minutes away from hypothermia in 75 degree weather. She has acclimated real nicely here. J Once we got back to our room, we sat down on the balcony chairs and a wine bottle-shaped thing wrapped in cute wrapping paper was put into T minus 5 hour birthday girls’ lap. Mmm, 2006 Australian Shiraz. A FANTASTIC bottle of wine, sipped on a glorious evening watching the peaceful water (minus a few motorboats/jet skis) on the River Kwai in Kanchanaburi. What a great way to deal with turning a year older!
On Sunday, world-wide holiday (AKA Shelly Day),we took an even longer one-way bus ride in the direction of Burma out to the Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum. The Museum and walking trail are managed by the Australian Government to commemorate 100,000+ (estimated) WWII POWs that died constructing the death railway. Japan was intent on constructing the railway to move supplies through Thailand and into Burma for an anticipated invasion of India. Allied ships prevented the Japanese from moving supplies exclusively by boat, hence the railway. American, Australian, and Dutch POWs were included in the labor force in addition to 250,000+ Asian contracted workers. The Asians had a far higher death toll (estimated at 90,000) as they did not have basic medical care provided (Allied soldiers retained the chain of command and had army doctors) or strong leadership to argue against the Japanese soldier’s demands to work. Men died from cholera, malaria, beatings, starvation, etc. Not exactly the way Shell probably expected to spend her birthday (um, death on a day to celebrate life??! Wait a minute…), but a cool experience nonetheless.
Hellfire Pass Museum is situated on one particularly well-known stretch of the railroad known as the Konyu Cutting. The cutting was dug mostly by hand and primitive digging tools to construct the railway through the mountains of Western Thailand. The Konyu Cutting is about 80km past the famous Bridge over the River Kwai, which is part of this same railroad. The Bridge was bombed out by Allied planes but rebuilt several times during the war.
Of the original 415km of track laid from Thailand to Burma, only 130km are still in use. The train track on the Bridge over the River Kwai is still in use and runs northwest towards the museum and southeast to Bangkok. However, the track running northwest stops about 15km before the museum.
Part of the railbed. Interestingly, most of the railbed has been removed or is buried around the memorial museum. never got an answer as to why.
There is a 4km walking path around the museum. Part of it is seen here (again this is the railway path)
Beginning of the Konyu cutting referenced in the plaque above
This pic gives a good idea of the scale of the cutting. Me thinks.
We felt it was appropriate to experience the train in action and took a 3 hour return journey to Kanchanaburi (where the Bridge over the River Kwai is located). The trip was absolutely worth it and the pictures/video prove just that:
Seriously, not a bad way to start the young and spritely age of 18 (I guess this is when women start to lie about their age). We traveled over the bridge that night for a good dinner on the water (actually, all our dinners were on the water!) and a “fruit cake” of mangosteens and rambutans with 3 candles in the center for the birthday girl. YUM!
Next up on the travel calendar: Finally go to a white sand, blue water beach and relax for a couple days on Koh Chang. Life in Thailand is hard.
Whenever we see an extended weekend on the Thai calendar, we can't wait to figure out where we want to go that might be a bit more of a distance. So when Buddhist Lent came up on July 15 and gave us a four day weekend, it was pretty much understood that we would be traveling up into Northern Thailand to Chiang Mai. We ended up flying there to give us more exploration time. I ended up needing the short travel more than I knew since I took off that Wednesday and Thursday with the Flu. Looked like we'd be taking it a bit easier there than we anticipated!
On Friday, we decided to do something both of us swore up and down (up until that week) that we would never do - drive a motorbike in Thailand. It made the most sense as a way to explore Mae Sa Valley since driving the loop was supposed to take about 3 hours, and traffic was almost non existent once you get out of Chiang Mai. It probably wasn't the smartest decision given that neither of us had ever driven a motorbike before, but I think living in Thailand has made both of us even more adventurous (I mean, look at the food we try!). The first 15 minutes of us driving on the shoulder while Matt got comfortable had me in hysterics. I could not stop laughing. In his eyes, it was one of the most nerve wracking times in his life. Then it started raining, so we had to pull over at a gas station and buy the only ponchos they had available - really pretty pink colored GIANT ponchos. It's a good thing Matt is already comfortable wearing pink shirts AND pulls them off well! :)
We got into Mae Sa and first stopped at the Mae Sa Waterfalls, which were really brown, but still beautiful. After some light hiking, we continued our way past elephant camps and orchid farms to discover the most amazing, breathtaking views!
The Food
Khao Soy
Before we made our way up to Northern Thailand, we received many recommendations for the food, most notably, Khao Soy. Looking in our Thailand Lonely Planet book, there were a few different recommendations for this Northern Thailand dish. I think that they give good recommendations in there, but I also think they don’t give enough credit to the many other small street restaurants that have just as good if not better food typically than a place they recommend. And for half the price! So since this was a famous dish up north, we decided to try our luck with one of those smaller restaurants not in the book. And let me tell you we were not disappointed!!!
We both ordered Khao Soy Kai (with chicken) and awaited this uber incredible dish. First, they brought us a stack of 3 containers. Upon checking the contents, one had quartered raw shallots; another had this spicy kimchi-esque cabbage (I liked this whereas I do not like Kimchi) and the third contained some other additive (I clearly didn’t use it since my memory is lacking). Just as we finished opening the containers, our Khao soy was delivered to us. We each had a large drumstick with thin, flat egg noodles, and green parsley in a delicious smelling orange curry broth topped with crunchy, curly wonton strips. I added a good amount of shallots and a bit of cabbage to mine. The first bite. Oh. My. Gosh. AROI!!!! This stuff was GOOD! It was slightly sweeter than I anticipated, a little creamy and the wonton strips crunched with perfection. We will be taking a cooking class in Chiang Mai when we go back in October and I am quite determined to learn how to make this incredible dish. If you are lucky enough, maybe you will get to try it at some point. :)
Tianzi Tea House
After having Khao Soy twice, Matt wanted to try out a restaurant he found in Lonely Planet that bragged of having the most delicious vegetarian organic food in Chiang Mai. I have to admit that I was slightly skeptical but wanted to give it a try. The setting of the restaurant was really unique, and we decided to sit outside where they had low long tables with lounges basically to lay on our sides as we were eating.
Looking at the menu, I knew I would have a hard time (and yet not so hard of time) deciding what I wanted. We ended up getting buckwheat bread with hummus (bread was okay, hummus was MMM!!!), steamed spinach with wasabi (YUM), GINGER and real brown rice (I almost died when I saw this), buckwheat pasta in the shape of gnocchi with sugar snap peas, CLOVES of garlic, and mushrooms (blech – here ya go Matt) covered in tomato sauce. AAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! I am sorry to say that I did not get any pictures because it was all devoured too quickly. Wow. That was some food experience. I am salivating like crazy just writing about it. AHHH!!!! SOOO GOOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you are ever in Chiang Mai, you HAVE to go to this place. You HAVE to. No questions. I will try to replicate these dishes as well.
Jerusalem Falafel
Greek salad with lettuce, feta, tomatoes, olives, cucumbers, and grilled seasoned chicken. Garlic pita bread. Ground beef meatloaf-esque thing with mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. Sigh.... :)
We wrapped up our trip in a way that was a bit of a surprise to both of us. Planning on leaving late Sunday night so we could have Monday to prep for school on Tuesday, I relied on the planning part (aka, Matt) to let me know when our flight was. Well, after a nice Thai massage in old city, Matt decided that he should try to check us in for our flight. It was 8pm at this point. We walked into the nearest internet cafe to do this, and upon checking our flight, Matt's eyes widened with a slight unbelieving smile on his face and said "uh oh." Our flight had left 37 minutes prior. BIG uh oh. We ended up staying another night in Chiang Mai, and leaving at 5:30am to make sure we got on the first bus back to Bangkok. That was a very long mistake. But always an adventure :)
