Saturday, May 21
We were up bright and early in the morning and ready for the adventures ahead of us. We had a good breakfast at the Pong Phen Guesthouses where we were staying (which I would highly recommend) and then a van picked us up to head out for the day. We had a one hour drive to the Erawan Falls, 7 levels of gorgeous waterfalls. We had a guide for the first two levels, but we wished we didn’t. The first few things she told us was that if we took the wrong path we would see a lot of snakes, she pointed out that the holes in the ground were tarantula holes, and she said to beware because some of the monkeys were vicious! Thankfully we didn’t see any tarantulas, snakes OR vicious monkeys! We climbed all the way to the 7th level, which was a total distance of 2200m. It may not seem like a lot but it was hard climbing up and over roots and rocks. Needless to say, coming back down was much easier! I never even considered hiking before, but after this trip I could see it becoming a hobby! When we got back we had lunch and ice cream and then took another van to the elephant grounds. We first got onto a seat on the back of the elephant with a guide riding bareback. After a little while he asked if I wanted to ride bareback, and obviously I did! It was SO cool. The elephant didn’t feel like I thought it was going to. It had course, wiry hair everywhere, but his ears were really soft! Everyone’s elephant’s stayed on the path, but ours kept wandering off and eating... it was also really awkward when he decided to scratch his bum on a tree!
After elephant riding we went bamboo rafting down the river Kwai. A boat pulled our rafts up the river and then we floated/paddled back down. There was a Thai man on the front paddling for us and his friend was on the raft next to us. They were so funny, they were singing us some Thai songs, it was cool! Our guide’s paddle broke, he tried to paddle with half a paddle for a whole, and all of a sudden he jumped into the river and swam to the other raft to get an extra!
Next we went to a train station along the Death Railway. We had some time to walk around the railway. check out a cave nearby and get some ice cream. We then took a train on Death Railway, it was rather bumpy and rickety, but very cool. It’s sort of funny that Troy is a conductor for the railway and I had to come all the way to Thailand just for a train ride! Hehe.
We then took yet another van to the Bridge Over River Kwai. We walked along the bridge and took pictures of the beautiful view down the river.
We finally got back to our guesthouse around 5:30pm, but we weren’t exhausted yet! We had heard about a delicious Italian restaurant in town called Bell’s (of course I took a picture for the Bell’s back home)! We all had pasta and it was soooo good! We were heading back to go to bed when we came across a cute little massage parlour. We went in just to check prices and ended up staying for a while. I got a back massage while Tori & Jill got foot massages. My massage was... different! The first thing the lady did was push on the middle of my back causing it to crack a lot, which felt good! The strange part was that there was no massage table, just a mat on the floor. The even stranger part was that she kneeled on my bum the whole time, and at one point leaned on her forearms on my back with almost all of her body weight and “massaged” it! It was definitely different but it felt really good, especially after sleeping on rock hard beds at our apartments during the weekdays! After our massages we were craving some sort of dessert, so we found a cool little restaurant and had warm apple pie with ice cream. Yes, I realize that I had ice cream three times in one day. I convinced myself that it was okay because we had hiked so much in the morning! Haha. We then walked around the town, looked in a few stores and then went back to our room to relax and sleep!
Oh don’t let me forget, it only cost 1090 baht (approx. $36) for this entire day tour!
Sunday, May 22
Ahhh we finally got to sleep in! Once we got up we packed up our bags and went back out to the guesthouse restaurant for breakfast. The ladies working at the front desk were so nice and helpful! We weren’t sure what to do for the day, so they suggested we hire a boat with a driver to take us up the river Kwai. The boat picked us up from in front of our guesthouses and we were on our way! The boat stopped at various places for us to explore along the way.
The first was a Monkey School. We saw a monkey show where the monkeys played basketball, swam and rode bicycles. After the show we held a little baby monkey, which was very scary but so cool at the same time!
Our next stop was at Khao Poon Cave. We had to walk up a hill to an eery secluded area where monks lived. We got to the entrance of the cave and a cute little six year old boy said “you want guide?” He was absolutely adorable! He took us down into the cave where there were many statues and buddhas. At first we were in a wide open area, but as he took us through the walls became tighter and we were starting to get a little bit claustrophobic. We were doing ok until we saw a bat! We all started screaming and told him we wanted to go back out, NOW! He laughed at us and said “bats, no?” Haha. We bought him a treat for being our little guide before we left!
We made our way back down to the boat and it took us down the river to the Jeath War Museum. The museum was in a replica of what the soldiers slept in during the war, and was filled with many detailed pictures from the war. It was really sad but interesting at the same time.
Our last stop was at the River Kwai Bridge Pier. Here we went on a floating restaurant and had fruit shakes to cool off! The boat then took us back down the river, slowing down and turning so we had an amazing view to take pictures of the bridge. We zipped down the river but when we turned in to go back to the dock at our guesthouse the propeller got all jammed with weeds and we couldn’t move anywhere. The boat driver jumped in the nasty water to fix it, which took about half an hour! Thankfully it was a nice day so we just soaked in the sun while we waited.
When we finally got back to the guesthouse we had lunch at Pong Phen. I had the best onion rings I have ever tasted! We then took a truck/tuk-tuk/taxi thing to the bus station and got on a bus, a real bus this time. The two hour bus ride only cost 99 baht (approx. $3.30). It was comfortable and air conditioned and we made it back safely! Oh and I forgot, when we went to get our bags which we had left in the lobby, Jill's was FILLED with literally hundreds of ants!! We opened a zipper and realized that they were all in a cracker wrapper in her bag and they all came filing out, it was disgusting! The lady working at the front desk rushed the bag to the curb and thankfully cleaned all of the ants out for us!
We then took a taxi from the bus station back to our apartments, where we unpacked, showered, relaxed and got ready for school the next day. As you can imagine we all slept like babies after two full days of exploration.
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