The Swiss Family Martin
The war aspect of Kanchanaburi is everywhere, and I suspect that the bridge and the railway are the reason why a lot of Europeans come here. However the area surrounding Kanchanaburi is also a national park and has some amazing scenery and areas of natural beauty.
We’re not normally ones for organised trips but we went on a cracker of one on day two of our stay here. First of to Erawan National Park with it’s seven waterfalls.
The Erawan park rangers have cottoned on to something- tourists leave rubbish. I have ranted about this in the past. So you are only allowed to take drinking water into the park, and you must check in your bottles, sign for them and leave a deposit. Each bottle is numbered, so they can check discarded bottles against names, and presumably find you wherever you are hiding and then beat you to death with them.
We are told by our guide Mu Mu, an extremely confident but fast and impenetrable English speaker, that we are welcome to swim in the pools of Erawan and that the little fish will give you a firm Thai massage. In actual fact, the buggers bite you, constantly and are not afraid of splashing or shrieking, despite my efforts to frighten them off.
I adopt the technique of swimming like a Olympic champion to outrun the little beasts but they are everywhere and to be frank, they are not little. It seems weird that the other day I was snorkelling in amongst the beautiful Koh Phi Phi Nemos and trying to touch them, but now I am frantically swatting away the biting brown leviathans of Erawan and shrieking like a girl.
Anyway here’s a pic of what I suspect is Louis’s highlight of his holiday…sliding down a natural rock flume like a good ‘un.
Safe to say eve didn’t go in any of the pools and whined the whole time, asking where lunch was and wanting to go home. She likes a good dash of ceramic tile and chlorine with her swimming water.
Next up, we go for a walk with some elephants. Here we are with Bunta (22 years old) and Seesaw.
Will work for bananas.
Unlike our previous Elephant walk on our Sri Lanka trip we were able to send some time with our Elephants afterwards. Here’s me speaking to Bunta and apologising for running out of bananas and making her walk in the hot sun.
And we saw one of the babies, who snotted all over my white trousers and rooted about my person for anything edible.
Our mahout was a cheeky one too. He ate two of the bananas meant for the elephant.
Next up we went rafting which was fantastic.(No pics, unfortunately.) With life jackets on, Mum, if you’re reading… Louis and John jumped off the the raft and swam most of the way downstream. John in River swimming shocker. See, I told you it was a ll a bluff..he was like flipping Tarzan. And I went in fully clothed but hung onto then raft so that I could be in earshot of Eve’s whining lunch enquriry and pleading to go home.
One of the other rafts had an unwelcome visitor in the form of a water snake. A deadly water snake. We might not have been so keen to jump in the River had we known. Yikes!
The Swiss Family Martin
The war aspect of Kanchanaburi is everywhere, and I suspect that the bridge and the railway are the reason why a lot of Europeans come here. However the area surrounding Kanchanaburi is also a national park and has some amazing scenery and areas of natural beauty.
We’re not normally ones for organised trips but we went on a cracker of one on day two of our stay here. First of to Erawan National Park with it’s seven waterfalls.
The Erawan park rangers have cottoned on to something- tourists leave rubbish. I have ranted about this in the past. So you are only allowed to take drinking water into the park, and you must check in your bottles, sign for them and leave a deposit. Each bottle is numbered, so they can check discarded bottles against names, and presumably find you wherever you are hiding and then beat you to death with them.
We are told by our guide Mu Mu, an extremely confident but fast and impenetrable English speaker, that we are welcome to swim in the pools of Erawan and that the little fish will give you a firm Thai massage. In actual fact, the buggers bite you, constantly and are not afraid of splashing or shrieking, despite my efforts to frighten them off.
I adopt the technique of swimming like a Olympic champion to outrun the little beasts but they are everywhere and to be frank, they are not little. It seems weird that the other day I was snorkelling in amongst the beautiful Koh Phi Phi Nemos and trying to touch them, but now I am frantically swatting away the biting brown leviathans of Erawan and shrieking like a girl.
Anyway here’s a pic of what I suspect is Louis’s highlight of his holiday…sliding down a natural rock flume like a good ‘un.
Safe to say eve didn’t go in any of the pools and whined the whole time, asking where lunch was and wanting to go home. She likes a good dash of ceramic tile and chlorine with her swimming water.
Next up, we go for a walk with some elephants. Here we are with Bunta (22 years old) and Seesaw.
Will work for bananas.
Unlike our previous Elephant walk on our Sri Lanka trip we were able to send some time with our Elephants afterwards. Here’s me speaking to Bunta and apologising for running out of bananas and making her walk in the hot sun.
And we saw one of the babies, who snotted all over my white trousers and rooted about my person for anything edible.
Our mahout was a cheeky one too. He ate two of the bananas meant for the elephant.
Next up we went rafting which was fantastic.(No pics, unfortunately.) With life jackets on, Mum, if you’re reading… Louis and John jumped off the the raft and swam most of the way downstream. John in River swimming shocker. See, I told you it was a ll a bluff..he was like flipping Tarzan. And I went in fully clothed but hung onto then raft so that I could be in earshot of Eve’s whining lunch enquriry and pleading to go home.
One of the other rafts had an unwelcome visitor in the form of a water snake. A deadly water snake. We might not have been so keen to jump in the River had we known. Yikes!
