Kanchanaburi

Wow - I don't even know where to begin - the past few days have been completely out of this world. This country is absolutely amazing. Too many story-telling moments have happened over the past couple days that it would take me nearly the entire day to describe them all - so, let me just describe the highlights.

Bicycling through a HUGE Thai festival/carnival - There was this huge Thai carnival right by the River Kwai that bigger than any festival that i have ever seen - it must have covered at least one square mile with 3 or 4 very very long rows with food vendors, carnival games, beer stalls, amusement rides - of course everything is very Thai and the place is absolutely packed with Thais. We had rented a bicycle and we rode all throughout the midway on the bikes ducking and dodging people, people laughing and pointing at us saying something to the affect i'm sure of "look at the silly Westerners on bicycles!" - We stopped to chat with some thai college kids from the local university - ate a grasshopper from the guy selling insects, drank some beers while listening to a Thai band cover "Wonderful Tonight (I serve that WonderfulTonight and Hotel California are the only two American songs that Thais know - I have heard each one at least a dozen times), feed some peanuts to an elephant, and moved. I felt so free just riding through these crowds - absolutely amazing.

There is a festival going over the bridge - complete with fireworks and lasers and a retelling of the whole Kwai story. Got some great snaps of the bridge, which I walked over right before the show started.

Yesterday, we did a tour where we went to Erawan Waterfalls in the morning. There are a series of 7 tiers to the falls, each about 200 to 500 meters apart. Some of you can swim in, and the hike to get from one to the next was great fun climbing through the trees and rocks and roots of the Jungle with a few monkeys sprinkled along the the way. One of the falls has this big rock that you can slide down. Then in the afternoon, we went to the Tiger Temple. A large group of Buddhist monks take care of tigers. They had three 4 month old cubs that you can play with. Yes, I was playing with a tiger cub, wrestling, picking him up, etc. Then there is this big canyon with adult tigers where you can get your picture taken with all 5 of them. Some of the pictures that I have are amazing. Catch these out!!




We met this very cool English guy, Sam, who does the sound and lighting for productions on cruise ships, so we basically just travels around on ships and takes breaks to travel a bit - he flew down after a cruise ended in Hong Kong for a week in Thailand before starting a new job doing the sound for Cirque De Soliel! Anyway, Erik, Sam and myself did some bar hopping and then went to this huge Thai disco which was absolutely packed. We ended up going there with the Thai girls who rented us our bikes the day before. We had bottle service for about $5. Incredible. Though, I am a bit hungover this morning.


I'm still in Kanchanaburi, though I have to get back to Bangkok this afternoon in order to get my flight to Cambodia. I can't even describe how fun I am having - travelling is more fun than I can ever imagine. Stay tuned for an Angkor Wat entry, probably on Sunday or Monday!