Kanchanaburi

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In a recent lesson on time, I asked my students to identify the months for summer and winter; these apparently don't exist in Thailand, but there is instead only wet and dry. In the wet season, it rains every day without exception; in the plains, this amounts to a sun shower that lasts just long enough to ruin the football field, but when you throw mountains into the mix, you can be under a system for hours or days at a time. While glancing over the tourist map of Thailand, I identified one town with the comment “fine weather year round." It also happened to be full of history, caves and waterfalls, but quite frankly, I would've gone into a war zone if it had advertised good weather.

My trip to Kanchanaburi got off to a rocky start as it seemed quite impossible to convey to anyone where I intended to go. Even with clues such as “the only city west of here," no one seemed able to interpret my pronunciation of the name. I eventually resorted to drawing up a sign and waving it at every bus driver that passed.

The 80km journey took right around 3 hours; the plan was to rent a motorbike from a dealer that my guidebook claimed to be right next to the bus station. This business had unfortunately shut down several years before and I had to make the long trek across town to the tourist district. It was a dark and stormy night so I couldn't do much in the way of sightseeing, but I did run through a few historic cemeteries (always best on dark, stormy nights), and I breezed through the market where I attempted to order a whole grilled cuttlefish for dinner; unfortunately, the price for one of these turned out to be around 300 baht and probably wasn't intended as a one-person snack, so I settled for the usual 15 baht rice dish. The guesthouses were all lined up along the river on the road to the famous bridge; I paid 3 bucks for a room with a shared bath – the high price was largely due to its location – depending on the night's weather, there was a decent chance I could wake up in the River Kwai.

Early the next morning, I rented a manual bike from a shop down the street. As part of the inspection process, the owner demonstrated to me how to start it using only a few dozen kicks, how to get to a lower gear by rotating through the higher ones, and how to start in fourth if the gearbox stopped working entirely; perhaps some of this should have led me to seek another bike, but he explained all the faults and workarounds with such confidence as to make them seem perfectly natural. There were a few other bugs – namely the odometer was permanently stuck at 89999 – I was forever awaiting the monumental rollover, and the speedometer looked as if it had been jury-rigged by a first-year Circuits class, only moving in increments of 10.

I arrived at the bridge before the hordes of tourists or the vendors showed up, so it lacked that aura of significance that only a few hundred camcorder-wielding Japanese can supply. Next it was 50km to the north of town for the Erawan waterfall. Shortly after I got on the highway, a driving rain began to fall which would not relent for a single moment until late that evening. To both sides there seemed to be amazing mountain scenery but it was greatly obscured by heavy cloud cover. Elephant and monkey crossing signs were frequent but neither of these made an appearance; I did have one giant bull that simply sat in the middle of the road staring at me, daring me to try to get around him.

As I was nearing the park, a truck in front of me suddenly slammed on his brakes; I was going about 60 at the time and immediately threw on my hand brake (though apparently there was a second one by my right foot which I had previously half-consciously assumed to be a hugely ineffective gas pedal); my front wheel stopped and my back swung around, tipping me over and sending me sliding along the ground. This left a big hole in my brand new jeans, but my freakishly large wallet protected my leg from any serious damage; the bike lost a chunk of plastic and got a bit scratched up but seemed to be as functionally sound as ever.

About half an hour later, I reached the park gate and the ranger informed me that there was blood gushing out of my arm. I thought it strange that this had not occurred to me before but decided to turn it to my advantage; I played the “crashed my motorbike and have to spend all my money on repairs" card and managed to get a 50% student discount on the exorbitant ($5) entry fee. The park consisted of 7 tiers of a waterfall spread out over about a mile; due to the heavy rains, the falls were fairly amazing, but there was also a less spectacular series of cascades where the footpath used to be and hiking to the top was quite epic. After the third cascade there was a ranger station where guards stopped you and searched through your bags for any pieces of plastic; for each piece you were forced to leave a 10Bt deposit that would be refunded if you didn't throw it in the river. The girl who took my money used this as an opportunity to make a pass at me: “You are very handsome; I like you" – I went with the standard smile and nod, hoping not to endanger the return of my 25 cents. I have been told on many occasions that Thais are shy people, but this is simply not the case – on a daily basis, women make terrifically forward remarks to me – and not just the prostitutes, but also teachers, students and shop owners – I've decided I rather enjoy this behavior and wish it would be adapted in more countries I visit.

Returning down the slippery slope from the top tier to the parking lot, I set off back down the road to Sai Yok Noi Waterfall; Lawa Cave was apparently nearby but I never managed to find it – Thais have this interesting habit of providing excellent signage until you actually need it – for 50km I saw signs pointing straight-ahead for Lawa Cave, but when the road ended in a T, there was no indication of any kind as to which way to turn. A little further down the road I did manage to find Hellfire Pass where in a bizarre twist, they'd actually commissioned a native English speaker to write intelligible signs explaining the history of the death railway.

I reached Sai Yok Yai National Park about 30 minutes before dark; I had been told that the ticket I had purchased earlier would be good here, but I didn't want to waste precious daylight trying to explain this in Thai, so I went with the old-fashioned approach of driving past the booth at 50km/hr. I don't know if I actually found the waterfall or not; following signs for various lookouts, I ended up in backyards where I was chased by vicious attack dogs. It was too late to visit the “Bat Cave", which is unfortunate since Batman has always struck me as a swell guy and would no doubt put me up for the night.

There wasn't much in the way of affordable accommodation in the area; the cheapest available was a 1200 baht houseboat. Apparently the next budget option was 100km down the road in Kanchanaburi. So I sped back through the dark and rain for the next two hours, coming oddly close to freezing to death a thousand kilometers from the equator. Arriving around 11, I got a room with no bath in the ever-popular Jolly Frog Backpackers for $1.75.

When I attempted to leave the hotel in the morning, the night watchman stopped me and demanded that I “check out." It was apparently customary for customers to wait to pay until the morning after their stay and so he wouldn't accept that I had paid the night before; he wanted me to sit and wait until the staff arrived 40 minutes later. I explained to him that my motorcycle was due back down the street, so he reluctantly let me loose to return it. I had been dreading the confrontation of the bike's return since the crash, but the owner simply declared it totaled, charged me 8 bucks and let me go on my way. Since I had nothing better to do, I thought I'd be slightly ridiculous and return to serve out my sentence; it turned out they had no record of me paying, but since my cash on hand was just over 70 Baht (which I needed to get home), they let me go on my way.

I went to the JEATH war museum, which gave some more insight into the atrocities of the whole Death Railway thing, and then managed to find the only Mass in the only church in town – for some reason, the words “Catholic church" are not understand by any Thai, anywhere, regardless of his/her aptitude in English or religious affiliation, so my only resource was random luck. After the service, I went to the bus station and made for Nakhon Pathom.

It took me several weeks to realize I didn't actually live in the city of Nakhon Pathom, and this in part explains why I always had such a difficult time finding a bus home. It turns out the capital of the province is about 40km west of my town of Samphran. The main attractions here are the tallest pagoda in the world and some big palace – my plan was to trek around town on foot and hope for the off-chance that all the big tourist sights were close together and had no admission fees.

Shortly after passing out unceremoniously across both seats, a girl came along and woke me up to claim the last open spot on the bus. She somehow identified me as a foreigner despite my excellent disguise and began talking to me in English; it turned out she was studying tourism at a university in Nakhon Pathom and was thus an expert at what there was to see and do in this the oldest city in Thailand. She offered to let me stay at her place overnight, but given that my school's faculty is almost exclusively female, I reasoned this would probably be a terrible excuse for missing my first three classes of the morning and had to decline.

After leaving the first bus in front of the giant chedi, we immediately hopped on another one to go 30km north to <insert name here when available>'s home. She was very proud of having the best example of a traditional Thai house in the neighborhood and gave me an extensive tour – the bamboo walls, thatch roof, water jars, and Buddha shrines were all intriguing, but by the time she got to “refrigerator" and “trash can," I could tell she was just killing time til the rain stopped. One curious feature for which I didn't get an explanation, but I've found to be present in every traditional Thai house I've visited, is a nudie calendar prominently displayed in the main living area – this always seems to be there regardless of the gender of the residents and is definitely one of the stranger customs I've come across.

From there we rode a motorbike across to a popular university that doubled as an amusement park. Among the attractions were a zoo, a birdpark, and a place called “Cowboy Land" that was advertised for miles around with the singular English phrase “Texas Steak." Also of interest was an elephant doctor that handled the high volume of injured elephants in the region.

At one point, she excitedly asked me “Are you afraid of goats?" I naturally responded that I was terrified, so we set off for a house that was supposedly full of goats. We drove away from civilization through the fields to an area lined with dilapidated shacks and ancient farming implements. Sadly it seemed the “goat house" had recently been torn down, and been replaced with fields full of goats, which weren't nearly as spooky.

We rode back to the city and bypassed the giant monument to go to the popular night market (though it was around 5 in the afternoon). We got a dish of Tom Yum Gung, which is an ultra-spicy mix of shrimp and mushrooms, as well as an assortment of tasteless, jagged leaves and stems that apparently aren't supposed to be eaten. Next it was onto the “flying ice-cream" stand where a guy shouted random Japanese brand names and hurled balls of ice cream high into the air; for some reason it was decided that in order to earn my dessert, I would have to stand 20m away and catch it in a tiny dish – fortunately my reflexes were unusually good and I got to eat it out of the bowl rather than licking it off my pant leg.

After this, <name> escorted me to the bus station, and thus eliminated any chance I had of hiking up the famous pagoda that loomed high above us just a few hundred meters away. I took the cheap bus to return to Samphran and got back to my apartment with a whole 10 baht to spare.


Bridge over the River Kwai





Random baby elephant


Elephants in the wild


The first of many tiers of the Erawan waterfall











Tis only a flesh wound





I managed to fall off this bridge in spite of its excellent engineering




Hellfire Pass

















Allied War Cemetary


Who stuck this wat in the middle of the road?


There's something a little fishy about this town



The JEATH War Museum was the bomb



No clue what this was


How to break in a new pair of jeans