Kanchanaburi is an area in central Thailand a couple of hours west of Bangkok in the foothills of the mountains between Thailand and Myanmar.  We visited here for a day trip 2 summers ago when we were here with all the kids to see the Bridge on the River Kwai made famous by the movie of the same name (you can see the original post here). It was our last day here and we just added it on a bit of a whim, but decided that we should go back sometime and spend a few days there to get a better look around.

With the help of some friends back at Iyara Thai in Redmond (thank you Nina, Bee and everyone) we got a lot of good tips and suggestions on things we should try to see when we are here.

Our first day here began with a late start as it was the first day we did not have a fixed agenda and we all just wanted to unwind a little.  We got to breakfast not long before it closed, but managed to get in and out before they shut it down.  We decided to take a leisurely walk up to the River Kwai Bridge and have a look around as Russ was not with us when we went here 2 summers ago.

We took a nice walk across the bridge and wandered around the market a little and then decided to take a boat on the river to see a few of the sites – this was one of the things on that was mentioned to us from our friends back home, and it did not disappoint!

Our first stop was at Khao Poon Cave and is one of the many caves in the area that has carved itself into a limestone hill.  The cave consists of 7 ‘rooms’ that are connected with stairways and passages that wind down into the hill.  The cave must be fairly popular with the tourists as it is quite well lit with fluorescent lighting 🙂  Some of the rooms are fairly large, and as we wind our way lower we start to see some bats flying about.  It seems a little eerie at first, but it is absolutely true that bats have great sonar for flying about because even with us moving around in the cave and getting fairly close in some places not a single bat hits any of us.  Mrs Columbus ever daring as usual crouched down low to enter into one room where there were dozens of bats constantly flying around, but she held her ground and took some time to marvel at the sight.

Our next stop was at one of the war cemeteries that are in the Kanchanaburi area.  The cemetery contains about 1700 graves of fallen soldiers that gave their lives during the 2nd World War, mostly POWs that died during the construction of the Thailand-Burma Railway.  The place is immaculately manicured, but it is a bit sobering to stand there among those who gave so much so that we could enjoy the freedoms that we enjoy today.  It is perhaps a bit fitting that as we arrived the clouds opened up and we got caught is a big downpour – the rain is bit refreshing and it drops the temperature a bit so maybe a fair trade.  The storm passes in about 20 mins and we know that in about another 20 we will be mostly dry again so it does little to slow us down and off we go to our next stop.

Our last stop on the boat trip is at the JEATH War Museum, this is a small museum with artifacts, clippings and photos also from the war (JEATH stands for Japan, England, Australia, America, Thailand, Holland) and the museum is laid out to resemble a typical prisoner of war camp – it is hard not to see why some many prisoners died in these camps as the conditions were horrible.

After the somber (but interesting) locations we hop back into our boat and return to the main pier by the bridge.  We wander around the market a bit buying some snacks and fresh fruit before waking back to our hotel for dinner and then a massage before bed 🙂  All in all a great first day here.

(BTW, for anyone who has been looking at the photos and thinking ‘can he make them a little bigger for older eyes’ 😉 I have gone back and fixed the links so that clicking on a photo will bring up a full-sized version)

We got back to Thailand just a couple of days before their national election.  The polling was today (July 3) and the government had forced a ban on all alcohol sales since the night before (not that it has a lot of impact on us but some of the backpackers are grumpy) so that the people are all fresh to get out and vote. More than 90% of the eligible population is expected to vote, which makes me a little sad when I read about the anemic turnout we get in our elections back home.

Thailand is very divided politically and in previous years protests and unrest have popped up in Bangkok depending on who was in power, and who was unhappy at the time.  The Thai people we talk to tell us that no matter who wins 1/2 of the country will be unhappy with the result.

It is expected that no party will win enough seats to form a majority government, so they expect that it will take a couple of weeks of wrangling after the votes have been counted for someone to form a coalition government and then the people will decide if they are satisfied or not.  It is not expected to impact us at all, but it is interesting to watch how the political circus works in other countries – I guess at some level it is pretty much the same 🙂

Our last day in Cambodia finds us with another relatively early start (for people on vacation) as we have a few things left on our list to see and need to get back to the airport by 2pm for our flight back to Thailand.

As usual our guide Theoun is already waiting for us when we come out of the breakfast area, and after loading what seems like more baggage than we arrived with, it is off to our last set of temples.  Today we will go to a group of 3 temples in the Roluos group – Lolei, Bakong, and Preah Ko.  These temples were built about 50km south-east of the main Angkor complex and are much closer to the Tonle Sap (more on that later).  At some point the king realized that the area was prone to flooding and the king relocated the capital to the Angkor area and started building his new temples there.  The main Angkor complex is a tough act to follow and these temples are not nearly as big and impressive as what we have already seen (sort of like looking at the original smaller pyramids after seeing The Great Pyramid first) but given that they were built in the 800s it is still a little inspiring to see what people made by hand over 1200 years ago – some of them like Bakong are still in quite good shape, and it is hard to image that they have lasted that long.

As an aside, after seeing all of these temples I have decided that I would quite fancy having a moat – I have requested to the gardener to get started on one as soon as we get home, so that I can have some crocodiles delivered before the rainy season begins back home 🙂

The final items on our list for Cambodia before heading back to the airport is to visit the Tonlé Sap and one of the floating villages.  The Tonlé Sap is a lake that most of the year is long and narrow (a few km wide and about 100km long), but fairly shallow (around 1 meter) and flows into the Mekong River and into the Pacific Ocean.  During the rainy season though the Mekong actually has such a high water volume that it over flows backwards into the Tonlé Sap and the lake expands dramatically to about 35km wide and almost 150km long and it’s depth increases by about 10x to around 10 meters.  The lake floods out the fairly flat country side and at it’s peak covers around 16,000 square km (around 6100 square miles)!!  The flooding creates a unique farming environment and they can harvest 3 crops per year from the well fertilized soil. Additionally, the flooded area provides a great spawning area for fish, and during the high season tons of fish are caught as one of the area’s major food sources.

A unique side effect of the expansion and shrinking of the lake is the existence of the ‘floating villages’ around the lake area.  Technically they are not floating, but are actually all built on high stilts over 20 feet off the ground.  Most of the year the ground below is dry and the houses and buildings are just raised up off the ground.  There is a ‘main street’ and people walking about, gardens growing, etc. but when the lake floods the entire village is suspended above the water by the stilts and the only means of moving about is by boat.  All the items that are on the ground are either moved up into the house, or are moved out by the road before the waters get too high.  At the time of our visit the village is not yet flooded, but our guide informs us that the water is rising at a rate of about 5cm per day (about 2 inches)!

We drive in from the main road about 1/2 way to the village where we board a longtail boat to go out to where the village is and then out onto the lake itself.  The lake was impressive and has already flooded enough that we cannot see the other side, and as we are going down the river from where we started we can see areas where the forest floor is now covered in water.  On the way back in from the lake our boat stops at the main pagoda for the village and we are able to get out and walk around.  It is a bit of a surreal experience to walk down the street and have to look up at all the buildings, but aside from that it is mostly a regular village, there are homes, merchants, and we even spot a barber chair at one building.  Near and dear to Mrs Columbus’ heart is a walk by the local primary school where dozens of young children are laughing and playing – it seems that we have wandered by during recess and the children are just hanging about in their classrooms.  Our guide tells us that it is OK to go have a look inside and even takes us into a couple of the rooms.  The little Cambodian faces are all smiles and the kids are waving at us, just excited to see some foreign faces.  The experience is a little moving, and we stop to buy some notebooks for the teacher to distribute to the kids in one of the classrooms before we head back to our boat to go home.

A quick trip back to Siem Reap for lunch and then our driver takes us back to the airport to checkin for our flight back to Thailand and the next part of our journey.  I definitely think that there is much more to see in Cambodia and I hope to be able to come back in the near future to explore some other parts of the country as we have barely even scratched the surface.  The people we interacted with were incredible and we are continually reminded of how happy people can be with so little that we are leaving a little humbled inside.

Our return flight is uneventful, and we are greeted in Bangkok by a taxi driver that we have used before.  We were able to call him from Cambodia and arrange for him to take us to Kanchanaburi which is our next destination.  The trip is about 3 hours, but we hit the Bangkok traffic at the end of the work day so that adds another hour to our drive time, by the time we get to our hotel we are all ready for a quick bite to eat and then some quality sleep time.

I don’t normally like to take pictures where the main subject is people.  It is mostly in my head, but I think that trying to capture the perfect ‘image’ of a person is something I need more practice with.  I have taken some portraits that I am proud of, but it still feels like something outside of my comfort zone.

That said, it is certainly much easier to take pictures of people that are so photogenic!  I must say that I am glad that there are rules about smuggling people inside of luggage as I fear that Mrs Columbus would have taken as many of these home with her as her baggage allowance would have permitted:

Not that we are complaining, because we are actually very blessed with what we have – even if they are sometimes a little sketchy looking 😉

On day 2 of our Angkor adventure Mrs Columbus and I roust our teenage companions for a very early 5am start on the day.  In doing the planning for our short time here almost all the comments I saw indicated that a sunrise or sunset (or both) at one of the temple sights was an absolute must, so we asked our guide to include one in our travels.  Given that we are here in the off season we unfortunately have to work around the potential of rain so that basically eliminates the sunset option as we would have to take a 40 min hike up a rise to see the view and sunset from the top.  The rains most often come in the evening, so we decide that the chance of having to hike up and down (the down part in the semi-dark) while being rained upon suggests that we are better off focusing on the sunrise option.  The skies can be mixed cloud most of the day so there is a chance the sunrise will not be as spectacular as we see in the photos, but we set off in the morning to see what the day will bring.

We have chosen to go to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise as we can get a good view over the moat with the temples in the background and a nice reflection off the water if all the conditions co-operate.  Unfortunately the last bit did not work out as well as we had hoped, and the overcast skies blocked out most of the sunrise itself.  However we still did get some nice photos and I have to say that the serenity of the moment was more than I expected.  We managed to set ourselves down on the outer wall to the left of the main causeway that crosses the moat, and there were no people around us at all.  We had a light snack for breakfast and watched as the sunlight came in.  The water in the moat was perfectly flat and you could hear the just the sounds of the jungle – it is difficult to describe, but extremely peaceful.

After the sunrise we jumped back in the car to start out to our next destination.  I had read about a company that offers a tethered balloon ride near the temple that allows you to see the park area from the air, and asked our guide about it.  It was very close to where we were, so we decided to check it out.  It was still early in the day and  before most of the bus tours start up, so there was no-one there but us, and they were able to take us up right away.  The balloon took us up about 150 meters (about 500 feet) and we had an impressive view of the main temple but also of the surrounding area and some of the spots we had been to yesterday.  It is hard to understand why these sites were lost to the jungle over the centuries when you are standing in them because they are truly massive, and you think how could something this size get ‘lost’, but from the air it is a little easier to understand how dense the jungle can get, and some of the temples we saw in the first day barely show through the ground cover and canopy when viewed from above.  All in all a great stop and we are very happy we chanced upon it.

Our next stops include the temples of Banteay Srei, Banteay Samré, East Mebon, Pre Rup, Ta Som, Neak Pean, and finally Preah Khan. Towards the end of stop at Preah Khan the weather catches up with us and a short cloud burst of about 20 mins opens up and we wait it out inside the temple.  When the rain lets up we decide to wrap it up for the day as we are a little tired and don’t want to chance getting caught in a bigger storm, but it is a little unfortunate as I think the temple was quite interesting and there was more we could have explored.

We have been fairly fortunate all day though as the route we took seems to be even more offset from the bus tours than our schedule yesterday and the number of other tourists we have to share the temples with is quite small all things considered.  These sites all seem to have an extra sense of grandeur when they are not full of people.

Our guide Theoun has co-ordinated some discounted tickets for a dinner show that is right across the street form our hotel, so we finish out the evening with a buffet of various Cambodian and SE Asian food, and a display of traditional Cambodian dancing.  Tomorrow is our last day here and we have a few things left on our list to see, so we set a start time of 7am with our driver and it is the end of another busy day.