Rather than spend another day in Bangkok for our last day here, we decide to get back out of the city and take a day trip out to Kanchanaburi.  This is the location of The Bridge on the River Kwai and the Death Railway.

The trip out to Kanchanaburi is about 2.5 hours by car, and we stop about half way there to visit a floating market.  In days gone past much of the trade and transportation in Thailand was carried out on the rivers and klongs (canals) that run through the country.  The Thai people would go out each day in small boats and buy and sell goods, fruits, vegetables, meats, or whatever they needed – the exchanges would be carried out from boat to boat and/or from merchants on the banks of the klongs.

Our driver takes us to a small pier where we hire a mini version of a longtail boat to run us through the market and see the sights.  Initially it looks like this may be a dud trip and prepare for disappointment because for the first 5 minutes or so we do not see any sort of boat or market activity, then we come alongside a couple of ‘shops’ that front onto the river, but see mostly the same old stuff we have seen everywhere else – Mrs. Columbus is giving me that ‘maybe we should just go back look’ when the boat turns a corner into what looks like complete chaos.  There are boats everywhere, about half are filled with tourists taking in the spectacle, and the other half are filled with goods of all varieties imaginable – there are boats with fresh fruits all cut and cleaned and ready to eat, there are boats with fresh flowers, boats with meat, boats with beverages, and even boats with propane burners and woks making fresh fried dishes.

There are times when there are so many boats jammed in side by side that it seems like no-one is going to be able to move, but somehow the Thai boat drivers seem to be able to bang their way around each other and push on ahead.  The klongs seem to go everywhere, and as you pass by a maze of endless passages seems to evolve, but the driver seems to know exactly where he is going and before long we are back at the pier where we started.  A short break to have a drink and some mango with sticky rice that we bought from a boat vendor and we are back on our way.

Thailand was not really an active participant in the second World War, aligning with neither the Axis or the Allies, although various parts of it were occupied by both the Axis and the Allied forces during the conflict.  The Japanese Army occupied much of the northern part of the country, and wanted to construct a rail link from Bangkok to Rangoon (in Burma) in order to move war supplies more easily.  As the rail line got close to the Burma border the country gets a lot more mountainous and construction of a rail line there would require crossing the range of mountains that separates Thailand and Burma.  Over 250,000 locals and Allied prisoners of war were conscripted to work on the railway, and over 100,000 died as a result of the harsh working conditions and poor nourishment provided by the Japanese.

The rail line was entirely built by manual labor (no heavy machinery was used at all), and follows the Kwai River for much of the route.  Today the line ends at Nam Tok well inside the Thai border, and the link to Burma has long since been dismantled.  There is a train that runs from Bangkok all the way to Nam Tok, but most tourists get on the train at Kanchanaburi or Tha Kilen for the trip up to Nam Tok to see the most spectacular parts of the railway.  There are places where it seems like the tracks are clinging to the side of a rock face with the river directly below and the jungle is so dense in places that you can sometimes feel leaves and branches pop in through the open windows.

The train is definately worth the $3 USD ticket price (Tha Kilen to Nam Tok) and after some lunch in Nam Tok we stop to see a spectacular waterfall that is at the end of the line – the actual original Thai-Burma rail line would have gone right past the falls, but there is now a park here and people can swim in the pools that are formed at the bottom of the falls.

From there we travel by car back to Kanchanaburi to visit the war museum and see the actual bridge that crosses the Kwai River.  The bridge that stands there today is not the actual bridge that existed during the war – the original bridge was a wooden structure that crossed the river, and later a second steel bridge was added, however, both bridges were frequent bombing targets by Allied forces during the war and both of the original bridges were destroyed.  The current bridge was re-constructed on the site of the steel bridge, re-using some of the spans and supports of the original structure.  There is a very small section of the original wooden bridge that remains on one side of the river and is now part of the war museum.

The original bridge was made famous in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai made in the late 50s, and the movie is based on the book of the same name that is the account of one of the POWs that was interred in the camp there. The movie is still well worth watching even if there are no Hollywood style special effects, and the movie was filmed in Thailand so is a great representation of the geography we have been seeing.

There is war memorial and cemetery there also that gets onto most tour routes, but we are running out of time and must start our journey back to Bangkok – our return flight to the US leaves at 10pm and we have a 3 hour drive ahead of us.

The somber note of all the war stuff seems a little fitting as we are all more than a little saddened with the thought that it is time for us to leave – it seems like only yesterday when we were arriving for what has turned out to be a great trip.

… is more than enough for me!

When we planned our original itinerary, we included 2 days at the end of the trip in Bangkok to see any additional sights we wanted to see, and any additional shopping that needed to get done without having to pack bags full of souvenirs around the country with us.

Well after 40+ days of peaceful travels around Thailand, our return to Bangkok was a bit of a slap back to reality!  Everything that we decided we did not like about Bangkok – the congestion, the pollution, the crowds of people – immediately reminded us that we were not in the country anymore.  I’m sure there are lots of reasons why it is a huge and growing city, but for us time spent in Bangkok is not a selling feature for Thailand 🙂  Out of all the places we have stayed, the rooms here are the most expensive, and the lowest satisfaction overall – we cannot wait to be done with our 2 nights here…

We take one of our last 2 days in Thailand to go to the Chatuchak Weekend Market – this is the largest market in Bangkok and only runs on the weekend.  There are thousands of stalls/vendors, and what seems like all of the people in Bangkok wandering through the tight alleyways that make up the market.

I foolishly have assumed that we are actually done most of our shopping already, having scored some great deals in Chiang Mai and our trip to the Golden Triangle, but I am quickly re-educated as the ladies acquire bag after bag of new stuff to some how jam into our luggage for the return trip.  After a few hours of wedging ourselves through the mass of people we call it a day and return to our hotel with several armloads of new goodies.

The market is really one of those things that I guess you need to see to appreciate, and now I can cross it off my list 🙂

Tomorrow is another day…….

Our time here in Chiang Mai is running short, and our last planned activity for here is to go up into the mountains and take a zip-line adventure called Flight of the Gibbon.  The Gibbon is a member of the primate family, and in times past the jungle around here would have had many of them flying through the tree tops, so we will go and do our best monkey impressions leaping from tree to tree.

Laurie originally stumbled across this activity while she was doing research on things for us to do in Thailand – to be honest I was a little skeptical about the whole thing as I could not initially see how sliding across a few zip lines seemed like a good use of my $65 USD.  If I wanted to fly across a zip line I could just do it over in Vic’s yard for free 🙂

I am happy to say that in this case I was wrong, as the experience was well worth the admission price, and given the chance I would definitely do it again.

For your package price they pick you up at your hotel in the city and then take you about an hour out into the jungle and up into an isolated valley to the east of the city.  The jungle canopy is so dense that my GPS receiver has trouble tracking the satellites us as we climb up the hillside in the van.  In fact, as we make our way upwards I wonder who would even bother to cut a road up into this place it seems so remote.  Well it turns out there is a small village up there (not hill tribe people), and it is one of the areas that a number of eco-tourist hotels are and some of the homestay places you an find in the Chiang Mai area.

The actual tour starts out at the main office where, after signing our injury waivers (Vic, you need to have some of these for your place), we meet our skyguides Mr. B and Ken, and get suited up into our harnesses.  The skyguides are there to assist you along, and enforce the safety procedures, but also to make you at ease and add some ‘flavor’ to the adventure and make the trip more enjoyable.  Our guides are fantastic at their job, and all through the trip they are cracking little jokes or taking about the area and how the attraction was built, or what the locals do in the valley, etc.

The adventure itself begins when you step off the road and onto a trail into the jungle – the rain forest here is about 1500 years old, and the size of some of the trees is overwhelming.  The course criss-crosses a sharp valley going back and forth as we descend a total of about 400 meters from start to finish.  There are 12 zip lines covering a total of over 2000 meters in length, along with 2 sky bridges, and 3 repels – 7 meters, 14 meters, and the final drop of 45 meters at the finish.

The entire time you are literally right in the canopy of the jungle with fig trees, palm trees, banana trees, etc. all around you, and when you stop to look down the jungle floor seems like a long way down.  Part of the procedure they run you through at the start is to secure all of your stuff to your person (like your glasses for example), as they carefully point out that anything that falls off would be lost in the jungle forever.

The whole course takes about 3 hours to complete (we are a small group of 8 people), and each zip line offers some different variant of speed and/or length and different surroundings so that you never feel like you have repeated yourself.  The last platform comes what seems like far too early, and they give us a drink to re-hydrate and then load us up in a van to go back up to the office where we get a light dinner before we have to head back to the city.

Words and pictures cannot really do the whole trip justice, but suffice it to say that it was a very tranquil adventure, and I would recommend it to anyone without hesitation.

This is our last adventure for Chiang Mai – we have one more day here, and I’m sure the girls will hit the market, and we will all just unwind a little before flying back to Bangkok and getting ready to head home.  I will of course make sure to allocate some time to get a massage before we leave, as I am not certain if we can find a reputable massage spot in Bangkok 😉

Actually I should take a second to give a little shout out to Sopa an the Sopa Salon – this was a little shop we found across the street from our hotel in Chiang Mai where Laurie first went to get her hair done.  It turns out that she also owns the massage shop next door, and has the reasonable price of 120 baht for a 1 hour massage 🙂  We make several trips here over the 8 days we are here, and Sopa becomes quite friendly with us, offering information about the area and things to do, and even hooking us up with samples of food items the locals eat (that we don’t normally see on restaurant menus).  If you are even in Chiang Mai you should definitely stop by, it is fantastic value, and some real friendly folks.

After taking a day off to relax and get a massage, our next adventure has us going north to Chiang Rai.

Chiang Rai is in the next mountain valley east of where we currently are and is about 250km away.  The roads here are not quite the same as back home, so this amounts to about a 3+ hour drive by car, so we are getting up at O-dark hundred hours (6am) so that we can still get some sightseeing done and not just spend the day in the van.  We set the tour up with our friend Riam from the Elephant trip and her and her husband pick us up in the morning and off we go.

Our first stop is about an hour or so outside of Chiang Mai at a natural hot spring – this must be a frequent stop for tours going through because in addition to the hot springs, there is a collection of shops for tourists to buy things and a few small spots to get something to eat.  The water from the hot springs bubbles up in a few different pools and then also jets upward from one pool in sort of a small geyser.  There is a pool where they say you can soak your feet, but the water is soooo hot that I cannot see how anyone could keep their feet in there for more than a few seconds.  In fact at one of the pools there is a Thai lady with a basket of chicken eggs, and for a few baht she will cook one for you in the pool – she says it takes about 5 mins to cook in that water.  Of course even if you could find a pool that hot in the USA, you could never serve cooked eggs from it without permission from the FDA, a certificate from the local health department, and a food service permit.

From there it is back into the van and a few hours to our next stop – just outside of Chiang Rai we stop at a temple.  Again I am thinking that once you have seen one temple you have seen them all, but once again I am surprised to see something completely different.  This temple (Wat Rong Khun) was built to commemorate the King’s 60th brithday, and is completely white in color.  The entire temple is made out of bricks and mortar, and everything in the complex was built by hand.  They have spent the last 20 years adding new structures and the work is on-going, perhaps to celebrate the kings 85th birthday or something.  Our guide tells us that this is the only temple in Thailand that is completely white like this, and that it holds a world record for the largest, most intricate hand made structure.

Just outside of Chiang Rai is an area that historically has been called the Golden Triangle – this referred to the opium drug trade that used to funnel large amounts of opium from Northern Thailand, Laos and Burma into Europe and North America.  The area now is more commonly used by the locals to refer to the spot in Northern Thailand where Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma) all connect – in theory you could stand in one spot and be in all 3 places at the same time.  In reality that particular spot is in the middle of the Mekong River, but part of our excursion includes a trip by boat up the river and to the junction of the 3 countries.  We journey up the river a little way along the Burma side (we are not allowed to stop and land in Burma) and then cross over to Laos and down to a small market on the Laos side where we are able to get out and shop for half an hour or so.  The ‘entry’ into Laos does not seem as restrictive, as we merely give some guy 20 baht per person and walk on in.  The boat takes us back to the Thai side, and it is back into the van to journey onwards.

Not far from the river there is a museum that provides some background about the opium trade and the history of the area, but we don’t stop here as we are pressed for time a bit, and have to decide between the opium museum and stopping to see the hill tribes later in the day – Mrs. Columbus wants to see the hill peoples, so we move onwards.

We head farther north to a city called Mae Sai – it borders onto a city in Myanmar called Tachileik, sort of like San Diego and Tijuana does.  There is a river that runs through the center of the city and that forms the border here between the two countries.  Just on the Thai side of the border there is a large maze of shops, and keen on finding a bargain we do our bit to support the locals.  Fortunately for the shoppers in the group we have Riam on our side to help haggle with the vendors – she has clearly done this a number of times, and will not be talked into over-paying for something.  After an hour or so in the market, and a quick late lunch, it is back on the road again to head for the hill tribes.

The hill tribes are sort of like refuges – they are not Thai citizens, and are nomadic peoples that have left Myanmar and Laos to find better spots to live.  The Thai government allows them to stay ‘illegally’ in the country, but does not give them any of the protections it offers to the Thai people.  Each of the hill tribes has it’s own customs and heritage and because they essentially live outside ot the population, the heritage is old and reasonably preserved.  In theory we are off to see a collection of villages where some of these people live and make their hand-crafted goods that they sell to the tourists to support the tribe.  To call this authentic would be like slapping a Mickey Mouse shirt on me and calling me a Mousketeer – I think that most of the whole thing is very staged for the tourists, and for the first time since we got here, I feel a little ‘clipped’.  They charge us 500 baht per person to wander around the village and put on a few simple ‘shows’ of music or dancing.  However when I see one of the long-neck ladies talking on a cell phone, it strikes me that these people are not too far removed from civilization.  The ‘tour’ (which is basically a little kid leading us through the village) takes all of about 20 minutes, and I bemoan the fact that we paid 1/2 as much for this as we did for the entire afternoon of elephant trekking a couple of days ago.  At any rate I guess we can cross it off our list, but I would certainly not recommend anyone wasting their time or money on one of these side trips.

From there is it back in the van for the long ride back to Chiang Mai.  It is dark by the time we get back, and it was a long day for everyone.  The hill tribes aside the trip was definitely well worth it, and once again our guide Riam and her husband made the trip so much better with all the extra help they gave us with talking to the locals, and knowing where to go and what was worth stopping for.

One of the things we had promised the kids we would do while we were in Thailand was to got to a safari park and ride the elephants.  While we did let them have a short ride on Jackie’s birthday in Ayutthaya, most of the feedback we found about safari parks was that the best ones were in the north around Chiang Mai – our trip yesterday proved our research to be right on the mark.

While we were wandering around the old city on our first day here, we ran into a tour operator on the grounds of one of the temples – at first we were a little apprehensive, fearing that we were going to get pressured by a typical tout trying to rope tourists in, but the lady (Riam) chatted with us for a few minutes and in addition to being very helpful, her services were priced quite a bit lower than the tour desks we had spoken to in our hotel and on the street.

It seems that her and her husband work independently from the big tour desks – he is the driver, and she is the guide – and they prefer to work with smaller private groups and families vs just selling X seats to fill the bus to go to a given location.  This seemed like a great fit for us and we signed up for a trip to an elephant park – they would provide transportation for the day and guide services for $500 Baht (about $15 USD) and we would buy our tickets for the safari direct from the park – turns out that we saved about $1000 Baht by doing this vs a standard tour operator.

Our tour takes us to the Maetang Elephant Park (some info about their animal friendly program can be found here), and the day’s program is for us to take a 1 hour elephant ride, and ox-cart ride, stop for a buffet lunch, and then a 1 hour bamboo river raft ride.  The tickets cost us $1000 Baht each (vs the $400 Baht we paid in Ayutthaya for 20 mins) so the day seems like a steal to us, and by the time we are done, it will be among the best $30 USD per person we have spent so far.

We begin with the elephant ride – the ‘trek’ takes us back and forth across the Maetang River a couple of times and up into the mountains and to the Lisu mountain tribe village.  We get the added bonus of a couple of baby elephants following us (and their momma’s I suspect) along the trail.  The trek itself is awesome, it is so peaceful going through the jungle, and the scenery is amazing.  We bring some bananas and sugar cane with us to feed the elephants along the way, and they clearly know who has food and where it is 🙂

Once we get to the Lisu village, we get off the elephants and they transfer us to an cart pulled by two oxen for the return trip to the camp.   The elephant drivers (mahout) return the elephants to the camp, and the ox carts plod along down a road to return the people back to their starting point.  To get us all into a single ox-cart Jackie got to sit up front with the driver – at one point he turned over the reins to her and she was driving us along down the road – clearly, the rules for driving an ox-cart in Thailand are a little laid back!

Once we get back to the camp we walk back down to the river to watch the mahout’s give their elephants a bath and a refreshing dip in the river, and then there is a short show with about 8 or 9 elephants to show some of the amazing skills that the elephants have learned.  One of the elephants has been trained to kick a soccer ball with striking accuracy, and can also flip the ball up with it’s trunk and then kick it in the air with either it’s front or hind leg – it seems like maybe the Ladybugs soccer team back home could use a few practice sessions with the elephant 😉

One of the elephants (named Suda) has been trained to paint pictures using her trunk – we have seen this before a places like the Calgary Zoo, but this is much more impressive – she paints an actual picture of an elephant and some flowers (all the ones we have seen before are really only a random bunch of brush strokes on a page).  At the end she signs her name on the picture and takes a bow.  Jackie asked specifically for a picture painted by an elephant for her birthday present, and was thrilled to be able to see the elephant paint the picture, and then was able to buy the actual picture painted that day!  (I have a video of the painting being made that I will post online somewhere once I get back to a high speed connection)

All the while our guide, Riam, is helping us to get the perfect spots to view some of the events, or arrange the purchase of the picture, etc. so with her great help the tour is going along fantastically.  Next it is off to lunch before taking the bamboo raft down river.  We were not expecting anything great from the buffet having sat through a couple before, but were pleasantly surprised when the buffet contained a large array of choices and they were all well prepared, including a couple of our favorites – spring rolls, and mango with sticky rice.  After a few visits to the serving table, we are done with lunch and off to the bamboo rafts.

The raft is exactly what it sounds like – about 20 bamboo poles strapped together to form a flat ‘raft’ – for us they place 3 wooden frames on top of the raft for seats and we are ready to go.  I am not completely certain they thought through the whole process of feeding people before getting on a raft, but the big lunch we just consumed surely helps to lower the raft a little lower in the water….  In the center, the raft seems like it is sinking – sitting about 1/2 inch below the surface of the water, but surprisingly the whole thing is quite stable, and aided by the 2 Thai ‘drivers’ the raft wanders it’s way down the Maetang River.

The raft journey is about 4 kilometers (a little under 2 miles) and while not quite as good as a massage, the experience is quite zen like.  The only sounds, other than the people on your raft talking, is pure nature at it’s finest, and it would be easy to just let the river carry you and your raft along for the entire day if it were possible.  Sadly, our crew and their raft must make their way back (the raft gets loaded on a truck for the return trip) so after our 4k we unload on the river bank where our smiling tour guide is waiting to pick us up.

On the way back towards Chiang Mai we decide to stop at a monkey school – the facility trains monkeys to pick coconuts as the monkeys are much more agile than a human picker, and can harvest the coconuts much faster by leaping from tree to tree vs the human alternative.  There is a little baby monkey here that the kids all get a picture taken with and a number of monkeys in the facility that you can go look at, and then they put on a short show to show off some of the skills they are being taught.  They say that it takes about 4 to 5 years to train the monkeys properly before they can go out and work the coconut farms.  The show was fun, and some of the monkeys and there tricks were quite cute, but it felt a little ‘touristy’ to me so while the kids enjoyed it, I would likely pass the next time around.

For the last stop on our trip we take a long windy road up the side of one of the mountains overlooking Chiang Mai city to see the Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep – this is likely the last temple we will see while here, but it is quite impressive, and has a phenomenal view of the city and the surrounding area.  The temple complex sits high above the road and can be reached by climbing the 309 steps to the top (or by a tram if you are real lazy) and we all ‘step-up’ to climb the stairway.  Once we get to the top the view is everything it is cracked up to be – it is too bad that it was a little hazy because the pictures do not do it the justice it deserves.  We also step into the temple itself to look at the Chedi and to get a blessing directly from one of the monks – we had not been blessed this way since the temple at Koh Samui, so a fresh blessing seems like a good thing 🙂

Our tour comes to an end with our return to the city.  Riam and here husband were great, and we had such a great tour that we have booked them again for another tour out to Chiang Rai a couple days from now.  We take an hour or so to unwind and then pop down for a massage 🙂 for the perfect end to a perfect day.