Central Thailand

Hello again. Thanks for reading still after all this time. Over four months have elapsed since I flew from Gatwick to Poland and I'm still having such a brilliant and exciting time. For anyone worried about me traveling alone: you have nothing to worry about. I've met some fantastic people and it's really pushed me to try new things. For instance tomorrow I'm trying a downhill mountain bike trip in one of the toughest places in the world! Should get the heart pumping.

Enough of north Thailand and let me tell you about my time in central. As you may be aware I spent a couple of days in the quiet and history enriched town of Kachanaburi. During this time I put myself on a tour of the surrounding places. Firstly we went to the Erawan national park to see it's famous 7-tiered waterfall. We only had 2 and a half hours there and was told it would take around an hour or so to reach the summit. So me and Roman (Ukrainian guy) paced it to the top as quick as we could, reaching it in about 45 minutes. The waterfall was awesome but the walk was hard. It was a sort of mix between the waterfall at Luang Prabang (Laos) (what with the tiers) and the hike up from the river at Tiger Leaping Gorge (China) (what with the ladders going up parts too steep to climb). It was excellent fun and on the way back we had some time to jump off waterfalls, swim around, and get bitten by the fish. The fish are weird. They sort of nibble at your toes. It's kinda funny.

After the waterfall we headed to the elephant park. Me and Roman were on the biggest elephant there as we trekked through the jungle. The rider appeared to have a really good relationship with Pet (the elephant) and upon instruction could get him to roar. I was really quite surprised at how loud elephants can roar. It's quite incredible. The trek was really cool and we went through a camp of the local people who take care of the elephants. When we got back to the elephant camp I was taken aback with how many elephants they keep. And breed. I didn't expect to see so many in one place. They seem quite well looked after, though you can never really tell.

From there we took a bamboo raft down river for about 20 minutes. It was really peaceful and a pleasant experience though I have been on many boats in the last few months so nothing new to spot. We then took the minibus over to a famous spot on the death railway, aptly named due to the number of deaths of the original workers on the site. Some 70% died and were treated or buried in a nearby cave that stank pretty bad. The scenery around was quite spectacular and after a short while our train showed up taking us through the country side to the bridge over the river Kwai. We walked down it and back and went around the nearby museum. I'm interested to watch the movie about it now where it was bombed in WW2. We got back on the minibus to go to the guest house and booked ourselves to go to Ayathaya the following day. We had a few drinks and although we've spotted, and been approached by, many prostitutes in Thailand, I never thought I'd see anything so blatant as the bars around there. Every bar is desolate and all the girls that work their are quite literally throwing themselves at the Westerners. Needless to say I didn't accept their illustrious offers.

So we went to Ayathaya, Thailands ancient capital before Burma came and ruined it. It's ruins are one of the most popular attractions though I didn't think they were particularly exciting. The night we got there we looked around a ruin in the dark with some big lights on it. This was pretty cool but I realized the next day the temples aren't that ancient or even extravagant. They are all extremely similar and all made of red brick with the stone and plaster being burned off. What also didn't help is that the night before some Thai's plied me with lots of Chang and Samsong whilst I tried to drunkenly teach them English and me Thai! So other than having a hangover in the intense heat and being bored by the "ancient" temples I didn't really do an awful lot. However, I took an amazing boat trip. Ayathaya is set on an island since a river runs all the way around it and along the river are some fantastic temples. The first we saw was an active monastery, one of the biggest I've seen. We watched the women there making the monks robes and watched the monks meditate and study in different rooms around the monastery. It also housed a huge golden Buddha.

The second and third weren't quite as amazing but still a whole lot better than the ruins held within the city. It was a really nice boat trip and I was glad that I managed to leave Ayathaya satisfied that evening. I left Roman in Ayathaya as I went up to Chang Mai on the train at 9.30pm. I arrived at 10.30am today and met a Dutch guy, Ruud, who is going to do this mountain biking thing tomorrow. Should be good if not incredibly tiring!