2 Day Trip to Kanchanaburi

Sue: We had cabin fever after staying in Bangkok unexpectantly for soooo long, so decided to book an overnight trip to Kanchanaburi which is a 2 hour drive north of Bangkok.

The first stop was a memorial garden for the many soldiers who died in World War 2 on the River Kwai, most were British, although some American, Australians and Danish too.
It was a beautiful garden with rows upon rows of plaques in the grass with Soldiers names, regiments and loving words from their families. They were mostly aged mid 20-30's and we noticed a lot of men were from the Manchester Regiment.

We then went to the Bridge on the River Kwai, it was amazing to stand there and think of all the Prisoner of Wars building it and how they must have suffered at that time.

In the evening we stayed overnight in an Elephant Camp and we slept in tin huts by the River Kwai. It was basically bamboo floating on the water and you could see the river through the floorboards! We didnt sleep that well as there were so many noises from the wildlife!

Next morning we visited a museum all about the River Kwai and walked down Hellfire Pass to see where the soldiers were instructed to make a clearing of the rock so they could build a railway track between Thailand and Burma for supplies. They had hammers and chisels and some explosives to do this. Thousands of men died there due to being overworked, underfed, malnutrition and disease.
They even took people from hospital to work on the site when they needed extra manpower to complete it within 18 months, when engineers had said it would take over 4 years to build.

After that we then did some Elephant Trekking which was fantastic! Our elephant was called Sandy and was 20 years old and our driver was 12 year old Uo. His father had bought him the elephant and he takes him home at night and Sandy sleeps under a tree!
Very gentle creature, at first it was a little unnerving when we were sat so high on him, but we soon relaxed and we had a trip into the Jungle! We each took turns moving from the seat on top to sit on Sandy's neck, which I wasnt sure about but Ou said it didnt bother him.

On return to camp we gave him a big reward of a bunch of bananas which he wolfed down. Probably needed all them for some more energy after carrying us!
He then did some tricks for us such as playing a mouth organ with his trunk and standing on 2 feet! Amazing!!

Later in the afternoon we went Bamboo rafting, not quite as exciting as we thought. We were led to believe it would be like white water rafting on individual rafts, but it was more like a floating bamboo sheet steered by a driver.....very sedate....both Gav & I volunteered to steer for a while and of course we headed for the sand banks not downstream!!

It was a brilliant two days away from the dirt and chaos of Bangkok and we are now keen to head for Cambodia