Whew..... finally caught up (with the Thailand trip that happened over a month ago...)

For starters, I suppose that we ought to take it as some kind of hint that it's been five days and no-one's commented on the last post. Seems all these three-week delays are catching up with us.

Well, no more! This one's comin' atcha a mere FIVE DAYS after our last post!!!

*insert more trumpet fanfare*

So yeah, in all seriousness we'll try to get better at that whole end of things.

Moving on.

The Thailand trip was, as has been stated again and again, awesome. I'm just trying to sift through and figure out what we haven't talked about yet.

Bangkok's pretty much been covered, so I'll stick with summing up our experiences in Kanchanaburi. They were great fun, and for the first day or so we were hanging out with an American guy (named Ryan) we met on the minibus from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi, which was pretty rad. He also had a Lonely Planet guide with him, which is how we found an awesome place to stay once we realized that the tour office that was supposed to show us to a hotel was already closed. It was a place called The Jolly Frog. It was awesome. One of the things that the Lonely Planet said about it was that the restaurant connected to it was awesome, and they were right about that too.

Awesome and cheap.

For under $4 I got an entire chicken barbecued on a metal spike:



Yeah. When I say "an entire chicken," that's what I mean. For the record, chicken spinal cord tastes a bit like pasta. I never would've guessed.

This place also had an awesome $4/night rafthouse that we thoroughly enjoyed. It didn't have quite the same rustic charm as the other one, but then again it also didn't have quite the same rustic infestation of cockroaches and enormous Thai spiders either, so it all works out in the end.



In fact, it really didn't have any bugs at all, which we thought was strange, since we were expecting a whole wackload of mosquitoes or something. Nothing. We couldn't figure it out until we looked up and saw on the ceiling the most effecting bug-repellent ever:

GECKOS!!

Dozens of them. They're so cool. Every one of the little pale specks you see on the ceiling is a gecko.

It also had a really nice courtyard area that for a while was surrounding a really good-looking girl, so I thought I'd get a picture:


Before moving on to the next super-rad thing that we saw while in Kanchanaburi (which will continue after the elephant tour ended) I'd like to take a moment to discus the magical nature of makeshift transportation.

BEHOLD!


Ever wonder what happens when you take a cool-looking boat and put an automobile engine block in the back? That happens, friend! A really cool boat.

Also, this is a typical Kanchanaburian taxi:


Guess where the passengers sit! I'll give you a hint, it's not on the bike, and if you look down you can always see road zipping by directly under your feet.

Back on track.

After the elephant experience, we went on another half-day tour to a Buddhist-owned wildlife sanctuary that specialized in the fostering of stray and orphaned cats.




Really big cats.

It's amazing how difficult it is to keep still and smile for a picture when the tiger you're petting twitches suddenly. There were other animals in the sanctuary, but none of them were as cool.

The next day, we rented a little scooter for the exorbitant price of roughly $6/day from a local shop.

It took a little bit to get used to, but after a little while we were both pretty pro at riding it, and let me tell you, it's SOOOOOOOOO fun.

Here are a couple pictures of it and us:



For those sharp-eyed observers among you who are currently asking yourselves "does that sign behind Rebecca in that last picture say something about a monkey school?" let me at last ease your mind.


*ahem*

YOU'RE FREAKIN' RIGHT IT DOES!!!

Yeah.

We found a place where they keep and train the single greatest animal on the face of this Earth. The majestic monkey.



Basically the way the first part of your Monkey School experience goes is that you pay about 50 cents for a bowl of bananas and then the guide shows you around the place, letting you feed the monkeys, some of which are in cages, and some of which are on long leashes tied to trees.

The one on my head is a white gibbon, and I need one really really badly now. She hung out with me the whole time we were there, just lounging around and relaxing. It was so freaking rad!

After the feeding and petting bit was over, we went and sat down for the show. By this point, a group of (go figure) Korean tourists had arrived so it wasn't just us there for the show, which consisted of monkeys picking numbers out of a bunch of mixed up bits of wood, rescuing hostages



and using their mad biking skills to impress the sexy ladies


After we were done at the monkey house and we bid our temporary Korean companions a hearty 안영이가세요, we were on our way. The thing that Kanchanaburi is most famous for is the presence of the bridge over the River Kwai. And here it is:


This one (obviously) isn't the one that was blown up in the movie starring Sir Alec Guiness, or even the historical dude his character was based on. There were two bridges. One was wooden and a few kilometres downstream from this metal one, and the other one was this metal one that I just referred to in the preceding clause of this sentence. This one was bombed by the allies and the middle of it was destroyed. As part of reparations payments, Japan had to provide the two slightly bigger and much more angular spans to repair the bridge after the war was over. Otherwise the bridge is original. It was a neat thing to be able to see, but it was after all only a bridge, so we decided to go eat at the floating restaurant just upstream of it.

It looked like this:


The food was amazing, but that hardly needs to be said at this point, and there was another cool thing about it. You could buy a bag of fish food for a few dozen baht and feed the river fish. We had a table right by the railing on the far end of the restaurant (sticking out into the middle of the river) so we took advantage of it and got a bag each. It was good fun and the fish seemed to enjoy it too.

After dinner Becca headed back to the Jolly Frog for a bit of a nap and I took the scooter out to the countryside for a spin and got some pictures of the scenery, just before and just after sunset.




So that was Kanchanaburi, and pretty much wraps up our Thailand trip for you.

On the way back we had a short stopover in Taipei. We were only there for about 40 minutes before we reboarded the plane, but we had time to see a rather blunt sign in the boarding gate.



I suppose it's better to warn people outright than to make it a surprise, but still!

Anyway, that was our trip to Thailand. It was an incredible amount of fun, and I highly and strongly recommend that you go there if the opportunity EVER arises. You totally won't regret it at all.

Ok, goodbye and I promise that we'll try to be a bit more regular with our posts and whatnot.

Later, all!

Thailand (Part 2)

Dear All,

Thailand. ahhhhhhh......ahhhhhhhh. It was lovely. I knew we got holiday days, but I didn't really believe it until we got there. My first thought was that 5 days of holiday are not really that many, but when I actually thought about it's not that bad especially since all contract workers and part time staff get no holidays at all. The only way out is up, unless of course you're like my brother who has scored a great job (*pinching his cheeks *) - Way To Go Bruce!!! (*cheering squad in the background*) - sorry this mushiness must be done online because I would be dead if I tried it in person (I may still be worried if in Canada but being in Korea gives me a bit of a head start)

So, I digress. Bangkok itself was not my favorite place to visit but there are palaces and cute little shops with shiny objects. It's funny because I KNEW that I didn't need shiny objects and I would keep telling myself that as I walked down the street and yet I would end up at these stores with Ryan politely standing there not understanding the mystery of not NEEDING trinkets and yet completely engrossed with looking at said objects. Maybe it's just me?

Our favorite mode of transportation were the tuktuks by far. There's just something exciting about driving on highways on 4 wheelers (well three wheeler's actually). I think it's the "inches from instant death" feel that adds to the thrill.

While in Bankok we also had the pleasure of visiting some temples.



Next on the list was the fabulous Kanchanaburi - loved it - bathing elephants in the river?!!! It just doesn't get better than that I don't think. I've never really appreciated elephants to the extent that I do now. I don't really know how to explain why it was such an awesome experience - you're just going to have to try it some day I think.

Here are various pictures from that day:


This is a 1-year-old elephant that was wandering around. We weren't able to get too close because it wasn't trained yet and it would try to charge and bowl us over like a full-grown professional football player. Ergo, it could be argued that professional football players are exactly like baby elephants.


This is a 72-year-old elephant. It's a bunch bigger.






In Thailand, it is important to know that every time you get into a vehicle you will not be taken where you want to go immediately. We were ready for this, having talked to experienced Thailand travelers before departing, but did not understand the extent. It takes about an hour for the transportation to actually leave and realistically an hour isn't bad. On top of that, however, you will never be taken exactly where you want to go... initially. You are always taken to a friend's hotel or restaurant. And so on our trip down to the lovely city our bus stopped at a BEAUTIFUL guest house with breathtaking (in my mind) rafthouses on the river (for $4 a night).



We had already booked another hotel for that night so we reserved this area for the following evening. The inn that we stayed at that night after a bit of a coffuffle with not being able to find our tour office (that turned out to be a blessing as the exact same tour was in another location at 1/4th of the price) also had raft houses but was not quite as pretty. Ryan was not as much of a fan of the raft houses as they had no airconditioner but I loved it.

The next night we headed back to the first location that we saw the raft houses and went to our room. We were just hanging out reading when I saw it. A bug. A HUGE bug. At this point I would like to describe how I selflessly saved Ryan fron the enormous cockroach one handed and armed only with a paperback ... but my 'would like to describe' and 'what actually happened' did not cross paths. In fact, although the thought "I should do something" did cross my mind, my next immediate thought was "but if I move it might eat me". After Ryan had finished with the beast we began inspecting the cabin for other bugs and discovered 6 very large spiders. We decided that the $4 for the room was not actually a charge for the sleeping itself. I bet it takes time to cultivate cabins for the bug-killing connoisseurs.

Tune in for the last of this exciting trilogy... sometime.