Kanchanaburi

In the beginning of August it was the Queen's birthday so we had a four day weekend.  I took the opportunity to go up to Kanchanaburi with a group of friends and had a great time!  Kanchanaburi is where the Bridge over the River Kwai was built during WWII along with the Death Railway.  We were able to go to a war museum and learn more about the POW's and were able to ride a train along part of the Death Railway.  On a lighter note, we were also able to explore a huge cave, climb and swim in the Erawan waterfalls, ride elephants, ride a bamboo raft and swim in the River Kwai, eat lots of delicious food, and pet and walk a tiger.  It was an awesome group to travel with and I was so blessed by spending time with them and getting to do some really fun and cool stuff.

Here is the Bridge over the River Kwai.  The first day we got there we got on a long shallow boat and rode around to a few different places...

We stopped at one place to explore a large cave!  It was really big and so fun to keep walking and exploring more and more rooms and pathways.  There was one room blocked off called the Ja-Ae room (Ja-Ae is what Thai people say when they are playing peek-a-boo with little kids).  Apparently this room is such a maze that you can easily get lost and you never know what is going to pop out at you!

 Here is some wildlife we saw on the way to the cave... cacti, peacocks, flowers and cows

 A great view of the River Kwai - beautiful mountains!

 A great big Buddha at the view point

 We also stopped at the Jeath Museum, (apparently they didn't want to call it the Death Museum).  The museum had pictures, explanations and artifacts about the POW's in Thailand during WWII.  It described their lives, how they were treated, and even had a bomb that was dropped but never exploded.  Here is also two views of the Death Railway the POW's built.

After our trip on the boat we checked into our resort and spent some time just hanging out and talking.  We looked out a window and saw a man wearing a Celtics jersey!  I was so excited about the possibility of meeting someone from Boston all the way in Thailand that we convinced Ryan to go introduce himself and figure out if he was from Boston while we all looked on.  Apparently the guy was from Germany and couldn't care less about the Celtics, but it was a funny story!

Our second day in Kanchanaburi we booked an all day tour to do lots of different things.  In the morning we hiked the Erawan falls.  There are seven different levels so we hiked up to the top and then slowly worked our way down, swimming in a few different pools.  The top right picture is the group I went with (from the back).  From left to right is Carrie, Panya, Ben and Ryan.  The bottom right picture is a picture of Carrie and Ben.

Here are some of the beautiful sights of the falls.  The bottom left picture shows a cave that Ben climbed into.

 The bottom left picture here shows the fish in the water.  There were tons of fish in each pool and they would come and eat the dead skin off your feet.  That was something I just couldn't get used to!

 At one of the levels there were some rocks you could slide down.  It was so fun!  Here is Ryan and Ben having a blast!

After lunch we went to ride elephants.  Here are Carrie and Ben riding their elephant into the river.

Here is Ryan and me riding an elephant.  It was the first time I was allow to sit on it's neck!  It was really cool!

After the elephant ride we went to the River Kwai and rode a bamboo raft up the river.  On our way down the river we jumped into the river and swam/floated for a while, which was nice.  (Sorry, no pictures of that experience).  After that we went to another section of the Death Railway and had some time to walk around.  Then we rode the train for a while.  Here is a picture of the section of railway we walked and some pictures of me and Carrie.

 On our last day we went to a Tiger temple.  We were able to pet some of the tigers and watch them play.

We also got to walk a tiger on a leash!  So crazy!

On our last day we went to the Bridge over the River Kwai one last time and took a group photo.  From left to right is Panya, Ryan, me, Carrie, and Ben.  They were such a wonderful group to travel with and spend time with!  So much fun!