It's been a fair while since my last post, but it's mainly because my parents have been visiting and we've been touring the country. We had such a fantastic time, apart from mum getting bronchitis, and we saw some amazing temples, people and animals. They arrived on a Thursday night and we hit the shops on the Friday. Dad took advantage of the low priced humourous t-shirts that are in abundance in Bangkok, while mum picked up a few nice pieces of clothing as well. We headed up to Chiang Mai by train on the Saturday, and I just want to say that if you are ever thinking of doing a 12 hour train trip- DONT. My head was still rocking hours after we got off the train and it wasn't fun! We almost didn't head off on our booked tour the next day as mum was feeling really crook, but she managed to pull together and we headed off on our Northern Thai adventure. Elephant rides were first on the agenda, along with a really cool show that the elephant trainers put on. We also got to interact with the elephants after the show, and mum got cheered up from her sickness by the elephant kisses (see photo!). They put their trunk on your face, suck and make this big smooching noise. It was soooo cute!
We went and visited a few of the hillside villages which you can find around the north of Thailand. Quite sad really- they are refugees from Burma and live in very poor conditions. There was a bit of National Geographic action which Dan spotted (ie. women washing in the open) but I just found it really sad. Especially the kids. When we visited our guide helped us buy a stack of snacks for them and handed them out. I didn't particularly like doing it because it felt like a bit of a sideshow, but it's just one of those things I think.
We stayed at one of the most beautiful resorts I've ever been to... really gorgeous rooms with bamboo walls, and the most awesome bathrooms! They had floors with stones all over them with big stepping stones to get across them. It felt like you were in the outdoors. Quite awesome.
After visiting a stack of temples and going on a really relaxing raft ride on the river (boring according to Dan, but nice for me!) we headed back to Chiang Mai via a snake farm. Although the show was pretty entertaining and as much as I hate snakes the poor things were really mistreated which made the whole thing a bit disgusting. When we got back to Chiang Mai and checked into our accomodation we almost ended up going back to Bangkok early because mum was quite crook- but after changing to a much nicer hotel, and getting a doctor to check her out she was feeling a bit better.
So, the next day we headed back to Bangkok, and then the day after we headed off on our second tour to the Bridge over the River Kwai, and Hellfire Pass. The trip was.... well, weird!! We got picked up by a driver who spoke no English whatsoever and proceeded to get really lost while trying to get out of Bangkok. He kept doing U-turns and when we came up to a split in the road he would turn the wheel left, right, left, slow down, stop, call someone and then take an option! It was ridiculous. He even got pulled over by the police at one stage for doing a ridiculous manouvre in the middle of a busy freeway, but after money exchanged hands and more than a few giggles from him we were on our way again. On top of that, our airconditioner wasn't working (and our driver didn't know how to use it in the first place and had to, once again, call someone on his mobile to try and understand it!).... so after the 400th u-turn I ended up ringing up our tour company and yelling at them about our crappy driver, the crappy van, the crappy airconditioning and the fact that we were supposed to be at our destination in half an hour and we hadn't even left Bangkok!! So, we spent about half an hour sitting in a mechanics workshop while the aircon was being fixed and then we tried to set off for our destination again... and got lost again! At one stage our driver even pulled over and handed his mobile phone to a policeman for directions!!! It was the biggest load of crap ever, and instead of it being a 3 hour drive it took us 4 and a half hours!! We changed vans at our destination and finally went off on our tour of the War Cemetary in Kanchanaburi, and then off to another elephant show (which was crap compared to the other one) and a train ride along the Death Railway which was pretty cool. We were then dropped at a resort for the night and we were the only ones there! Firstly, it wasn't the resort that was advertised on the site, secondly there was no where we could go for entertainment.... and at one stage we were going to entertain ourselves with the karaoke machine in the dining room but thought it was cruel to make the 7 staff hang around just for us! So we ended up just getting a few more bottles of beer and playing cards all night!
Next morning we headed off to Hellfire Pass early in the morning, and it was amazing. There was this eerie atmosphere, and it was just us there for about an hour. It was so strange to think that almost 70 years ago the prisoners of war were making this railway cutting under atrocious conditions. Apparently a life was lost for every sleeper on the Burma railway. The museum was fantastic, and some of the images I will remember for a very long time.
After that we headed to a place called the Tiger Temple. It's basically where these monks have taken in orphaned baby tigers and raised them. They are currently working on a project to make a tiger island so that the next generation of tiger cubs can be taught how to live in the wild and then released. It was so amazing to be so close to these big pussycats, and I can't wait to get back there again.
So after a pretty amazing 10 days I put my parents back on a plane, and now I'm attempting to get back to some form of normalcy!
