Day 46 -

We slowly and begrudgingly get up at about 6:30am. Luckily we are getting picked up from right outside the hotel by a minibus which will then take us to Kanchanaburi.

We have an arranged tour for the first three days including today.

After about an hour in the minibus we stop at the WWII War Memorial. There were lots of headstones here showing names of different soldiers who had dies during the war.

Next we went to the War Memorial Museum where I started to get the first signs of an upset stomach. "Delayed Delhi Belly" Anthony and I called it and it only got worse from here...

The museum was located a short walking distance away from the Bridge Over The River Kwai so we walked to that and the views over the river were amazing. The place was crammed with tourists mainly Japanese tourists who seem to be everywhere! All of them have tripods, spare lenses and other gadgets for their cameras, and are forever taking pictures of anything. A seriously snap-happy race!

On the way back to the minibus we walked past a market which today had a man showing off his baby leopard! For a few quid you could hold and feed the leopard which I did and although it was very cute, I couldn't help feel sorry for it just tied up all day so that different people could hold and stroke it - the owner must make a packet!

We then headed to Death Railway where we went on a train over the rickety old rails and again we saw some extraordinary views. It is known as Death Railway because during the war when the Japanese invaded Burma through Thailand they needed to somehow get supplies and troops to Burma. By sea was not possible as the vessels would have been vulnerable to attack so the only other route would have to be overland therefore the Thai-Burma railways was constructed and the Japanese forced the labour onto thousands of British, Asian and other prisoners of war. Obviously thousands of the labourers died whilst making the railway hence the name given, Death Railway. See, I was listening! That's probably why the Japanese tourists were so intrigued by the bridge maybe?

Following on from this, we headed to our accommodation for the next 3 nights - bamboo huts right on the River Kwai. After lunch we headed to a waterfall (forgotten the name) not far from the huts. These waterfalls were amazing but unfortunately we had not brought any swimwear with us which actually turned out better for me because I seriously got the trots big time and had to leg it to the toilets which fortunately weren't too far away and luckily there wasn't a queue! I was in and out of that toilet for the next hour until our transportation came to take us back to the huts.

Once we arrived we had a couple of drinks and some tea (although I didn't have anything for fear it would not settle!). That night we carried on drinking and had an early night as tomorrow we have another early start so we can go and bathe some elephants!

Day 47 -

We are awoken by the landlord banging on our door at 7am making sure that we are up and ready to go to clean the elephants! We actually thought that last night he had said to us to be up at 7am for breakfast not to leave so we weren't ready at all!

Once up and dressed we then headed to another part of the River Kwai and waited for the elephants. We were waiting for a good few minutes when all of a sudden these huge elephants stride through the bushes to where we are all standing. It was a bit nerve racking at first because these animals are huge and of course they are not tied up to anything as they normally would be in a zoo. They are just being handled by a boy sitting bareback on each of them with a small stick!

Our fear was soon overcome with excitement as Anth and I had the largest elephant to clean known fittingly as Wide-Butt. We had to follow him into the river where he then crouched down for us so we could climb on board. The next 45 minutes or so was the best fun ever. Wide-Butt was dunking us under water, splashing us and trying to throw us off (obviously not nastily), it was wicked! We got some really good pictures and were soaked by the end of it but at least it woke us up!

As it was still only about 8am we headed back to the huts for breakfast which was cold egg on warm bread so I passed. Next stop was the Ewruwan Waterfalls. This took about 1 hour by car to get there. These waterfalls were in tiers, seven altogether. Anth and I didn't realise this at the time and only got to tier TWO thinking that this was the top ha! We still had loads of fun though jumping off the rocks into the water and getting a fresh fish massage!

After about 2 hours at the waterfalls we headed to see some more elephants - this time we were to go on an elephant trek. Nowhere near as fun as bathing them but the trek was ok.

Back at the huts we had tea and met a few other backpackers. We all had a few drinks and when Anth and I eventually went to bed, we found a frog in our bathroom! Anth's even more of a girl than me when it comes to things like that so instead of shewing it out we just left it, closed the door and hoped it wouldn't come near us in the night!

Day 48 -

Another early start! 7:30am today! When Anth goes to have a shower as he pulls the towel off the rail out jumps the frog from last night scaring the crap out of us ha!

This morning we have bamboo rafting to do which turned out to be ace fun. A long boat took us up the river for about half an hour and then we all transferred onto a bamboo raft which would take us back down to our huts. We all had life jackets on so Anth and I jumped in the river and just let the current take us back down. It was really relaxing and enjoyable!

Our next stop of the day was Hellfire Pass. This is all to do with the Thai-Burma railway again. This is where the labourers dug through cliffs using just chisels and hammers so that the railway tracks could pass through. We spent about an hour here and went on an extra long walk so we could see the track from a bird's eye view. On the way back to the minibus a snake slithered right pass me!

After lunch we headed to Tiger Temple. This was no way as fun as the elephants yesterday even though we got to stroke numerous tigers. It's quite cruel here at the temple as all the tigers are tied up and you can tell they are suffering from dementia because all they do is walk around in circles over and over again.

The pictures we got were good though and it was bizarre seeing the monks walking around with tigers on leads as if they were dogs!

This was our last night at the floating huts tonight and whilst I slept, Anth taught the local Thai lads how to player Killer on the pool table. The irony here is that we were on a floating raft so I don't think the game could have been fair, every time the raft rocked, the balls moved!

Day 49 -

We leave the bamboo raft today and head to Kanchanaburi town for 5 nights. Apart from this move there is nothing else to report today apart from we were given the worse available bungalow ever at our new accommodation so we ask to move and end up with a rather sweet one right by the river.

Day 50/51/52/53 -

For some reason Anth and I both got our "can't be bothered to do anything" heads on and that is exactly what we did for the next few days, nothing! Well nothing that interesting anyway. Therefore I have meshed these four days together to give a quick outline of what our four days of nothing interesting was: -

1)We totally loss of time - we didn't know what date it was, what day it was and thought we might look stupid if we asked someone what the day was so we just guessed it.

2)We decided that we were going to work in Australia so we got our Working Visa sorted out!!

3)We walked into the main shopping area which took about an hour to get something to eat. On the way back my Delhi Belly returned with a vengeance. I have never been so scared before in my life. Not only did I have white trousers on but we were walking up the side of a motorway with no shops or anything in sight and no shrubbery for me to hide behind. Anyone who had seen us must have thought I was in labour as I was holding my belly and running whilst Anth was telling me to breathe, breathe, BREATHE! Anth ran on ahead and found a petrol station with a toilet so I was saved. That was too close......

4)One day (don't ask which) we did go and do something; we went on a 2 hour bus journey to visit some hot springs in the forest. This was really nice. There were 3 Turkish style baths in amongst the trees which went from warm to hot. Along side the baths is the natural river which is freezing so the idea is to go in out hot of the river to the baths and back again as a cleansing and relaxation process. It really worked too. We felt so clean and chilled out when we'd finished we just went back to our bungalow and did nothing again!

5)We nearly got attacked (well not nearly but it was bloody scary) by 3 dogs when walking home in the dark. Stray dogs seem to be everywhere here. Anthony said that if you walk around with hunched up shoulders dogs will not attack you so for the remainder of our time here we walked around like Quasimodo...

6)One of the days we went to a bar and a cockney called Frank owned it. We were laughing our heads off at everything in the bar as it seemed that Frank had tried to "Cocknify" everything up. The cocktails that Frank made were called things like "The Mike Ried" or "The Bob Monkhouse" and he had various sayings over walls. It was funny because I doubt anybody ever comes into the bar, it is really hidden and a dump I suppose, we only accidentally stumbled over it but Frank had put so much effort into it even though it was so tacky! What really made us laugh though was when we were leaving the bar we realised that Frank didn't just have a pub to run he also had another business selling carrots! Frank gained customer recognition by advertising his carrot business on his Ford Escort. His company slogan is a real winner - "Frank's Carrots - No b******s" Hahaha!!!

We worked out it is 16 November 2009 when we leave Kanchanaburi and head back to Bangkok. From there we head to Ko Chang...