Days 4 & 5 - 5th & 6th May

We begin the 'River Kwai Trekking Tour and Tiger Temple' 2 days and 1 night.

Day 1 - Early pickup from our hotel and travelled to Kanchanaburi. On the way we stopped to visit the Cemetry of allied prisoner of the second world war then onto the Jeath museum followed by a visit to The Bridge Over The River Kwai. Then on to catch the train to see a long The Death Railway (the most dangerous curving bridge) This train had no windows or doors and as per I was last one to get on so was left standing by the open door way and the joins of the carriages which were bumping around all over the place, as you can imagine I felt that I was holding on for dear life!! A short video clip was taken but unfortunately, is too large to upload onto here. Glad to be off the train we were then taken to the 'Floating House', for a Thai lunch and was our accommodation for tonight (this was a hotel on a river boat) sounds nicer than it actually was! We expected this to be a rustic, cosy boat house but it was the complete opposite... more like a long shed, with very dodgy decor, and bad lighting well of what lighting there was! Torches came in handy. At dinner we were surrounded by hundreds of moths falling into our dinner plates, nice!! After lunch we then went to the Tiger Temple, a Buddhist Park Project where they have learned to tame tigers. This was the most amazing experience of my life... something I've always dreamt of being able to do... cuddle up to a tiger, I loved every second of it. Cheryl bless her decided against actually getting near the tigers so stood on the outside.

Day 2 - Woke up to a Thai breakfast and then got ready for a visit to the Elephant camp. This was pretty cool but again Cheryl decided once we were there that she really didn't want to do it so stayed behind took the photos and waited for me to come back. Next on the intinerary was Bamboo rafting but because of the bad weather we were taken back to the Floating House and just took a short trip up the river on the local speed boat and back for a Thai Dinner. The food I've eaten so far is so repetative.... either rice, noodles or if you're brave enough you can try the dodgy looking very greasy chicken, pork or beef sticks sold on the outdoor stools stalls around the streets! Everything we seem to be eating is fried something! not sure I can handle that for two months!

Our two days here are now over so we headed for the train station and now have a long 15 hour journey on the night train to Chiangmai to look forward too. We'd booked first class so at least we had our own room which we could lock up and therefore, didn't need to sleep with one eye open to look out for our bags!