Hello everybody,

This is the official journal to 'Kanchanburi' as the one we did on the 25th was just a quick Christmas message.

This place is really beautiful. Our hotel is a little more than what we'd normally pay but it was during Christmas so we thought what the hell as it came with a pool and had all the comforts of a good 3 star hotel. We are a 5 minute walk from the main strip where all the cafe's, restaurants and bars are. It's the main 'backpackers' section in Kanchanaburi and its a really nice atmosphere.

As you've probably seen by the photo's we hired a couple of scooters. They were so much fun and made getting around a lot easier. It only cost just over a fiver for the both of us to have a bike each all day. How goods that? Oh, the best bit was it cost 90Baht to fill each of them up, about 1 pound and 30 pence. Now Gemma is thinking about getting one when she gets back to the UK because she loved hers so much :o)

We went to the 'Death Railway' museum. This is what Kanchanaburi is famous for. The bridge over the River Kwai is also known as the 'Death Railway Bridge'. In WWII the bridge was built along with 100's of kilometres of track to join Myanmar (the country next to Thailand) and Thailand together. This was an important section to allow supplies to get through to the troops during the war. The reason for the name 'Death Railway' is because the whole thing was built by prisoners of war 'POW". In which most of them died building it including a lot of British soldiers. The Japanese were in charge of this whole operation and were real slave drivers. Obviously we did the museum first so later on in the day when we walked across the bridge, it had a lot more meaning to it. The museum was one of the smallest we've ever been too but at the same time, the most interesting. We weren't allowed to take any photos inside which was a shame. However, it was a real eye opener and certainly made you think of what these people had to go through day after day after day. So as you can imagine when we rode up to the bridge and walked across it, it was quite breath taking and we walked the whole length in silence. After that we rode back down towards the cemetery and just walked among the many remembrance plaques. We couldn't get over how many of them were British and had died at such a young age. We think the youngest was just 17. It was quite a sad day but really interesting and made you realise how lucky we are now. It was certainly the strangest Boxing Day ever!

The highlight of our visit to Kanchanaburi was the 'Erawan Waterfalls' (see above photo). It was 70km out of town and we decided to get the bus to it. On the walk down to the bus station we figured out it would only cost an extra 4 quid for the both of us if we hired out the bikes again. So we did from which Gemma got very excited, ahh! We think the woman found it funny when we went back the next day to hire the same bikes again. It took us 2 hours up there with a break and just over an hour and a half back without. Forgot to mention that in Thailand they drive on the same side of the road as us, which made it a little easier. Once we got to the waterfalls (knackered from the long ride) we parked up and started the long 3km walk up along all the falls. There were 7 tiers in total. Thank god most of it was under shade. Beautiful scenery was to be had in any direction you looked. It was absolutely stunning. Especially with monkeys swinging in the trees above you as you walked. I tried my hardest to get a photo of them but they're really fast! Gemma went for a swim to cool off while Darren got a few more photos. You have to be strict with taking pictures when your traveling for 6 months which I've found so hard here. At the end of the day we headed back to Kanchanaburi, had a long shower and went out for a really nice Thai meal. Gemma ordered a main meal and Darren ordered lots of appetizers so we could try a few things. We can certainly say this, Thai food is so much nicer than Chinese food. There's also more variety which is cool and we found the service tip top :o)

Doesn't sound like we did a lot in Kanchanaburi. But that’s because we just chilled out again and took each day slowly. This is now our second place in Thailand and we're really loving it. With China we couldn't wait to leave. With here we don't want to leave. So we're buying a house just outside Kanchanaburi and we've both got jobs lined up..... Only joking :o)

A big thank you for all your Christmas messages and emails. That was a hard day for us as we missed home a lot. It will never feel like Christmas in a hot country. Might even go as far to say we miss the traditional wet 'n' windy Christmas at home. Well it never bloody snows does it? Oh and we never did find a place that served Christmas dinner. We knew it'll be hard in a 95% Muslim country. But we did have good old English pie and chips instead.

We're off to somewhere tomorrow. Still haven't decided yet but that’s part of the fun. We'll speak to you all very soon.

Lots of love Darren and Gemma xxx xxx