Hello from Kanchanaburi north west of Bangkok. We arrived via a bus from the Kho San Road ( thank goodness to get out of there) and met Richard and Kath from York on the way. They are doing a month's tour of Thailand. Having teamed up with them to find a place to stay here we joined them at a tiger sanctuary run by Buddhist monks. Evan was a bit sceptical at first as the tigers live  in cages most of the time, but many of them have been saved from poachers and they are raising funds to build them a really nice reserve where they can roam relatively free. Making sure not to be wearing anything red, guests were lead one by one by the hand to meet the tigers and stroke them! I stroked one and kind of sat nervously near to the others, and I still have all my limbs - phew. Kath paid an extra donation to have a photo taken of her with one of the tigers' heads on her lap! She looks very sultry - and we'll upload some photos as soon as we can so you can see for yourselves! We also met some baby wild boar ( which we suspect were soon to become tiger food - we since found out that they are not - phew!) horses, and baby tiger cubs! Evan had an important role to play whilst ther rest of us were meeting tigers - he was looking after the bags. I'm sure he'll edit this to say otherwise....but at present he's busy with a Chang beer.

After such an amazing afternoon we took a wander through the strip in kanchanaburi to Apple's which is the hostel everyone recommends and had some delicious food - and then attempted to go to sleep although my body clock is still really disturbed.

Today we got up at 8am which was hard! We took a tour to the Erawen falls in the national park - 7 tiered, we were all very impressed with ourselves for getting to the 7th tier and celebrated on the way back down by swimming in tier 2 with some nippy fishes. We were on a tour with Amanda and Phil who we also met at the Tiger Sanctuary. They have been away for 4 months already and have 14 months to go which makes our trip feel like a week in the med! Thank you Amanda anyway for your top Chang Mai tips.

After lunch we spent the afternoon visiting the hell fire pass on the thailand-burmese railway and learning a lot about the lives of the POWs and local people who built the railway for the Japanese during the war. We rode with a lot of schoolchildren (on their way home from school) on the death railway and then saw the bridge over the River Kwai. I naively thought this would just be be a bridge, but of course it was a bridge and several hundred souvenir stalls. It was also another great example of how health and safety hasn't really travelled so much outside the UK and US, the risk of falling off the bridge or be pushed by another tourist very high......

The scenery from our bus today also really spectacular, but even more agog were we by how many small children and pets thais can fit on one moped......