We had a 6am start today as the mini bus was leaving at 7am, it arrived 20mins later and then we had to hangaround for a bit but that didnt really matter as the driver then drove at 100 miles an hour so we made it for 9 anyway! We were herded off the mini bus and told to go look at the graves in the cemetery for 20mins and not ot make a sound, 'do not talk', this wasnt a problem as we had no idea what we were even supposed to be looking at so just wandered and after 10 mins heard the guide shouting her head off for us to come back to the bus, so much for being quite! Back on the bus, us and 4 Korean's who hadn't a word of english (fun!) we went to see the Bridge over the River Kwai and took a 1.5hr train trip along the Death Railway Bridge (Bridge over the River Kwai) and the wooden bridge that was built by the prisoners of war! Our guide was pretty rubbish, I think her face might have cracked if she smiled but thats what you get for £20.

Luckily we sat beside an Australian lady who had a personal thai guide who was explaining everything she could see to the Australian lady so naturally we earwigged to the highest order - this worked in our favour as we struck up conversation with the Aussie lady and soon we were eating mango and chilli and bamboo from a banana leaf that was being sold on the train and was something the thai guide insisted the Aussie tried, naturally we did too!

We headed back for some lunch after this, chicken broth soup and a mix of 4 thai dishes between us and the 4 Koreans then off to the waterfalls to chill out and have a swim! In theory this sounded great but it was full of locals who were more facinated by our mega pale skin and decided to take sly photos while giggling behind the lens - needless to say this detered me from donning my bikini bod but matt braved a dip as the only whitey (with his t-shirt on :))

After this we were bundled into the mini bus again to see where we would be sleeping that night, a shack on the river! lets just say it was our first real night of truely slumming it and like the temples the photos do no dicpict the state of the place, but hey at least we had a cockroach and a lizard to keep us company. We quickly realised why it was such a cheap tour :) The staff were really friendly though, the food was nice and the scenery beautiful!

We shared dinner with a couple of Geordies (Gill and Tony), an American girl (Eulalia) and a dutch girl (Marike), it was nice to have a good chat, swap stories and be free from the sign language with the Koreans.

After a sweaty broken nights sleep in our beancan we set off for some bamboo rafting, the perfect relaxing start to the day until Matt was pressured into jumping into the same river we deposited in that very morning :) He enjoyed it all the same even when the guide made him wear his lifevest as a massive nappy!

Off the raft on to the mini-bus on a surprise journey (no-one told us what was next on the agenda) that brought us to the Hellfire WW2 memorial museum, at least we found out what the graveyard was for the previous day. We were able to walk a stretch of the railway the WW2 POW's from Europe, Australia etc. were forced to build including the Bridge over The River Kwai. Best views by far only 40KM from the Burmese border over forest and mountains.

Back on the surprise bus journey, to end up at the elephant riding. We could pay extra to bath them but plan to see more in Chiang Mai so just took the ride. When we got off, we tipped the mahout for bringing us around, the elephant took the note in his trunk and gave it to the mahout, everyone cheered but Matt! He was in a blind panic behind everyone trying to salvage the belongings of our bag that a macaque monkey had tried to rip off him, once Matt had grabbed the bag, the monkey retaliated by kicking him in his leg! nobody saw this however, so its Matt's word against the monkeys.

Lunch and then we went to see the tigers -gggrrrr!! This was in a temple so out came my trusty pantaloons once again. We got taken around several (very sleepy) tigers and got our pictures taken with them. This wasn't the best experience of getting close to tigers for the first time. They were chained down and seemed drugged up, which is really sad. We wandered around the grounds for a bit and saw the FATTEST bear in the world, honestly it was just blubber, we have a video to put up but it had hardly any hair on its fat ass from sitting down constantly. Then we saw a turtle in the water where the water buffalo were, we poked it to see if it a) wasn't a massive water buffalo turd or b) if it was alive - it was alive and after a couple of minutes staring at it, it popped its head up - success!!

Home time, three hours back to Bangkok, collected our bags and checked into a different hotel, on land this time and out to get some food. 2mains, 2 large chang, water and sprite £3.00, cant go wrong.

So today we are chilling and getting ready to move on from here, booked into another hotel for 2 nights and heading to Chiang Mai Monday afternoon (if we can escape before more floods hit!)

Tomorrow we're off to one of the biggest markets in the world to try and barter Sinead a new wardrobe!

Hope you're all still awake, let you know how we get on!

S&M