Wednesday 3rd October

Another train, this time slightly west to Kanchanaburi (which I'll never be able to spell, and Dave will only be able to pronounce once we've been there!). We've got a couple of days here before heading back to Bangkok, but there's plenty to keep us busy while we're here.

There were loads of tours to choose from, but we decided to stick to our own schedule and use local transport as we're finding that it's quieter and more friendly than being shoved onto an "air conditioned" mini bus with loads of other travellers.

Our first stop was a walk to the graves of the British and Australian POW's who had died in the making of the Burma railway; there were hundreds of them in neat rows in perfectly manicured lawns - reading the inscriptions on the headstones was heart-rending, especially as most of them were so young and died for no reason, a lot of them just because of a lack of vitamins as we found out later in the excellent museum.

After the museum, we got a cycle rickshaw to the bridge over the River Kwai. This was less than a kilometre away, and the rickshaw was being pedalled by an athletic looking man - but he was 72 years old, and it was a very hot day - we were tempted to call an ambulance by the time we arrived, although he seemed to recover quickly enough with a bit of water and shade, and shook our hands and grinned at us very determinedly before he left. We're not sure whether retirement was an option, but we hope he considers at least a career change soon!

The bridge itself wasn't visually impressive, but interesting nonetheless, especially after everything we learned at the museum - although neither of us have seen the film of the same name (it's on the list for when we get back).

That afternoon, we went to visit a tiger temple, where we got to stroke and play with the tigers, and nearly got stampeded by a troupe of hungry boars, cows, chickens, goats and horses when the monks called feeding time - It's amazing how close we've been allowed to get to animals here, and in all of our experiences in Asia so far.

The following morning, we got up early to catch a two-hour bus to the Arawan waterfalls, and managed to climb up to the 5th tier of seven before we ran out of time and had to jog back down again to catch the bus back. The falls had beautiful clear pools with loads of fish in, and although we didn't have time to swim, plenty of others were.

We had the bus pretty much to ourselves, and headed back to Kanchanaburi for a quick lunch, then another bus back to Bangkok to collect our visas, fingers crossed, at 6pm...