We booked a sketchy adventure trip to the River Kwai region around Kanchanaburi and were left in the dark as to all details of the trip until we got there. Even then the plans were subject to change. All we knew was we were to be picked up from our Bangkok hotel and transported to Kanchanaburi for a series of activities.

Firstly there was the Bangkok marathon outside our hotel on the morning of the pick up and so the bus was very late. We had started to feel that it wasn't coming at all, but the hotel staff made some calls to reassure us we had not been forgotten. The bus turned up (eventually) and we were on our way. We had thought that we had booked onto the train to Kanchanaburi, but it turned out to be a kamikaze minibus! We only had a short while in Kanchanaburi because of the delay and managed to potter around the bridge amongst throngs of other tourists. It was a relief then to get out of there and on to Nam Tok, some 60km further up the Kwai valley to what is now the end of the death railway. The rest of the line to Burma was ripped up after the war. We had a ride on part of the railway, over some wooden tressle bridges and got off for a tour of the Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum. This was very moving as it told the story of the building of the railway and the hardships of the POW's involved. This part of the trip culminated in a trek along some of the most difficult sections of line to be constructed, including Hellfire Pass itself.

After the sweaty trek we were transported to the riverside in the remote Nam Tok area and dined on a river raft. We were then sped up the river on a longtail boat to our accomodation.

The place was called Kitti Raft and was just that. A series of rafts lashed together and moored on the fast flowing river. There was a bar area fortunately, and so we whiled away the wee hours drinking (far too much) Chang beer, and chatting with a couple of young Danes called Andreas and Grasmus and a Scot named Cameron. We played the Danish version of s***head, (a card game) because Cam couldn't decide on the proper rules for the scottish version.

Now for the interesting part, sleeping on the raft. The room was a kind of rattan walled affair with a bed as hard as the floor! The bathroom was just a metal tray on the floor with a hole in that you could see the river through. The toilet you had to flush with a bowl of water and the shower was cold (I am convinced it was just river water). We had two nights to look forward to!

In the middle of the night, in the pitch black we were woken by an uncomfortably loud scurrying noise. This was followed by a couple of hours of a knawing, chewing sound. We tried to locate the culpret with the torch, but the sound always stopped the instant you shone the light, and there seemed to be nothing to see. Never the less the sound was disturbingly close by. When the dawn finally broke and after a fitful sleep we saw that there was an two inch hole not two feet from where Sharons head had been. A rat had clearly been chewing through the wall during the night. When we looked round further, we saw that there were many of these holes that had been fixed up with gaffer tape previously. The rat had eaten the wall and the tape together, and would come back for more that night. We asked to be moved to the neighbouring room where there was a more comfortable bed and seemed to be no holes in the walls.

After breakfast in the jungle on the bank above the raft house (forever known to us now as the Kitti Rat Raft) we floated down the river for an hour on bamboo rafts. This was more fun and safer than it sounds, gently drifting downstream with the current. Some more adventurous guests swam alongside the rafts as we went, but after horror stories from Al Eastwood about the danger of leeches and our own experiences of the rats the night before, we declined to jump in. When we arrived at the dinner raft we walked gingerly across a rickety wooden bridge that wouldn't have looked out of place in an Indiana Jones film.

We were then whisked away to the Elephant camp in the jungle where we rode a 45 year old female elephant. The weather was a little cooler than the previous day and awarded us with a little shower of rain but it didn't bother us as it was still quite warm and didn't last long. The other people in our party were Neil and Tip from the USA but of Thai origin with their daughter Jill and her friend Heather on a cultural vacation. Also Cameron joined us and there was another couple from the Czech republic called Jarek and Petra. We had a 45 min jaunt through part of the jungle and after were able to feed one of the elephants bananas as fast as we could keep them coming.

We then headed for the tiger temple which we weren't entirely looking forward to but it was included in our package. We had heard that some of the larger tigers had been drugged in order for tourists to have their pictures taken alongside them. In reality the tigers seemed quite happy but the alternative for these orphaned tigers would be death as poachers kill the parents and leave the cubs to fend for themselves. Monks started the park taking in 1 tiger cub but has since grown into an animal rescue centre which seems to be growing quite rapidly. Amonst the tigers were also wild boars, Peacocks, water buffalo and deer.

Back to the dinner raft for our thai evening meal then a short trip back on the longtail boat to "Kitti Rat Raft" . The only ones going back for a second night were Jarek and Petra, who also moved rooms due to a rat night. Our new room had a strange odour which we can now place as rat pee. We went to the bar area on the raft and joined the thai guy who looked after the raft in watching "Total Recall" entirely in thai but no one else joined us. We returned to our room to find the rat had been enjoying an alternative meal of strawberry chewits we had absent mindedly left on the bed. We left him chewits, he left us little turds! We realised that they must have been coming into the room through the hole in the shower room floor so we covered it with the toilet flushing bucket and went to bed.

An early start the next morning as we were headed to Erawan falls where we were to take a 5km trek through the national park to view all 7 tiers of the beautiful blue waterfalls. We saw monkeys along the way and some strange spiders. The trek was a hard slog with it being muddy and steep in places and were rewarded with a refreshing dip at the top tier where the water thundered over the largest of the falls. The water pressure battered you down if stood directly underneath it where we both tried the reputed massaging effects. Stephen could barely keep his footing and Sharons bikini bottoms were nearly blasted off! There were quite large fish in the pools that nibbled your legs and feet if you stood too long in one spot. We didn't leave ourselves enough time to make it back down to the bus and consequently had to hurry through the difficult jungle paths. Sharon managed to fall twice, once at the edge of one of the pools and again on a steep muddy section of path. The lesson learned was not to jungle trek in flip flops!

There only remained one final visit to the dinner raft before heading back to Bangkok for a well earned night at a Best Western hotel, (luxury). Amazingly back in Bangkok, we went to our favourite restaurant in Bangkok and who should walk in but Neil, Tip and the girls with Jarek and Petra. With the Kitti Rat Raft friends reunited we enjoyed a meal and beers. Exchanging details, we feel we've made some new friends and will have new places to stay if we should be in either Riverdale, California or Moravia in the Czech Rep.