Start with a place called Kanchanburi, throw in the river Kwai and add a bunch of TIGERS and see what an interesting day you get!

A tale in which our young heroes... well go and explore through the country side, visit the mountains, see some temples, walk across the river Kwai, chase some waterfalls, oh and spend the afternoon petting tigers...

Hmmm... what could those stripes mean?A view of the bridge over the river Kwai.

Read the rest...
Our final port of call in Thailand was a small city west of Bangkok called Kanchanaburi. The city itself is situated along a peaceful river and has a rather low key feel to it, like if you wanted to go and just do nothing next to the river Kwai... this would be the kind of place you'd come. As a side not the river Kwai has a fascinating history, forced labor, massive deaths, etc... all to build a bridge that was destroyed shortly after its completion. For history buffs its fascinating I'm sure, I kind of just thought it was pretty while also attempting to acknowledge the hundreds of people who died here. Anyway, so we got into Kanchanaburi and decided to rent a moto (a moto is really just a moped but that's what they call it here and I like it, mostly because it sounds much less lame that way), which is something that I've been wanting to do for months now.

Me as we walked across the bride. Like I said, kind of interesting but mostly just "pretty."

Our burley moto and a cliff face in the background. (if you look closely I have the same expression in this picture as the one above it...weird)

A temple with a view.

Now this city doesn't have a lot going for it but it is a place many folks find themselves when they grow tired of Bangkok... or because they've heard of the the river Kwai. But its located in the mountains that separate Thailand and Burma, beautiful stuff that we felt obligated to explore (hence the motor bike and my excitement). Along the way there were some great temples, and nice views of karsts but the main reason we came here is because we had heard about a place called the Tiger Temple.

Now, I'm not one of those people that had tiger T-shirts as a kid, or tiger toys, or really much of tiger anything (aside from Tony the Tiger) so the idea of seeing more tigers was interesting but not overly appealing and then I heard a an interesting thing about this temple, you get to pet tigers. I'm still not sure why I found the idea of petting something that God designed to kill me in a bite appealing but it did and ever since I heard about this place I wanted to go... almost in a 7 year old mind set, "I get to pet tigers! Hehe!!"

Us "walking" with the tiger. We were really just standing when the picture was taken as he had just peed.

A tiger cub. This little guy is only about 20 days old. Oddly enough the folks who work with and are the primary handlers of the tigers are all monks, hence the temple part of tiger temple.

So we boarded our newly rented moto(which I'm sure goes faster than your average moped and is much more manly as well) and spent some time driving around the mountains
on our way to the temple. After some seeing the mountains, some great karsts, and an ideally placed monestary or two we arrived at the temple. After that all we had to do was pay, wait while trying to ignore the other tourists there and we finally were able to both walk with a tiger (or really touch it while it walked all the while thinking, "Don't eat me, don't eat me) and pet the tigers as they laid around in the afternoon. It was a very cool experience, though at times it felt a little canned and blown up for tourist hype. Regardless of the unnecessary pomp and circumstance, I can say I've touched a tiger and well.... it felt like touching a big cat. But who am I to complain they are cats after all right?

They sleep alot, although even when it was asleep I thought of how little work it would have to do in order to eat me.

After that we went spent the rest of the day hunting down a waterfall (and found it... despite having to wait out a rainstorm) before finally deciding to return to our guest house for the evening. It wasn't the most amazing day, there were no new deep revelations about life but it was fun to spend a day driving a moto (not a moped) around, seeing the mountains, walking across the river Kwai, chasing waterfalls, and touching tigers.

A picture of the waterfall.

A picture of local boys at the waterfall. They took great joy in attempting to climb it (which never worked) and seeing what small holes they could stick their head into... ahh to be 13 again).

The view of the river Kwai from our guest house.

Back to Bangkok (and all that comes with it)

Well, this post is a little untimely, umm, I mean, late. We are currently making our way around Myanmar (Burma) and Bangkok seems like ages ago, but due to various reasons including changing countries and painfully slow internet speeds, we are just getting to this now.
I thought these guards at the royal palace were kinda funny...

Bangkok was a transition time for us- we spent our days obtaining a Myanmar visa, changing USD travelers cheques to baht to USD (a silly way of doing it), concluding what we considered the "southern peninsular" leg of our trip and preparing for the next phase: Myanmar. We did manage to squeeze in a little time to play tourist, though. And what a place to play tourist- we got a little frustrated being back in Tourist Tax land... but I will leave that discussion for the end of this post!

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We arrived in Bangkok via airplane from Singapore. Again, we braved the public bus system and made our way to the Kao San Road area- of which Josh already posted- for a cheap guest house. Along with heading to Kanchanaburi (forthcoming post), we spent a day at the impressive National Palace and Wat Phra Kaew. We also headed to Wat Po, which holds the largest reclining Buddha in Thailand, and to Wat Trimitr, where a 10 ft solid gold buddha happily resides. We walked around the city quite a bit, discovering little pockets of activity: a few streets full of intricate temple-bound flower arrangements/arrangers and an area where they sell everything buddhist- huge yellow candles, gold buddhas, silver bowls, etc. Our favorite was the "electronics" street where people sold speakers, stereos, motherboards, amps, DVD players, little bits of electronic-y looking things and circuit-y bits, all on tables in the street.

This time we ended up on a few ordinary buses- instead of AC, a few fans hang from the ceiling! We actually liked the river ferry best of all- so much quicker than braving the appalling Bangkok traffic.
At the royal palace- a pretty place.

After a few days back in Thailand, we were both getting a bit tired of the country. While we enjoyed it overall (especially Koh Tao), the "Land of Smiles" was honestly not that smiley to us. We met some friendly people, yes, but we got tired of being treated "differently." I've rarely been the recipient of discrimination, and this is certainly small scale, but we were consistently experiencing a double standard when it came to money. (Writing from Myanmar gives me a slightly different perspective, but here the inconsistency is primarily government-induced or petrol-related.) We experienced this some in Cambodia and Vietnam, and some travelers would argue that Vietnam is the worst in SE Asia, but we've seen it the most in Thailand by far.

The morning we went to Kanchanaburi, our boat across the river was 26 baht total, but somehow our medium-size bill (we had no small change) turned it into 36. We didn't have time to argue as we'd reached our dock. Then at the train station, a sign was posted in English saying the charge for foreigners on this rail line has been raised to 100 baht, almost twice the amount we were expecting. After buying our tickets, we walked across the street to find something for breakfast. When I asked one woman how much her tiny skewers of pork were, I was expecting 5 baht or maybe 10 because we were at the train station. "Thirteen," she told me. I noticed a sign on the stand. It was in Thai, but it clearly listed two items, the same number of items she had for sale, and two prices: 10 and 20. When Josh pointed at this, she just smiled, faintly apologetic in that "I'm not really sorry" way, and shook her head at us. The admission to the National Palace was up from last year from an already pricey fee and the price of Wat Pho, where the big reclining Buddha rests, more than doubled from 2006. Thai can enter these temples for free.

That big reclining buddha at Wat Po...
... and the solid gold one at Wat Trimitr.

That being said, these prices I am listing are very low, much lower than they would be in my country (usually, not always), and I acknowledge that. So I don't know why exactly it irritates me quite so much. Certainly since Malaysia, we'de experienced a much lower quality for higher prices and this was even more true now that we were back in Thailand, but I think it's the fact that I can do nothing about it. I've heard Asians from other countries say that they can sometimes get by with the Thai prices if they don't have to say much. That makes it sound like it borders on racism to me.

To some degree, I'm fine with paying more as I have more earning potential than most locals, and I like knowing that national treasures are cheap or free for those who live there, but it does catch me off guard. I don't think I've ever seen a separate foreigner price posted at a national park or museum in the USA. Thailand, too, seems inundated with tourists, so higher prices could help limit the amount and type of visitors. However, it certainly doesn't seem to exist for that reason. A man we met in Singapore proudly said that all museums, temples, etc. are the same price for foreigner and national alike, knowing what we'd experienced in other SE Asian countries.

I think part of it, too, is that we fairly carefully budgeted a certain amount for each country based on estimates and printed materials of previous prices. Then after arrival, we discovered that costs were consistently more expensive in certain countries, even if the product was exactly the same as it was before. And this appears to have little to do with inflation or increased petrol costs, but simply a "good" business mind realizing they've got a good thing going and that there's a whole people group just waiting to be exploited. We were not paying more for better goods or services. We were simply not Thai, so we were paying more.

PS:

We can't have a Thailand post without a photo of Josh and street meat! (Although he claims street squid doesn't win the "best of" award...)

Kao San Road

There is no good way to really describe Kao San Road. It is the first stop of many in southeast Asia (as most everyone starts in Bangkok and in Bangkok it has the most affordable housing) but like many entry points it feels unlike the rest of the locale. Consequently Kao San Road has the feel of a a white trash Las Vegas, populated by 19 year olds out to piss off their parents and find themselves in the world.

Thank goodness we won't have to see this place anymore.... :)

P.S.

Megan: Josh that last line is unfair.

Josh: What the age should be higher?

Megan: Yes.

Josh: Ok, say what then... maybe 20?

Megan: That sounds better.

Off to the Hinterlands!

For the next stage of our journey we are off to Myanmar (Burma), a country that is a big mystery to us. We hear it refered to as a "time warp to the 50's in Asia" and so we are rather excited about it. However, phrases like "time warp to the 50's" makes us dubious about internet and such. That being said, we have a series of posts that will be going up over the next few days and hopefully after that we will be able to keep you up to date. If we don't post in that time know we will as soon as we get to a computer. Hope all is well and thanks for reading. (sorry, that last line just felt necessary.)

Happy 4th of July

You should all go celebrate... or something. There is nothing like being away from home that makes you miss it.

See some photos of our time feeling as American as we could here... A&W Rootbeer!!

When we left the All American A&W it was 6:00, the time the Thais daily play their national anthem (and they all stand at attention). This event felt rather surreal and left both of us with "God Bless America" in our heads. Why that song... I don't really know.

Bangkok...waiting for a visa

Just a brief update, we are presently in Bangkok trying to secure ourselves a Myanmar visa... even though we got up at 5:30 this morning, it'll be a few days! At least we were the first in line... until the Thai travel agents showed up.