Bridge over the River Kwai.

Brian at Bridge

Arrived at River Kwai after a 2 hour bus journey from Bangkok. We were taken to our hotel by a very friendly pick up truck driver who was out of his brains on Rice Wine, but no matter ... Our hotel is lovely, enormous glass sliding doors onto a lovely verandah with views over the pool and lush green garden ..

We dumped the bags and walked down the road to see the famous bridge ... It is very beautiful here.. and I am telling you 'it's a jungle out there' .. the bridge was very historic and I was very excited .. you can walk over it on the tracks and jump in to view points when a train is coming ... I of course had to lay across the track ... Brian threatened to tie me down ..... we are very happy here, had a lovely swim in pool and then went across the road to a restaurant for dinner.. life is good..
The next day we hired two bikes and headed out to the Thai and Burmese War Museum ... our bikes had no brakes but hey ... that's what your feet are for .. The museum was one of the best I have ever been in.

Brian reflective !!

Fish massage

Hellfire pass

The 415 km of rail track was built by allied prisoners, in 20 months... 12,000 British POW died building this track and overall 100,000 men died , they died from starvation, exhaustion and tropical disease, a horrible way to die, hard to understand , most soldiers I guess when going to war think they may get shot or injured but to die by pure brutality  is utter disregard for human life..... those pesky Japanese wanted a track built from Thailand to Burma as it was a long way round in a boat, they used Prisoners of war to build this track, in dense jungle , through mountains,on one  cup of rice a day and no days off for 3 months ... horrific..no machinery just a hammer . After this humbling tour we decided to cheer ourselves up in the War Cemetery, which was beautifully maintained and again humbling to see how old some of these soldiers were..  From here we rode along the river, it was so nice to be pedalling along under our own steam , we took a ferry over to the other side, well I say ferry, more like a metal raft, it pulls up you ride on .. it put puts across , no life jackets, no sides  to it no jetty, then you ride off... fab... rode along country lanes , in the jungle, children came running out of houses waving, cows grazing , men ploughing fields with oxen .. I was really happy.. really getting into the trip now, you soon forget about money and getting to places, you have to eat and stay somewhere, and try and do as many things you can whilst here, so that means hard cash ...
Back for a lovely swim, and logged on to find my dear friend Pip has had to have her dog put down, Maya the Doberman, she has come to stay with us many times, and was very sweet.. we knew she was poorly but to read it made us both very sad, and very very homesick, we are here having a great time, and peoples lives are going on back home, good and bad... I was wallowing in self pity and wished I could come home and give Pip a great big hug... it really made me think about the poor POW building this sodding train track and how homesick they must have been and not receiving any information about home for years, and wondering when or if they would ever get home .. only 7 men actually survived.....
So I dried my eyes.. said a prayer for Maya and everyone else and bucked myself up ... the next day we headed out to these amazing waterfalls, 7 tiers high , they were so beautiful, clear blue water, perfect cascades.. I decided to take the plunge and have a swim... OMG ... think cartoon character being chased by sharks ... as I entered these shimmering pools I was unaware that skin eating fish were waiting for their breakfast, no sooner had I submerged , they took their first nibble ( bite ) some of them were huge ,  the fatty boom boom of the scaly world .. It was the fastest swim I have ever done... Step aside Ian Thorpe ... I swam under and back from those falls  so fast Brian couldn 't focus my high speed zoom camera on me .... I was in and out in a trice... yelling and hollering ... the most stressful swim ever .. however it made for an amusing hour watching innocent swimmers enter piranha infested water and swim out then the frenzy started  these fish hang out in 'shoal gangs'.... a lot of splashing of water and shrieking ... a nice fish massage !!!!
After this free ex foliation, it was back on the bus and off to Hellfire Pass... this is where the POW had to cut through the mountain to make way for the track. there was a great museum there, and then a very peaceful, thought provoking walk along the old track through the pass... you can only imagine what the brave men had to endure... we then got onto a train which takes you on part of the track over a wooden viaduct which is still standing.. a fab day, overwhelmingly sad but so interesting , we headed back , me with my nice smooth feet ... and Brian very hot and jumped into our pool, for a game of who can swim the farthest under water...

Next day brought with it  more cycling ... I love it here, it is so lush and jungly.. I am waiting for Tarzan to make an appearance  in his hots pants any minute ( are they leopard or tiger skin ?) .. so we rode out to the Chungkai War Cemetery... you know Brian he just loves a cemetery... this one was again very peaceful , line after line of soldiers.. it is right on the river... the peacefulness was punctured by a Karaoke boat filled with Japanese tourists drunk and singing at the top of their voices.. having a great time. in a place where their ancestors had caused so much misery and death at their mercy, seemed a little distasteful .... from here I made Brian ride up a very steep hill to some caves I wanted to see....... he just raises his eyebrows now and says.. 'of course my darling ' this was one dilapidated temple, that has caves attached to it ... you pay a monk on the door and in you go , into these eerie caves... for those that know me .. I have a vivid imagination .. and can get a bit jumpy as my imagination gets the better of me ... this was one of those situations ... now then , bear with me ... in 1996 a British tourist was murdered in these caves by a drug addicted Thai Monk ... this can only make one assume even monks have their off day... god knows what she was doing whilst he was meditating to make him lose the plot.. well we climbed down and down  through tunnels and caves, slid through tight crevices following the arrows !!!! it was very very dark .. and I was freaking out at the thought of a saffron robe coming at me... we eventually came to the middle of the cave and a huge Buddha was waiting for us , god knows how he got there... well I had calmed down a bit ( still worrying about the lights going out ) and ventured off on my own ... HUGE mistake ,I went into another cave, and a bat flew at me , I screamed which set all his mates off, they were all flapping about my head and I thought I saw a flash of  saffron , in my haste to escape nearly brained myself on a stalactite ..Brian was just waiting patiently and casually asked ' al right ' !!!!' lets get the F@@K out of here .'.... we were the only ones there ... I wonder why ...
After this it was time for a leisurely ride back ... I mentioned maybe another temple the other side of the river .... so we got the metal raft over and rode to another temple... not just another temple ..It is the devils own work to find a floating nun these days.. but no matter .. I found one  the temple of  'the floating nun ' and I could barely wait.... We arrived ... it was a scruffy looking temple .. when we enquired about the nun we were pointed in the direction of a shack with a concrete pool ... we sat and waited for the miracle ( basically a nun floating around on her back meditating ) you can only imagine our disappointment when that darn pool was empty... not a nun in sight .... Brian was a picture .. " I have ridden 12 miles for this  " blah blah !!! he called her every nun under the sun, eventually a women came over to us and said the nun would 'get in ' for 200 baht about £5 ... Brian said he can watch wizen old women float on their backs down at Whitstable pool for free so she can 'get teh ' !!!!! if she wants to meditate , meditate away she is not getting her holy hand on  my baht !! so we rode home laughing and singing all the way ... a fab day .. really really funny..

The next day I went for my first run.. it was lovely , great to be pounding away again .. I ran all the way over the Bridge over the River Kwai.. not every day a jog takes you there ... Run 1 done .. back for a dip , pack, then onto the station for our overnight sleeper train to Malaysia .. I can't wait.. we really loved River Kwai . Came for 2 days stayed for 5 !! if people are coming this way , get straight out of Bangkok and get the bus here, it is fantastic...