The Global Guy

While waiting for my Vietnam and Cambodian visas to come thru, I decided to take a quick trip to the town of Kanchanburi to see the famous bridge over the river Kwai that inspired the movie of the same name. Of course it’s not the actual bridge of the movie…first, the movie was shot in Sri Lanka, and second, the original one was destroyed during the course of WWII. Still, it was something to do to kill a few days. I booked the trip thru one of the Khao San Road guest houses, and got exactly what I paid for.

The first day we were picked up from our guest houses at about 7:00 am and drove for three hours or so. We stopped at an allied war cemetery to pay our respects to the dead who fought in this area during WWII. I was surprised to see how well it had been kept up by the locals. It was just as well manicured as Arlington in Washington DC. After the cemetery we boarded bamboo rafts for a leisurely cruise down the river to see the bridge from underneath. After lunch (cheap pad Thai) we went on a cheesy elephant ride, and then got dropped off at a local waterfall to go swimming for an hour or so. Before heading to our guest house for the evening we stopped by "Tiger Cave" which was a dead cave filled with Buddhist relics and statues. The guest house was actually the highlight of the evening…we had our choice of staying in tree houses, or floating rooms on barges. It was a really nice area and they had kayaks, and a flying fox for us to play on. The food was pretty decent, and the cheap beer made it easy to get to know everyone else staying there.

The 2nd day was a great day of hiking and swimming in and around the Erawan waterfall. This is one of the most spectacular waterfalls I’ve seen on this trip so far. All together it’s made up of 7 tiers, with a trail going up beside them to the top. A guy on the trip and I decided that it would be more fun if we actually climbed up the waterfalls instead of using the trail, so we climbed in and started heading up. It was a blast, and we even got used to the cold water after a few minutes…we never did get used to the fish that kept nibbling at any bit of exposed skin though.

Our final day was dedicated to seeing the remnants of the old death railway cutouts that the allied POWs had to carve out. We took the local train over the Kwai river bridge to Kanchanburi where we boarded the bus to head back to Bangkok. I had dinner with Megan that night, and we figured we’d run into each other again in Cambodia in a day or so.

After hanging out on the islands, I figured it was time to finally move to Bangkok itself. I arrived on the overnight train, and found a local bus to take me to Khao San road. This is the central location for every dirty backpacker in all of SE Asia. It’s a huge street crowded with cheap guest houses, restaurants with big screen TVs, cheap beer, and decent food. You can get any kind of counterfeit merchandise you could ever want here, from student IDs to Kathmandu backpacks. If you’re going to run into someone you know, this is the place for it to happen. Out of the dozen or so nights I stayed here at various times during this trip, there were only three days where I didn’t find a familiar face. The first time it happened was when I ran into Meg, who I’d first met in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, and then again in Penang. This time I found her when we both happened to be browsing the same rack of fake T-shirts. Amazing! Anyway, we spend a couple of days hanging out, seeing the various temples of Bangkok, checking out a Mexican film festival, and catching a Thai boxing match.

Bangkok is a city full of temples. You could dedicate an entire holiday to doing nothing but seeing all of them, and still not finish. We concentrated on three of the most famous, including Wat Po, Wat Arun, and Wat Phra Rattanasatsadaram. Wat Po is famous for being the oldest Wat (temple) in Bangkok. It’s known for it’s huge reclining statue of the Buddha, and for it’s massage school. Wat Arun is one of the most majestic looking Wats, situated on the banks of the Chao Phraya river. It’s got a huge stupa that is most spectacular at sunset when the setting sun sinks slowly behind it. The best view is either from a boat on the river, or from a dock directly across from it on the other shore. Wat Phra Rattansatsadaram (Wat Phra) is located on the grounds of the King of Thailand’s residence. It’s got a jade Buddha statue inside that the King himself changes the clothes on three times a year. It’s a relatively expensive Wat to tour, but really can’t be missed.

I’ve moved on to the island of Ko Samui. This is a much more touristic island than Phi Phi, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There is so much to do here that I think you could spend two or three weeks seeing everything! I’m staying at a beach on the northern part of the island, farther from all the tourist stuff. It means that I have to rent a motorcycle to get around, so I’m having to quickly learn how to drive one properly! I’ve taken advantage of a lot of the stuff the island has to offer…I’ve gone diving again, ridden an elephant, seen pot growing in the wild, relaxed on the beach, gone swimming, and then done it all over again!

Just taking a day to tour the island by bike was one of my favorite things to do. The island is roughly circular shaped, and it takes about 5 hours to drive all the way around at a relaxed pace. I found out later how important sunblock is here! Some of the things I checked out you can see below…the two rocks are Hin Ta and Hin Yai..known as grandfather and grandmother rock. Of course these have become two of the most popular attractions on the islands. Another strange sight is at Wat Khunaram, where there is the mummified body of a monk. According to the local legend, the monk who died in 1973, had been a rich Thai who a few years before his death gave up all his worldly possessions to devote himself to his spiritual life. A few days before his death he told his followers to build him this glass coffin, and then died exactly when he said he would. Supposedly the body refused to decay, and it is displayed here exactly as he wished. Apparently the eyes aren’t in such great shape, so they decided that at the very least he needed a set of cool shades.

I spent yesterday going to the Ang Thong national marine park. This area is a bunch of islands that are mostly uninhabited, and fairly small. The standard tour starts out somewhere on Ko Samui, and then you take a relaxing boat ride out a couple of hours to the archipelago of about 40 islands. Once you get there there is lots to do. We spent several hours kayaking thru the various grottoes and overhangs, finding several really decent snorkeling spots. One of the highlights of the trip is an island called Koh Mae Ko that features a closed lagoon connected to the sea by an underwater cave. Getting to it requires a bit of a hike thru some narrow and sharp rock passages, and a bunch of rickety bamboo ladders that have been worn down to almost nothing by the thousands of tourists that came before me.

After three long days of traveling I’ve arrive in Thailand finally. I’ve based myself on the island of Ko Phi Phi. I’m staying on long beach, which is around the back side of the island from the main harbor and ferry stop. Getting between the main town and our beach requires a taxi ride in a long-tail boat, so named because of the huge propeller shaft connecting the motor to the water.

The island is simply amazing…pure white sand, emerald green water, cheap beer, cheap accommodations right on the beach, and fun people all around. I picked this beach on the recommendation of the British guy I met in Bukit Lawang…he works at a dive shop right up the beach, so I figured I go check it out. The diving has been fantastic. We’ve been to several local reefs that were nice, if a bit average…typical reef fish and corral. However yesterday they asked if several people wanted to get together to rent a speed boat to head out a lot farther go see Hin Daeng and Hin Muang.

These are two distant reefs that were some of the best diving I’ve ever done. The names mean Purple Rock and Red Rock, and they were very descriptive. Hin Daeng was especially amazing…the very top of the rock sticks out of the water, and continues way past recreational scuba depths. The corrals were all an amazing purple color…I saw so many new (to me) types of fish and animals…it completely took my breath away…and that’s a bad thing underwater!Hin Muang was nearly as amazing…red corrals dominated the underwater landscape, but the highlight of the trip was the manta ray that showed up during our surface interval. I’d never seen a manta in the wild before, and it was simply majestic. It was the closest thing to an underwater bird I’ve ever seen…it didn’t seem to swim, but instead flew thru the water. We all jumped in with snorkel gear and spent a good 10 minutes swimming with it before it got bored and headed off for deeper water.