March 2018
The most memorable thing about Kanchanabri(population: 32,000) was this songthaew & the driver whose name we can’t recall. We decided to take the bus there simply because the buses ran every 20 minutes or so vs. twice a day for the trains. We caught our bus at Bangkok’s South Bus Terminal, which, for some reason, was out west, not south at all. This bus terminal was huge. You took the escalator up to the second level and found zillions of ticket counters. Confused, we just looked for the word “Kanchanaburi” and got our tickets. The 2.5 hour westward bus ride was unremarkable. At the bus station in Kanchanaburi, we were picked up by a driver who was not overly aggressive. “Please take us to Away Resort!” So off we went. We chose this hotel mainly because our friend Sam had Hotel.com reward points that he wanted to spend and Away Resort came up as one of the choices when he did the search. It was a bit out of the way but very quiet.
On the way to the hotel, we talked with the driver, and he was very pleasant. He said he could show us around. We said the Kwai Bridge and anything else he thought we shoud see. Sorry, but we can’t remember all the things we did. Here is some of what we found:
Enough. We had to stop. I think we paid him about $50. Then we all plunged into the nice, big pool at the hotel. Let’s just eat here, someone said. The restaurant at the hotel had great food and was peaceful.
Next morning, the hotel arranged an airconditioned van for us to go to the Erawan Falls in a National Park 65 km north of Kanchanaburi. It was a big park, and we had to hike up quite a bit to see each level of the 7 cascading falls. The scenery was beautiful, but the sun was scorching down. None of us made it to the top tier. Some of us got to level 5. Pat’s feet were being massged by some fish nibbling at them.
We had lunch at a cafe by a dam on the River Kwai (Khwae Yai River in Thai) before heading back to the Kanchanaburi bus station. I know. We don’t have pictures of the beautiful water falls, but we do of the bus terminal, below.
It would have been nice to spend a couple of days just relaxing at a resort hotel around here. There are some other national parks in the area, too.
Small Wide World 