Rest Day in Kanchanaburi: Erawan Falls

December 8, 2006

We have breakfast and a nice cup of coffee at the hotel and are picked-up by an Air Conditioned minibus promptly at 8:00am. One more stop down the road for two more backpackers and we are off for about a 90 minute drive to Erawan Falls.

There are some Australians, Brits and two women in our group, but people don't seem to talk. We have noticed on several occasions before that backpackers don't talk and mix with other travellers the way we remember. Is this a result of the internet? It's mostly small groups that keep to themselves. At Erawan we have a 2.5 hours to explore the falls, but that's too short to take much time at all seven levels. We hoof it all the way up to seven, Patrick only stops for pictures of different pools before the arrival of an onslaught of tourists that will fill them up with people.

Patrick was here on his world tour in 1992-94, and in his mind, they were more colorful, and it took a lot more jungle walking and river crossings to get to the higher pools. Now there is a pretty good trail and some bridges. We change clothes and swim at number seven pool. There are many fish in the blue green water that nip at our legs. A monkey is making a nuisance of himself by trying to steal backpacks. One doesn't want to get bit by these buggers, and they know it!

We walk down and swim again at pool number 5, the prettiest pool on the walk. A close to 10 foot waterfall comes over a higher terrace and plunges over our heads. Then we have to hurry back down to the parking lot and still be late by 15 minutes. Fortunately, we also have our lunch break here, so we did not delay the others. After lunch we drive to Hellfire Pass, a large cutting through a hillside on the Burma Railroad. WW II P.O.W.'s were forced to create this cutting at a tremendous human cost. There is an excellent Australian managed museum here with displays and a movie. The P.O.W.'s called this place Hellfire because of the torches and fires used during the 16-18 hour long workdays.

We make another stop at a section of railroad where we were supposed to take a 30 minute train ride, but something is apparently wrong with the "real" train so instead we are put on a series of small carriages with a small engine that takes us across a couple of scary trestles and back. We don't derail and make it back. The parking lot is packed with tourist stalls and a couple of big buses show up. It's been a long day with one more stop at the bridge on the river Kwai. The light is pretty nice in the setting sun, but crowds of tourists make it hard to get any good pictures. We go in search of pizza for dinner, unsuccessfully and end up in a small pub that has "bangers and mash" on special tonight not bad at all with a cold beer.

Since we had each downed a large Singha before we headed out for dinner, we are done in for the night after our meal. Another rest day tomorrow.