DAY TRIPPING
Ayutthaya, Kanchanaburi and Floating Market
Excerpts taken from Naked Farang: Four Weddings and a Coup
With various relatives visiting me in Thailand, I had planned a few day trips from Bangkok to give them a taste of central Thailand. After an early breakfast, we waited for the mini-van and driver I had arranged through a Thai friend and which was a nailed on bargain at 1,500 baht per day for the van with driver. Petrol was extra but this still meant we were being chauffeured around for around 2,000 baht for each of the three days we had hired this service. The driver was very knowledgeable and he took us to a number of places that we would never have known about otherwise, not one of which was a jewellery shop.
Our first big day trip out of Bangkok was to the former capital of Ayutthaya and the many beautiful ruins there. On the way, we stopped off at Bang Pa In Palace where we drove around the strange and beautiful collection of buildings and ponds in golf buggies.
By the time we got to Ayutthaya, it was absolutely roasting and we bravely wandered around a few old ruins before being beaten back by the heat. My mother is a caffeine addict who thinks that water is for fish and we couldn’t risk her dehydrating, so it was back to the air-con van and then on to a hotel that the driver knew and which had an outrageously huge buffet for the same price as a bag of chips in London.
After lunch, we braved the heat once more to take elephant rides around some of the old ruins. Our trip to Ayutthaya ended with a brief stop at the remains of one more very impressive old temple complex before we drove back to Bangkok.
On the following day, we headed to Kanchanaburi to see the bridge on the River Kwai. Our excellent guide stopped off at the Rose Garden on the way which is a cross between a zoo, a crocodile farm and a souvenir shop.
At Kanchanaburi, we first stopped off at the immaculately-kept war graves in the town centre, which was a very sobering experience. Next we had lunch near the infamous bridge in an open-air, riverside restaurant with panoramic views of the river, bridge and jungle opposite, making it a very enjoyable experience. After lunch, we took a few cautious steps on the old bridge itself, which is actually not the same one that was built by the allied forces during WWII because that one was destroyed by the allied forces in WWII. However, it is a very dangerous structure with gaping holes to fall through and trains crossing it at the most inopportune moments. Certainly, if this bridge happened to be in England, there would be guards forbidding entrance and it would probably be slated for demolition. If it were in the states, somebody would already have “accidentally” fallen off it and claimed $29.7 million in compensation. I always wonder how they arrive at such seemingly specific amounts for these handouts but don’t get me started on the American way or we could be here all night. Suffice to say that the Thais are less concerned about what might happen until it has already happened at which point the newspapers will take pictures of people pointing at pixelated things and print them on the front pages of their seediest tabloids.
We finished our day out in Kanchanaburi with a visit to the old, small museum dedicated to the many men who lost their lives building the bridge and the entire railway line deep into Burma. Some 16,000 allied soldiers are estimated to have lost their lives during construction. While these are without doubt tragic losses, the 150,000 forced Asian labourers who also died seem to be generally overlooked.
We set off bright and early on the next day as we headed for the floating market at Damnoen Saduak. This is a real tourist trap, but what are you gonna do? We were tourists after all.
Once we’d been ferried around a few narrow canals and looked at a market selling everything a tourist might want to buy, we drove back to Bangkok to get properly cultured up with a trip to Wat Phra Kaew (The Temple of the Emerald Buddha), in The Grand Palace complex.
Paul Snowdon - Excerpts taken from Naked Farang: Four Weddings and a Coup
Related article – I Wish I Was in Bangkok:: Part 1
Related article – I Wish I Was in Bangkok: Part 2
Related article – I Wish I Was in Bangkok: Part 3
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