Thailand Day 12 - Kanchanaburi

Today was a day filled with firsts.

David went on his own, and Leah and I stuck together for the day. We started off by renting bikes again, and went to the tourist office in town. Neither Leah or I had ridden bikes in years until this week, but like they always say "you never forget how to ride a bike!" or something like that ;-) It was already hot when we left at 9 am. We rode into town and found out that most places we would've considered going in the AM were farther than we could get by walking or bike, and expensive by tuk tuk or Songtao, so we opted to stay in town. We first went to the Jeath WWII museum. It was about the allied POWs who were forced to work to build the tracks from Kanchanaburi to Burma, and the horrible facts that went along with it. The Bridge over river Kwai was where it started, and was bombed multiple times by allied planes during WWII.

From there, we rode into what we thought would be "downtown". Apparently we rode right through it and didn't notice. We did however find a Tesco which was a shopping mall type thing with something like a superwalmart inside. We noticed a hair salon, and decided that maybe we'd come back later for Leah to get her hair cut. We each ordered an overpriced ice cream while we were there, but when they arrived we realized they were not overpriced, we only underestimated the size of the servings. We each left half of our orders to melt (YES, Leah and I DID NOT eat all of our ice cream) We bicycled back to the hostel at midday.

In the afternoon, we hopped a Sontao to the Tiger Temple, famous in this region for rehabilitating and rescuing tigers, and taming them. Onlookers even have a chance to pet them. I really enjoyed this.

When we got back home, we planned to head back out to the salon for Leah's haircut. We knew that the Songtaos didn't go as far as the Tesco, so we were planning on hailing a cab (we didn't want to bike the 6km each way again). As we were walking from the hostel to the main road a random thai guy with a motorbike and a sidecar (similar to the onces we'd seen food or entire families riding in) stopped us trying to give us a ride. well, we were looking for a taxi anyway, so sure! He told us he'd charge us 20 baht each by showing us 2 20 baht bills since he didn't speak a lick of English. He didn't seem to have a clue where he was taking us so we just kept waving him on through town. I think the Tesco was farther than he expected, so we tipped him another 20 baht, and he seemed thrilled.

Upon arriving at the salon at the tesco, Leah and I quickly picked out a hairstyle from a book, as they too did not speak English, and she didn't want them to botch up her hair. The guy took about an hour an a half, and was sweating by the end, but he did a great job. He charged her 180 bahts ($6) for the whole thing (washed, cut, blow dried, styled, and obbsessed to perfection). Leah tipped him an extra 200 and he was beside himself.

We tried to take a Songtao back to the hostel since they were waiting outside, but none of them wanted to take us all the way there (we had to say 'choo choo" to emphasize that we stayed near the train station since again they didn't speak english). But lucky for us, a motorcycle taxi driver offered to take us for 80 baht, so nervously, Leah and I took him up on it and hopped on the back of his motorbike. It was awesome. Pretty scary since I'd never been on a motorbike, but awesome nonetheless.

We met up with DZ for dinner, and I got probably my worst meal since I've been here, but I haven't really had any bad meals until now, so I can't complain.