Whiskey, waterfalls and wildlife

Our next stop was a town to the north-west of Bangkok called Kanchanaburi. We arrived there after a couple of hours in a minibus ready for a more relaxed vibe after the busy intensity of Bangkok. Fortunately, our hostel had a swimming pool, which was our first port of call when we checked in. 

Having not eaten all day, we headed out for an early dinner. Choosing where to go for dinner in Thailand is quite difficult because there is so much choice, a particularly challenging problem for the indecisive Charlotte. Furthermore, most of the restaurants serve pretty much the same dishes, just with a varying quality. When we finally decided we ordered beers and I had a chicken panang, my favourite curry. Pete had a small plate of noodles but resisted double dinner, perturbed by the slightly higher prices in Kanchanaburi. Charlotte eventually chose a lovely fragrant noodle soup type dish.  

A Jamaican bar, confusingly named Buddha Bar, would do to continue the drinking. The enthusiastic  wannabe Bob Marley Thai owner was great and he served cheap beers. The price of a bar was by this stage judged by the price of a large Chang beer. If it had Singha that was even better. His was 65 baht (~£1.30) so that was perfect.

It wasn't, however, as cheap as the next bar. We spent the rest of the night at a bar - a shack - which was simply called 'Get Drunk For 10 Baht'. 10 baht = 20p, so you can see what attracted us here. We drank whiskey and coke 'til we could have no more and stumbled back to the hostel. 

The main reason we visited Kanchanaburi was not, as you might think, for the great food or the cheap drinks. It was that the town of Kanchanaburi lives not too far from Erawan National Park. Here, after a rickety ride in an old Thai bus, we climbed five tiers of waterfalls, swimming in each along the way. It was perfect but for one thing - little nibbley fish, the type people pay to have their feet eaten by (for some reason) in the UK. Maybe these were a little bigger. While some were cashing in on what they saw as a free spa treatment, we didn't share their enthusiasm and just kept moving so they wouldn't get us. Pete was the worst, screaming like a girl every time one came near him. I'd had a bad experience with a nibbling fish in the past (it bit my nipple) so I wasn't too much better. 

Since the waterfalls were in a national park, there was plenty of other wildlife around. Particularly memorable were the monkeys, especially the baby ones. Charlotte fell in love with them immediately but we wouldn't let her bring any of them back to our hostel with us.

We nearly missed the last bus back to Kanchanaburi. However, we made it home in the pouring rain (it was monsoon season in Thailand) after a ride in the back of a vehicle which surely was at one point used only for transporting small animals. We decided to avoid the apparently average hostel restaurant and brave the rain, going to a restaurant run by a charming but bossy Thai woman called Apple. We shared three Thai dishes, having been told off for trying to order two of the same dish. Charlotte was told off once more for mixing the curry and rice wrong (served separately in Thailand), of which I have a brilliant photo. Pete looks petrified. The food was very very nice, however, and well worth the stern lesson in the dining etiquette of Thailand.  The rest of the night was quite quiet, me and Charlotte sharing a shisha pipe and Pete twice thrashing us at pool. We were tired from our day at the 'falls and it was still raining so we made our way back to the hostel by midnight for some well-earned shut eye.