The river that got renamed cos of the bridge

It's been a while since our last road trip and Kanachaburi was one of the places we have been wanting to visit since we moved to Bangkok. Y was heading to Bangkok for a short trip and we thought it would be boring if we stayed in Bangkok and did the usual shopping and eating, especially since she was coming back again in December for that. Thus we decided that we will drive up to Kanachanburi, and then head down to Pranburi for Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park and some relaxation.

I must admit that my planning was overly ambitious and tried to pack too many things into one day. There are tours which offer day trips to Kanchanburi but they didn't attempt to drive all the way down to Pranburi at the end of the tour, thus in the end we skipped quite a few places that I wanted to visit in Kanchanburi. 

Our first stop was the Kanchanburi War Cemetery. It is the main cemetery for the prisoners of war captured by the Japanese army and is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The cemetery is open 24 hours and there is no admission fee. I had read a few books about the POWs experience to gain a better understanding of their experience and I think being in the cemetery overwhelmed me. I actually broke down crying even though none of my relatives fought in the war. I know my grandma lived through it but she never spoke about it so I have no idea of the things she went through. As you walk through the cemetery it's very overwhelming to see how young some of them were, 19, 20 etc and of course this continues even today. There were a few people who seem to  be there to visit the graves of relatives as they came bearing flowers. The date of our visit was also pretty close to Remembrance Day so there were also poppies being laid on some graves. 

As we were leaving, there was a group of Thai tourists who came and used the place as a photo opportunity. Sometimes I wonder if the Thais know about their part in World War II, in any case I have no way of finding out. This group didn't seem to know the significance of anything and just took a bunch of photographs and left. 

Our next stop was the Death Railway Museum which was just next to the cemetery. As we were walking into the museum, there was a really really old man walking out. He was so old I wondered if he was one of the surviving POWs. If yes, I cannot imagine how he feels coming back to visit his old comrades as well as going through the museum and all the memories. 

No photos are allowed in the museum which is privately run. The museum is able to help source for information about POWs and of course it provides an overview of what happens during World War II and the construction of the infamous Death Railway. I would say the museum gives a good overview and is pretty objective in the information provided. One of the things I remember clearly is that there was a mock-up of the carriage which the POWs were transported in and I was struck by how claustrophobic it must have been for the POWs who were packed in like sardines. The Japanese Army apparently didn't care how many died as they treated the POWs as dispensable labour.  While the first floor of the museum was dedicated to providing an overview of the war, what the POWs went through etc, the second floor was dedicated to the personal effects of the POWs. Some were recovered from the camp sites while others were donated by their relatives. It was interesting how innovative and creative the POWs were in trying to keep records of what happened to themselves as well as their comrades. If you didn't come with flowers but would like to leave some flowers at the cemetery, you can purchase some poppies at the museum. I'm not sure if they have it year round or only had it since it was near to Remembrance Day.  

After leaving the Death Railway Museum, we headed for the infamous bridge over River Kwai. It is now a tourist spot with many restaurants dotting the surrounding areas and we settled into one of them for lunch. It was actually quite surreal to sit there eating lunch, enjoying the view and at the same time think of all the POWs who died building that railway.

 After lunch, we went onto the bridge to take a look. You can actually take a train to cross the bridge or you can do it like us and just walk on it. There is no worry about a train coming and crushing you since the train moves really slowly and they hoot like crazy as they are approaching. The bridge was been apparently restored after the war by the Japanese (the irony of it all) so it is very safe to walk on. No rickety wooden slabs to walk on, everything is now steel. There was a huge Chinese temple on the other end of the bridge which we did not explore as it was too hot to walk across and back that day.

With that, we ended our Kanchanaburi trip and headed off to Pranburi. While Kanchanburi is perhaps best know for the Death Railway and Bridge over River Kwai, there are a lot more places to explore and we would probably go back again.

Note: I got the information about the river being renamed from seat61

Throwback: Sukhothai - November 2013

We visited Ayutthaya and Saraburi in August 2013 and for some reason visited Sukhothai in November 2013. Two historic cities within the span of 4 months, I'm not entirely sure what we were thinking.  

Ayutthaya and Sukhothai are not anywhere near each other but for anyone interested in visiting ancient temples in Thailand, these would probably rank amongst the top places to visit. However if you are in Asia for a limited period of time and only want to see that many temples, go to Cambodia and visit Angkor Wat, that is really the one and only temple you should see in your lifetime.

While Ayutthaya is about a 2 hour drive out of Bangkok, Sukhothai is considerably further and would take about 7-8 hours realistically speaking. Though Google maps state that it is 5 hours 42 minutes away, I feel 7-8 hours is more likely, depending on how often you stop for a break and the traffic for that day. You can also fly there via Bangkok Airways or take a bus from the Mo Chit bus terminal. We opted to drive since CS likes driving.

The drive there wasn't really anything to shout about. Highways in Thailand are not the best, but driving there means that once you reach Sukhothai you have your own transport which makes it easier to visit the various temples. Unlike Ayutthaya where the temples are kind of scattered across the cities and you need to visit each one individually, the ones in Sukhothai are all located within the Sukhothai Historical Park, there is only one entrance fee and you can also drive your own car in (this incurs additional charges). Alternatively if you have no car, you can rent a bike and cycle in, either of these options are better than walking as the grounds are quite huge. 

It is actually really popular to go to Sukhothai for Loy Krathong but since we don't like crowds and you need to plan way in advance, we went the week after Loy Krathong. They still had the decorations up but the place was a lot emptier. It was also ridiculously hot but it makes for good photos so I can't complain.

Here are some pictures of the various Wats within the park. It's been so long that I've actually forgotten the names of all of them except Wat Si Chum, oops

 

 

Wat Si Chum

There is an audioguide for rent which explains in some details the larger and more prominent temples. The audioguide gave a pretty good picture of the history of the various temples which we felt was good enough for us as we aren't history buffs.

Outside of Sukhothai Historical Park, there are other wats as well which you may like to visit. These charge a separate fee so you may want to read up and decide which ones you would want to pay. Those are a bit further away so if there is shortage of time, perhaps just spend the day at the park. We visited Wat Si Chum and Wat Phra Phai Luang which are probably the more famous ones. We didn't have that much time and the crazy hot weather put us off from exploring more.

Overall, I prefer Sukhothai to Ayutthaya as most of the wats are concentrated within a certain area making it easier to explore. It may not be particularly accessible but the temples are impressive and in much better condition than Ayutthaya. 

Throwback: Wimbledon 2011

Seeing as how it is currently Wimbledon season, I thought I would do a throwback to Wimbledon 2011. When we went on our trip, one of the things we wanted to do was attend some tennis tournaments. CS is a huge tennis fan and so am I, and since we were in Europe we decided we had to take the opportunity to catch Roland Garros and Wimbledon. We also managed to catch the quarterfinals of Monte Carlo, which was amazing partly cos of its wonderful location.  

In any case, this post is about Wimbledon. Unlike other grand slams where you just buy your tickets online, Wimbledon has a balloting system for tickets where each household can submit their application to try for the ballot. We weren't lucky with balloting and thought that was the end of it, luckily we realised they also have a queue system where anyone can queue for tickets to have a chance to catch a match on Centre Court, Court 1 and Court 2. There are limited tickets available for each court so if you desperately want to watch a certain match, you would need to arrive early to ensure your place in the queue. The Queue (yes in capital letters) is so famous it has its own Twitter account, there is also a good write-up on Guardian about it. 

The day we decided to queue happened to be 2nd Monday, and as Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal were on Centre Court, there were some diehard British fans who started queuing since Thursday night for Monday's tickets! We arrived in London early Sunday morning and quickly set off for the queue. We had bought a cheap 2-men tent in preparation for the queue, equipped with our tent and a fully charged iPad, we set off for Wimbledon. The tube journey took forever and it was interesting to be in a part of London that was very residential. We were rather lucky that the day we queued was a lovely sunny day as the entire week before was raining like mad. When we arrived we were informed that our queue number would place us on Court 1, obviously there was no chance that we could have gotten on Centre Court since people have been queuing since Thursday so we were rather thankful that we got Court 1.

We quickly set up our tent and started exploring the place. As it was a sunny day, most of the people in the queue were out playing games or chilling just outside their tents, reading, sunbathing etc. We have never camped before and it was an interesting experience. The Queue was really well-organised with stewards around to ensure everything was in order. There were also toilets in the park so that was another thing being taken care of. I remember there was a group of Japanese housewives who were fully equipped with all sorts of sun-protection accessories and brought their own bento meals. There were also other campers who came equipped with air mattresses and portable stoves and cooked their own meals. As it was really quite hot that day, we spent most of the day hidden in the cool shade of our tent. I can't really remember what we did but I do remember watching The King's Speech. As we didn't bring any food with us except for a few light snacks we were grateful that there were local businesses that delivers food to the area. 

all the tents nicely lined up

By about 10pm, the stewards went around to make sure everyone is in place and to ask everyone to settle down to sleep. As Wimbledon is a residential area, the Wimbledon organisers try to minimise the disruption to the residents. Although it was quite hot in the daytime, temperatures drop quite a lot at night and I remember feeling quite cold. As we were sleeping in the tent with no sleeping bags, it was also rather uncomfortable and we took quite a while to settle down.

We woke up early the next day as we wanted to beat the queue at the toilets as well as the left luggage facility. We are not allowed to bring in bulky items or items which are considered advertising so we had to pack up our tents and deposit them at the left luggage facility. After doing all that, the queue finally started moving and we got really excited about finally getting into Wimbledon. 

Beautiful morning, all getting ready for matches!

Right before entering the grounds, there was one final security check, which I have to say was very thorough, it was like going through the airport security checks! After the final security check, we bought our tickets and were really lucky to be able to get 2nd row court side seats!

Court 1, 2nd Row

We entered the grounds really early as they had to usher us in first and then let the people who are queuing for grounds admission in (as you can see, the Brits are really big on queuing). We had a lot of time to kill before the matches started so we explored the grounds and as a Wimbledon tradition, got our strawberries and cream!

Henmen Hill or Murray Mount?

Strawberries and Cream, Sir?

The order of play for Court 1 that day was 

Marion Bartoli vs Serena Williams

Novak Djokovic vs Michael Llodra

Roger Federer vs Mikhail Youzhny

Wimbledon Champion Bartoli

Champion in the making Djokovic

Outgoing Champion Federer

As we were sitting so close to them, it was quite interesting to observe the players up close. Marion Bartoli's quirks are even more obvious and Serena William's screams are scarier.  Back in 2011, Djokovic was not the player he is today, he was good then but Llodra didn't play that well either. By the time Federer came on court,  I was super sleepy cos I couldn't sleep the night before. We're not fans of his so we left and went out for a short walk around the grounds. We did go back after a while to finish the match though.

Azarenka strolling by with her iPod

We all remember this match which went on and on and on.........

All in all it was a really fantastic experience for a tennis fan. The queuing, being up close on Court 1, watching the players in such close proximity, wandering around the Wimbledon grounds. Definitely a must-try in a lifetime for tennis fans. 

Throwback: Ayutthaya and Saraburi - August 2013

It's been so long since we've even looked at this site that I'm surprised it hasn't died off already. In any case, we'll try to put in a little more effort in updating. Since we haven't been anywhere in a while, let's do a throwback to 2013 where we visited Ayutthaya and Saraburi. My original plan was to talk about Ayutthaya and Sukhothai in the same post since they are the ancient civilisations of Thailand but the post would be too long and unwieldy, so this post will just be about Ayutthaya and Saraburi instead. All photos are taken with my iPhone so let's not expect any National Geographic quality pictures here. 

Ayutthaya is less than 2 hours drive out of Bangkok, so it's easy to do a day trip there and back from Bangkok. There is also a train from Hua Lamphong station but it supposedly takes longer than the stated time so I would say driving is a better option unless you really like trains. There are also minivans that depart from Victory Monument to Ayutthaya and I think those run rather frequently. 

We drove there so it was easy for us to visit the various temples at Ayutthaya. You could walk around but having a bicycle or motorbike would make it a lot faster. Within Ayutthaya, there are charges for individual temples, so you should do some research as to which temples you want to visit. I actually can't remember the names of the temples we went to except for what I can Google but I think we only visited 3 or 4 that day as it was really hot the day we went. Since our main purpose to Ayutthaya was to visit the temples we had to be appropriately dressed (i.e. no sleeveless tops, no miniskirts/ shorts for ladies) as a form of respect. While some of the temples are no longer in use, they are still religious sites, so the dress code still applies. 

We visited Wat Phra Mahathat, which is famous for the tree which has grown around the Buddha's head. This is a popular tourist spot so there are tour buses full of tourists who come here. Most tourists come and take a photo of this and leave for the next temple but the temple grounds itself has more to see than this tree, so take your time to walk around and explore.

Wat Phra Mahathat

 I actually cannot remember where this was taken, oops

 same for this, not sure which temple

We also visited Wat Lokaya Sutha which has a large reclining Buddha. It is apparently 37 metres and 8 metres high, yes it was so long I couldn't fit it into my iPhone frame so the picture below is what you get instead. 

reclining Buddha at Wat Lokaya Sutha 

Since it was a really hot day, we didn't really feel like temple hopping much so we decided to go to Saraburi instead to visit the vineyards and waterfall to cool down. 

The vineyards were open but sadly there were no grapes, I think it was the wrong season to visit. And proving that I cannot blog for a living I do not remember which vineyard we visited. There are quite a few around the Muak Lek district and they are all situated quite close to each other so if you don't see one you like you can just move onto the next one. We bought a bottle of lychee wine but since we are not wine connoisseurs I can't tell you if the quality was any good. We did rather enjoy it though so that's what counts. 

After the vineyards we went to Namtok Chet Sao Noi National Park to visit the waterfall. You can swim in the waterfall but we just took a short break to enjoy the scenery and had a small picnic.  There were lots of Thai families and teenagers there enjoying the cool breeze, making it quite an enjoyable place to just relax. 

there are supposed to be 7 levels for the waterfall

All in all it was a rather enjoyable day out. If you are looking to get away from the hustle and bustle of Bangkok, do consider going to Ayutthaya and Saraburi for some temples and greenery. 

Gazing upon the Sunflowers

December is typically the "winter" month in Thailand and this year, though the weather is cool, it wasn't as cool as last year. In any case, December is also apparently the month when sunflowers fields can be found around Saraburi and Lopburi area and we thought it would be nice to make a day trip.

We set off early on Sunday morning thinking that the roads would be empty but our mistake was that we chose the LAST weekend before New Year's to go visit the sunflower fields. I think everyone and their grandmother was going back to their hometowns so the highways were filled with cars, trucks, vans, buses etc. Driving out of Bangkok was relatively easy, however once we reached the highway, we were stuck and moving at a snail's pace. It was almost as bad as our drive through Poland and we kind of regretted our decision. It was so bad CS started looking up videos on Youtube to play while we crawled on the highway (he's quite obsessed with Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith lately). 

Anyway if you are interested, these are the instructions I copied from the internet on how to get there (sorry, can't remember the site now) but we made some diversions. The route from the internet is below though 

Take highway 1 and then turn into highway 2 at Saraburi. Go straight until you reach Muak Lek and turn into road 2089 which leads to Wang Muang. From there, take road 3017 to reach Pasa Jolid Dam, from there you can take road 3196 to get to Ayutthaya and then road 32 to get back to Bangkok. 

We followed the instructions and found one sunflower field shortly after turning into road 2089 (I think). We had to pay 10baht each to enter the sunflower field, honestly the field was pretty big BUT the sunflowers were rather small. I had expected to see some really nice big sunflowers so it was a little disappointing. I was pretty glad to get out of the traffic jam though, and to walk around a bit. 

We then drove a little further up and found another sunflower field but this was smaller so we didn't pay to go in. There was a nice old man selling kites just outside so we bought a kite from him and flew the kite for a while. It was pretty windy that day and the weather was great so we had quite a bit of fun for a while.

After that, we decided that we may still be stuck in traffic so we took a detour and went to Pak Chong to visit one of CS customers who had a restaurant there. The food was alright but the view from the restaurant was gorgeous and since the weather was cool, it was really great to sit outdoors and enjoy the cool breeze. 

After that we thought we would drive back towards Saraburi to look at the sunflowers but driving out of Pak Chong, we noticed sunflowers! Turns out it was a corn farm which also grew sunflowers, probably to cash in on the sunflowers craze during December. The farm is Suwan Farm, it was quite sunny when we were there so most of the Thai families were sitting in the shade, snacking and relaxing. We ventured into the sunflower field where we had the fields more or less to ourselves, with the exception of one Thai couple who came with a photography crew. The view is lovely and since a picture says a thousand words, here goes

gorgeous flowers with mountains in the background

not quite Van Gough but good enough for us 

We then took a drive to the Pasak Jolasid Dam, there was a viewing tower of some sorts and we paid 20baht each to go up. The tower was rather short but because it was the highest building in that area we got quite a good view of the surroundings. Unlike the Eiffel Tower there is no cheaper option if you climbed the stairs, haha... In any case it was a good way to get a sense of the surroundings. 

view of the dam

There was this structure near the dam which reminded me of Har Paw Villa, but this was the only structure that looked vaguely scary. The place had mainly Thai families just enjoying a simple day out, enjoying the view and flying kites, and since the weather was quite cool it was all rather relaxing. 

i actually have no idea what this is supposed to be, 

So if you ever come to Bangkok during end November/ December and would like to get out of the city, go visit the sunflowers fields! There's also a Jim Thompson farm which I would like to visit, will update then.