Kanchanoburi, temple caving and more scary bridge crossing!

Due to our usual lack of planning we were forced to dump our idea of heading to Kai something National park and instead grabbed a bus to Kanchanoburi. We have to be back in Bangkok on thursday to pick up our Visas- so we can only have one night away. Kanchanoburi is situated on the famous River Kwai- where many Australian soldiors were prisoners of war in World War II and were foreced to build the Thai-Burma railway (or death rail). So after a three hour bus ride we arrived, grabbed a couple of bikes and rode a couple of kms to the Bride over River Kwai. It was not that exciting really - but now we have been. It is single lane and still used by trains but the trains have to go very slowly to avoid all the crazy tourists wandering along it.

After this quick trip we headed in the opposite direction towards temple caves. The caves were about 5km from town and the ride there was quite scenic- lovely forest lined roads and corn fields etc. On seeing a sign saying "Monkey School" we couldn't help ourselves but turn down a narrow track. It was very disappointing (yet not unexpected) to see monkeys caged and tied up only to be released for shows they put on whenever a tourist would pay money. Extremely sad. worst of all was a nocturnal monkey in a small cage his eyes wide open and looking tired and scared- unable to sleep in this well lit environment. After asking the workers if the monkeys always lived in the cages, and getting a vague response we decided to leave. They told us we could take a short cut over the railway track behind monkey school to get to the cave. So we wandered through this great canyon of rock divided by the train line (here we had to cross another incredibly scary bridge- I'd say the worst so far!) and up to the top of a hill complete with massive fat, jolly gold Bhuddha and magnificent views of the river Kwai and surrounding landscape. We then followed another path around to the temple caves. These caves are home to both Buddhist and Hindu religious statues and symbols. I felt extremely brave walking into and through the caves as I can be very claustrophobic and had to be coaxed by Tim most of the way. The initial part of the cave was massive with a huge reclinng buddha statue and other religious paraphenalia but the you continue around through narrow twists and turns, head bowed to get through to another deeper level. It was well worth it even though my heart never stopped pounding and I kept panicking that i couldn't breathe. Another scary aspect of the caves was that in 1995 a drug addicted monk who lived there murdered a British backpacker inside the cave. Luckily I forgot about that until safely out in the open again. it was extremely atmospheric and beautiful- however we didn't get a lot of photos- it was a bit dark and I was freaking out too much to care.

It was hilarious though- just as we were coming out of the cave temple we got a call from jenny telling us about the US election. its crazy to think that even though we are in the middle of Thailand and in a cave modern communication is such that it can reach us.

By this stage we were very sweaty and tired. So we rode back to our guesthouse which is along the river and went for a swim in their pool.