Kachanaburi, the river Kwai and Erawan falls

Recently I needed to escape from the hustle and bustle of Bangkok, to surround myself in a bit more natural environment. So I jumped on a local bus, packed full of people (but thankfully, air conditioned!) and went up to Kachanaburi, about 2 hours NW of Bangkok. There are a lot of cute little bamboo huts to rent on the river itself, which is really beautiful.

Expecting to find peace and quiet, I was stunned to find that the combined volume of the singing frogs in the reeds, and the cicadas in the trees, made the countryside almost as noisy as the city! But of course, the sounds of nature relax you a lot more than the honking of car horns and clanging bells of street hawkers.

View of the sunrise from my hut:


I took one of the funky local buses from Kanchanaburi to Erawan national park, where there are many really beautiful waterfalls. What you can't see on the picture is that there are ten million Thai people walking up the path behind, with huge hampers, mobile cooking equipment and just about every item you could think of to spend the day in the park.



Luckily I found a very quiet path through the bamboo forest, where I could escape the hordes and walk alone for a while.

Didn't get to see any monkeys though! Gutted. I guess I'm just going to have to make a trip to Lophburi which is apparently "monkey town".