Ludwig's Odyssey: February 2016

After being stuck in Kanchanaburi for nearly two weeks we made our way south and decided to head for Prachuap Khiri Khan on John’s advice, a place firmly off the tourist trail.

We arrived and checked in to a hotel with lovely sea views. The wind was blowing quite strongly for the first couple of days we were there and it felt like we were looking out over an English beach promenade! but just a little warmer of course.

It’s a strange little place but we liked it, the only foreigners around seemed to be of an older persuasion. No real night life to speak of or many restaurants to go to really but the night market was cheap and we got some good street grub there, luckily we can point at what we want to eat and I can just about order chicken fried rice in Thai, unlike other places where tourists go, there was hardly any english signage at all.

The area is made up of three bays (Prachuap being the bay in the middle) with wonderful views from atop of temples, we enjoyed visiting the two other bays to the north and south of us on foot and on bicycles.

In Prachuap, we walked up to one temple to enjoy the views which were great but the temple itself wasn’t much and I didn’t enjoy having to dodge the myriad of Macaques and their excrement, aggressive little buggers that they are. After my run-in with them on Tioman, i’m really not that keen on them at all anymore, not that I really was in the first place...

Another temple in the bay to the North of Prachuap about 6km away had a very big cave at the top, again with lovely views and this one had no monkeys but a large reclining Buddha.

The bay to the south was the ‘beach’ bay and it was a real novelty to be on a beach without many coconuts, palm trees et al, most of the trees were pines which is quite unusual for this part of the world from what we’ve experienced.

Around this bay, there were some monkeys we did enjoy seeing however. inside the Thai Air force base just south of the town, you are allowed to walk through to some areas to see WWII relics and commemorative monuments (the Japanese invaded here in Dec 1941), it also includes a sanctuary for Duskey Leaf (Spectacled) Langurs. These monkeys are very cute and so playful, not aggressive at all and a real joy to be around, they are quite happy being in very closed proximity to humans as people come and see them everyday.

We were initially unsure of where to go next after here, south obviously but in which direction? Well the pull of diving took us back to Koh Tao.

Normally, we don’t go back to where we’ve been before as what made it special before is now lost in time. Even so, we’re glad we did, yes things have changed with a lot of people we met the first time around now moved on to pastures new or returned home, but there was still some really nice people left and we really enjoyed spending time with them again and making new friends at Alvaro.

Our experience was very similar to last time in many ways so I won’t re-write it all. Feel free to read the blog post from last year although have added a few more photos of different parts of the island on this post.

The diving wasn’t quite as good as before sadly due to poor visibility but we did dive around a wreck for the first time so that was an interesting experience.

After nearly two weeks (where does the time go...) we are now making our way over to Phuket, not a destination we thought we would go to as it’s more geared towards holiday makers rather than backpackers. Why are we going then? Well, there are some VIP holiday makers that we are meeting up with!!

Prachuap Khiri Khan

View from our balcony

Ao Noi Bay, north of Prachuap

Ao Noi Bay

Ao Manao Beach

Cheeky Spectacled Langurs

Koh Tao

Old buddies

Hin Wong Bay

Shark Bay

See you in Phuket

And so back to Thailand, to see the bits that we missed last time.

A few days in Bangkok to enjoy some wonderful food and see Star Wars!, then a train journey north for a couple of hours to arrive in Ayutthaya.

Once arrived, we decided to walk to our guest house as the weather was unusually mild (the tuk tuk drivers only rip you off anyway), got settled in and the weather got gradually colder and colder.

We’ve been used to eating outside all this time but this night, we had to go indoors, the wind chill was something we’ve not experienced for a long long time. It has been cold on a few occasions on our travels but really only a few chilli nights when we’ve been up at altitude. This felt like we where in the midsts of winter, especially as we didn’t have any warm clothing.

We woke up in the morning and the cold snap continued, it was no more than 15c (it should be at least 30c), so trousers on, waterproof jackets on to keep in any warmth and off out on bicycles to see some of the historical ruins in the old centre. (How are we going to cope when we come back home..)

Ayutthaya was the old capital of Siam for 400 years or so until 1767 when the Burmese sacked the city and as befits buddhist beliefs, there were many many temples created some of which were restored in the early 1900s which is what we see today.

It’s a really pleasant area to cycle around going from temple to temple, very reminiscent of our time in Sukhothai.

The second day, the temperature had increased a bit but it still wasn’t anywhere near what we usually see on the thermometer. This time we visited the area outside the main centre which included a couple more temples but also areas where French and Portuguese settlers had been issued land back in the 1600s, including a Portuguese grave site.

We also witnessed a ceremony at one of the working temples (Wat Phanan Choeng) which we had never seen before, a Robe Offering Ceremony. Men dressed in white led the ceremony, after some prayers had been performed, some of these men climbed into the giant Buddha’s lap and some began collecting bundles of orange cloths/robes from silver trays held up by the seated worshipers, the bundles were then tossed up to the men in the Buddha’s lap. Once up there they were unravelled and tied to a rope slung over the Buddha’s shoulder. All the trays collected, the rope was then pulled and the bundled robes snaked up the Buddha’s shoulder. That was it we thought but then the men grabbed the other ends of these robes and tossed them down to the seated crowd.

The people at the front passed the robes back to those behind them and once they had reached the back everyone lifted the robes over their heads. After a short prayer the robes were dragged back up and slung over the Buddhas shoulder. A very odd but interesting ceremony to watch, have a look yourself on the video we took.

The following day we made our way to Kanchanaburi on a couple of buses and settled in to our guest house. We went out for the evening to get some food and on the way we stopped in at the Jolly Frog Guest house, this is the place that Wendy had stayed in when she came here some 17 years back so was curious to see what it was like. It hadn’t really changed that much nor had the clientele, within 2 minutes she recognised someone she had met there all those years ago! John, a really nice guy from Essex who comes over most years to escape the English winter, of course we had to go out and have a few drinks. We enjoyed his company for the few days we where there and his local knowledge was also very helpful, there were other really nice people that we met around that guest house, the food was really nice and very cheap too so we just kept coming back.

Aside from that, the main reason we came to Kanchanaburi of course was to visit the famous bridge over the river Kwai and see the other WWII sites around the area related to the infamous Death Railway.

The bridge is very nice and shiny, mainly all original and made of steel and concrete and not wood as in the film (which was actually filmed in Sri Lanka). Only the middle section has been rebuilt, this was after the British bombed it to stop the Japanese getting supplies into Burma.

We of course had to visit Hellfire Pass (around 80km from Kanchanaburi) which had an excellent Audio Tour, we were lucky that we arrived around lunch time on our hired motorbike and had the place nearly all to ourselves before the coach parties turned up a couple of hours later, this gave us a much better experience to reflect on what happened here.

The poor sods, malnourished, frail and disease ridden that had to chip away at a rock face by hand, no wonder so many died, it's hard to get your head around the cruelty of it. The workers were kept in such inhumanly poor conditions and malnourished to the point of starvation, not to mention all the tropical diseases and cholera that spread around the camps, it’s small wonder that any of them survived.

If you’ve seen the film, The Bridge on the River Kwai, it doesn’t really portray what really happened here, the Railway Man is much more accurate.

Back in town, opposite the Thai-Burma Railway Museum, a very well made museum about the building of the line is the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery where at least half of the PoWs that perished are remembered here.

PoWs and Romusha (Forced Asian Labourers) built the line in record time (415km in just over a year) which killed around 20% of the 60,000 odd PoW workers and possibly 90,000 or more of an estimated 300,000 Romusha workforce.

It’s not all doom and gloom, there are other, non war related attractions too, but we didn't visit many of them, we preferred to hire a motorbike and see the countryside instead, visiting the odd temple here and there which was a great way to see the area.

We sort of got stuck here for over a week when we had initially decided to stay just three nights. Accommodation, food and drink is very cheap here and it’s got a nice vibe even with the go-go bars, they are easily avoided or not whichever your preference ;-).

Next stop Prachuap Khiri Khan as we make our south.

Ayutthaya