Kanchanaburi

Hello world! My name is Cyrus and this is pretty much my first blog post (the last one didn't really count). Paige has been writing all the other ones but I promised her that I would write this one. I included a few random links that I thought were funny or somewhat related to what I'm talking about. Feel free to click on them or don't if you don't want. Well, here it goes...

This past weekend Paige and I decided to finally take a weekend for ourselves to kind of relax and explore Thailand without a group of 20 other Americans by our sides. We ended up going to Kanchanaburi, which if you're not familiar with, is where the famed Bridge Over the River Kwai (actually pronounced like square without the s) is located. We had another three day weekend for Constitution Day and Kanchanaburi is only two hours away so it was a pretty easy trip for us to make.

The first day we were there, we jumped on a bus and drove for an hour and a half to a nearby national park. The park was called Erawan and is a hiking trail with waterfall after waterfall. This is a big tourist spot which was obvious to see because of the number of people we saw in their speedo's, 2-sizes-too-small bikini's, beer belly's and flip-flops. The hike was actually pretty tough which made it even more amazing that the Europeans were able to get all the way up the trail in their flip-flops. But the hike consists of seven different "tiers" with a showcased waterfall on each tier. Some of the waterfalls that we saw were amazing. You would think that you were at the showcased waterfall and would hike 100 more meters only to realize you were then on the proper level and saw a whole new waterfall.

So many dirty people counting this as their bath for the week...

 

It took us about two hours to get all the way up to the seventh level (video of us sitting on the top level) and we finally decided to jump into one of the pools of water. The craziest thing about seeing all of the waterfalls was just how clear the water was through the whole hike. You could literally see the bottom of the river we were hiking next to the whole time. However, when we did finally jump in we were quickly surprised by the amount of fish swimming. Not only were they swimming right next to you but as soon as you get in they start swarming your feet and legs and eating the dead skin off of you. It is a strange, strange feeling and we ran out of the water pretty quickly and had no desires to get back in. The hike down was a lot quicker and only took us about a half hour. After that we jumped back on the bus and went back to our hotel.

 

Later that night we went down to the market and got our shopping on. We both finally splurged and bought some clothes but the highlight of our night was walking back to the hotel. As we were walking down the street a man stopped us and told us to look up in the sky. It was a "black moon" as he called it but we realized that we had already missed out on half of a lunar eclipse and hadn't even noticed it. It was the last one until 2014 so it was pretty cool that we got to see it while we were here.

Sunday morning we woke up and decided to finally make our obligatory trip to the Bridge Over the River Kwai that we had heard so much about. Seeing the bridge was pretty anti-climatic. It's one of those things where seeing the bridge isn't actually that cool but knowing the history behind it makes it a lot more interesting and relevant. We walked across the whole thing and even did a little march while singing the song from the movie. Overall it was a good experience and we can now check that off the Thailand list.

Most of the original bridge was destroyed during the war, but the wood used on the edges of the bridge was salvaged.

On our way back from the bridge there was a little market that we walked by. We stopped to look and noticed that there was a spokesperson from the nearby zoo who had a baby leopard in a cage and was taking donations for the zoo. We gave a donation and Paige was able to hold and feed the leopard for a few minutes. She loved it and got mad that I only took one picture (who knew you needed more than one picture of something) but here is a video of it. And don't worry I will be looking for jobs as a narrator after we get back.

Now we are back to school and no more long weekends until our New Years break. We are just going to be hanging around Suphanburi enjoying living the dream here for a while to relax and catch up a little bit on sleep that we've been missing out on the past couple weekends and throughout the school weeks. Hope my post wasn't too long and boring and maybe I'll start writing a few more of them from now on. Hope everything is going well back home for everyone!

And as always GO LIONS! Let's get that last wilcard spot!

Love,

Cyrus, Paige and the baby leopard.

PS. I don't think the Packers need any more luck, they have everything locked up already.