From Pai to the Kwai

Well, we headed into the mountains to to the home of Thai hippies in a place called Pai - where there happened to be a music festival on the night we arrived. This made getting a room difficult, but we still managed to find a room with a free pet (Permkroop the frog, pictured ready to jump out from sink overflow to welcome us). We started to get into the Pai vibe and explored the area, avoiding people offering expensive guided tours and enjoying the hills, waterfalls and hotsprings ourselves on bikes and a moped with nights on the town.

After this we realised that we had 'dropped out' for too long, and needed to head south sometime to eventually catch a flight, so spent a long day on buses to get to Sukhothai. This is an ancient capital city with temples and palace ruins spread around outside a newer town. Again we hired some rusty bikes for a laughable price and cycled around the ruins inbetween cold drinks and firey snacks.

We're now all the way down on the Kwai Noi River, and are going to travel up the valley on the railway tomorrow. The town of Kanchanburi has some large cemeteries of people who were forced to build the railway, whch includes the famous bridge just up the street which we walked across today - picture of a trains edging across very slowly to avoid knocking over the tourists. There is a very good museum here illustrating how hard the whole line was to build, and the stories of people forced to work here - and the view straight out of the museum over the large cemetery is poignant.

The next 'long journey' is to the weather beaten south of Thailand, which we have to pass to get to Singapore come rain or shine. The weather forecast points to the former so better keep fingers crossed and feet firmly pointed away from the buddha whilst touching his enormous hands for good luck:-