I made it out of the daily grind in Bangkok successfully, but it was close! In any case Bangkok was great but I was happy to get to Kanchanaburi. 

I took the peasant bus there, no aircon, rickety old train, on the train line that is dubbed the “death railway” as it goes to Myanmar and was built during the second world war and was pretty much a disaster. There’s a movie about it called Bridge Over the River Kwai, said bridge is in Kranchanaburi, where I am now, and my guesthouse sits on the River Kwai. The train was lovely though and for 100 baht I would definitely do it again. I got to chat with a nice old Thai man who knew English and let me practice some Thai with him. While we were chatting I noticed his testicle was precariously hanging out of a rip in his shorts. He didn’t seem to mind! 

When I got to Kranchanaburi I felt isolated, but I worked up the courage to go grab a beer and approach some nice looking people sitting out by the water. A great decision as these guys were just great and we spent the whole night downing 10 baht drinks a cute streetside bar. One of the guys told me to jump into the river in the morning so I came down there the next morning and did, it was magnificent! Then I got breakfast and met one of the guys from the night before and he invited me on his adventure with him. He is keen on animals and had read about a cave nearby that housed the world’s smallest bat! So we got on motorbikes (I rode a motor bike!) And scooted 100km to a deserted national park to seek this ellusive bat. It was so cool to go into this creepy limestone cave, feeling like Steve Irwin or something, and having hundreds of bats flying at you trying to see who or what you are. We craweled through some tiny little cravasses and got fairly deep too. An unforgettable experience, and yeah there were some pretty small bats! After that we got to go for a dip in a cute little jungly river that leads to a big waterfall (the waterfall wasn’t that impressive though) but the jungly bit was nice. Also it was my first time every being in a bamboo forest, o had never heard the sound of bamboo in the wind and it was creakety and awesome.

All in all if you had of told me that all that was going to happen when I got to Kranchanaburi, I wouldn’t have guessed it! But it was amazing to take up the opportunities that presented themselves and in the end I got to have so many great experiences!