June 28
As far as what happened yesterday, while it was one really weird day. I was going to bike to Kanchanaburi (where I am right now) but when I was taking a break at Phanum Theum, about 25 kilometers from Kanchanaburi, an older man rode up on his moped and introduced himself (his name is Tawee) and said he was a primary school teacher and would like to invite me to his house. I wasn't all that hot on the idea but I thought it would be interesting to see a Thai family from the inside, so I agreed. I followed him to his house, locked up my bike and then got into the car with him for parts unknown (he did not speak very good English). He ended up driving into Kanchanaburi to show me the bridge over the River Kwai and all of the other tourist sights that I was planning to see today anyway. I use the term "driving" loosely because this guy, without question was the worst driver I have ever encountered. Our blind friend Loddie could have done better. He had no concept of lanes or directions and would just head toward any unoccupied piece of asphalt. Luckily, cars coming the other way had quicker reflexes. I was utterly terrified for the entire hour and a half of driving - I had the same feeling I have in an airplane in heavy turbulence. He only had one minor collision (when he backed into a large rock) so I feel fortunate.
Aside from Tawee’s driving, he treated me to lunch and dinner and introduced me to a number of members of his family at several locations. Most of them just sort of nodded when we were introduced (they had expressions like "look what the cat dragged in") but I did meet his sister who was an English teacher and we had a very nice two hour chat. I learned a lot about Thailand in that conversation. She invited me to do an impromptu half hour talk before her English class (fifty 12 year olds). Can you imagine me doing such a thing?
The people who work in the internet cafe just brought me over some candy and coke (unasked for!). That was nice. Makes me feel a little better about this town. The first internet cafe charged me a higher rate because I was a foreigner (this is the first time this has happened on this trip). It is a bit of a tourist place so it has some of the creepy stuff associated with Thai tourism (i.e., massage parlors catering to westerners). I tried to go to a guesthouse recommended by Lonely Planet but as I approached the entrance about a dozen dogs came after me. So much for that guesthouse! I did get a really nice clean room in a place called the Luxury Hotel for $9. And it has CNN so I will get to hear some English tonight.
I walked across the Bridge over the River Kwai. Part of it is what was built by the prisoners of war (the middle section was destroyed by American bombers in 1945 and repaired after the war). I will be going up to Erawan national park tomorrow and will be very careful about the mosquitos. The Deet really does work, although I have only used it a couple of times. I will also use the mosquito net. This is supposed to be a very beautiful park with lots of waterfalls.
June 28
I have cooled down a bit and will try to describe Tawee's home and family. It was a single level house on a large fenced lot with lots of banana and other tropical fruit trees growing in the yard. There was no grass and quite a bit of garbage strewn around in the yard. As in all Thai private buildings (and many public) you have to take your shoes off to enter. Shoes are left outside the house. The floors are all ceramic tiles. The bathrooms are set up so the entire bathroom is the shower stall. There is huge (50 gallons plus) pot that holds water to use in bathing. You can get hot water if you turn on this little box (you've seen them before in Europe and elsewhere). Tawee had a regular western toilet that you flushed by dumping in several buckets of water. The regular Thai toilet is like a turkish toilet, only raised a few inches off the floor. You have to sit on a platform. They don't use toilet paper, but wipe themselves with water from a bucket using their hand (I had to do this today for the first time and it was not pleasant). Other noticeable things in the house were a huge teak bench (about 5 feet across) which I have seen in a number of hotel rooms. It seems to be standard furniture. There was not a great deal of other furniture in the house. There were two Mickey Mouse jigsaw puzzle that one of his daughters had put together. Tawee's family were all pleasant and seemed pretty middle class. His sister was a teacher and his daughters were nurses.
June 29
I biked up to Erawan Waterfall National Park yesterday and stayed at a guesthouse up there (it's a bit up in the mountains heading toward Burma). The ride was pleasant, through forested areas primarily and the falls were spectacular. There are 7 tiers with swimming holes beneath each one of them. I went swimming in one and it was wonderfully refreshing. I was only able to get up to the 4th tier because a bridge was washed out and they had "replaced" it with a 5 inch wide plank across a short span or raging water. A lot of the backpackers were tightroping their way across it (if you fell you probably would not get killed but you would almost certainly get a broken arm or something of that nature). With my slippery bike shoes I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and passed on it. Can you imagine what an American national park would do if their bridge washed out? They'd close down the whole trail more than likely.
My guesthouse wasn't the greatest (you can really get dumps in Thailand - I've seen a lot of places that are just a mattress in a 6 by 8 foot room with no windows (they rent for about $3 a night, so you get what you pay for), but I ended up sleeping OK. This morning I took another, equally pretty, route back into Kanchanaburi where I will stay one more night at the Luxury Hotel. Tomorrow I head east toward Ratchaburi and then south a bit toward the coast. I'll probably spend a night along one of the beaches and if I don't like it, head back to Bangkok a couple of days early. This is all up in the air for now. I should have internet access every day from now on in.
June 29
I had an interesting day today. I biked about 110 kilometers (mostly on the main highway of Thailand, which is sort of like I-5 although they don't drive so fast) and got to the coast. I looked at the beach, which was similar to the northern Australian beaches with no wave action and not very interesting sand, and then rode back inland to Phetchaburi. I am definitely not a beach person - I don't like the beach scene or ambiance, and I don't particularly like the beach itself. So that's my sum total of visits to Thailand's famous beaches. Phetchaburi is a pretty nice town with a number of fine wats. There is a particularly spectacular one on top of a 500 foot hill on the edge of town. My guesthouse host (I got a room for tonight for $3) said the only internet cafe in town was located at the top of this hill. So I had a couple of reasons for going up to the wat on top of the hill. About half way up I was confronted by a whole herd of monkeys - and I think they have been in communication with that monkey that attacked me in Zimbabwe. They started hissing and coming toward me. I moon-walked back down and waited until a whole squad of schoolboys started going up. It was funny watching the boys because one of the alpha-male monkeys would not back down. The boys would charge toward the monkey, and the monkey would charge right back. The boys would run back screaming. Anyway, I followed this bunch and finally made it up the hill. It was actually quite scary because there were literally hundreds of monkeys (everywhere you looked you saw monkeys - there were about 20 in each tree as well as all over the ground) and the big males weighed about 50 pounds. There were also signs in several languages saying that the monkeys were dangerous.
The people in this internet cafe are so helpful it is driving me nuts. They keep coming by to fill my waterglass and to tell me various things. This has been a pretty common experience in the non-tourist parts of Thailand. It's a big deal to have a farange walk in, apparently. Tomorrow I am heading to Samut Songkhran, which is on the outskirts of Bangkok and has a train line that goes directly into the city. I plan to stay overnight there and head into Bangkok on the train the following morning.