Elephant Rides and The River Kwai part 2 (It was too big for 1)

You are probably thinking that was a full day, but there is more. After the incredible day at the elephant park we went straight to The Bridge on the River Kwai. Just so you know the history of The Bridge on the River Kwai, it was built during WWII in 1942 under Japanese control. The Japanese forced prisoners of war and other Thai laborers to build the bridge in order to get supplies from Burma to Thailand. The railroad that this bridge was built for is still used today. During the building of this bridge 106,000 people died. It seems surreal to think that so many people died building a bridge that today doesn't look all that grand in size, but I can only imagine the conditions the laborers were forced to work under.  Here are some pictures of the bridge.

 The Bridge On The River Kwai

 All of us girls at the half way point over the bridge

This statue faces the river and the bridge and is very magnificent. 

After our short visit to the bridge we were rushed off to a surprise dinner: a boat cruise on The River Kwai. The boat cruise was a huge floating house and we all had a fancy sit down dinner on the boat. It was one of the best things I have done in Thailand (maybe not the best food) and I loved every minute of being out on the water at night. Here are some pictures from the boat cruise.

 Left to right: Lara, Jill, ME, David (wet bed haha), Julia, Lauren, and Dustin (what a shirt right?)

 The little boat that pulled us down the river.

After dinner they played music and everyone relaxed around the edges of the boat until the rain came crashing down. It suddenly went from not a single drop to buckets and buckets of rain falling from the sky. The rain was so pounding on the tin roof so loud that the DJ turned the music way up and naturally the only thing to do was to dance in the rain. Here is the best picture any of us got of the rain dance party. 

And that's all folks... At least that's all for that day. It really was the best day in Thailand I have had yet and I hope you enjoyed all of the pictures! 

Sawadee Kha! 

xoxo

Elephant rides and The River Kwai (Kway)

I'm BAACK!!! 

 Did you miss me? =)  I know I am way behind on this because we were traveling, but I plan to catch you up real quick. Finally you all get to hear about the Elephant park day. This day was jam packed with amazing activities and I am stoked to share all of it with you guys.

We started Thursday (Thursday is Orange in Thailand) with a very long bus ride from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi. We left the majority of our luggage at the hotel and only packed over night bags for this trip. Luckily I left my rain coat and umbrella in my locked up suitcase in the hotel and it was raining cats and dogs outside. Rookie move, what can I say? Hey at least I packed it right?

After our 3 hour long bus ride ( I didn't even have to stop the bus to pee once) we arrived at the Elephant Park just in time for lunch. We were all like little kids and a little too excited to eat all of our lunch. My group's first activity was bamboo rafting down the River Kwai. The river was beautiful and the mountain scenery was out of this world. Everything here is green and lush which made for a beautiful float for us. Don't be fooled by the sound of river rafting and think this was anything like intense river rafting. The bamboo rafting was more like a slow and relaxing river float, but it was perfect! Here are some of the photos of the bamboo rafting.

Jill and I all ready to go

Our bamboo raft with lots of scary critters

Headed down stream

Our boats lined up and ready =)

Not sure why I am making this face, but look how beautiful the scenery is around me! 

Our Captain! 

We only made it about 10 minutes on the raft before we all decided to jump in the water. Only God knows what is swimming in those waters, but we all made it out alive, so no worries. 

Jill got cold feet, but I was ready to jump in the water!

All of us girls floating down the river. We have our ass in the water, toes on the boat.

I guess this is my "we're in the water face"...?

Immediately after our bamboo rafting adventure we headed to the little huts to catch our elephant rides. EEEK! It was so much fun and even though we had a mean guy leading our elephant, it was still a great elephant ride. In India I was able to sit on an elephant, but this elephant ride was way more fun and a little painful as well. We went on an hour long elephant ride through the jungle, across the river, and around the entire elephant park. Here are some of the shots from the elephant ride! 

Hello =)

Normally these guides get off and take photos of you on the elephant, but our elephant was acting up or our guide didn't like us because we were the only ones to not get pictures on our own cameras. We spent about two minutes mad about it, but the ride was too awesome to worry about our picture.

This guy was acting up too and making noise the whole way

Luckily our friends in front of us snapped some pictures. In this picture I am putting my hair up after the elephant just sneezed all over us! haha

Here are the elephants crossing the river. Luckily we did this part 2nd because we witnessed how much elephant poop is in the water we were all just swimming in and elephant poop is no joke!

Because our guy didn't take our photo, and we didn't know if our friends got any good ones,  we bought this one that the elephant camp takes (quite the way to sucker us in to buying from them, but it was less than $5 and we got a cute frame)

Really this cute frame is worth  the money and guess what? It is made of elephant poop! Really resourceful these Thai people are. haha No it doesn't stink!

That's not all folks... Next we went to the baby elephant show. I repeat BABY ELEPHANT. =) The elephants did all kinds of tricks and really were the cutest things ever. I am not sure how well they treat the elephants here or how hard elephants are to train, but I like to think these cute things are well taken care of and treated nicely. Also I really want a pet elephant! haha

Raising the Thai Flag              

Playing the harmonica 













Little bit of hula hoop







                                                        Some Darts!

 How cute are they? =)

                                               I could have stayed with the babies forever!

I even got a kiss goodbye. An elephant kiss feels like someone has a vacuum hose attached to your cheek. Disclaimer: I have never had a vacuum hose up to my face, but I imagine that's exactly what it would feel like. =)

Soi 11 round 2 and the art of Bartering

Sawadee!!

Hi there all! I am trying to scoot along and get you all got up on our travels before we start traveling some more. I wanted to tell you something I forgot that happened on Tuesday. Before we went out on the town on Tuesday we all decided to hang out by the hotel pool and play this game where one person holds a phone on their head that says movie titles, animals, or other categories of things and then everyone has to give them hints until they guess what the word is on their head. We were all playing this game and the word was chocolate. Jill had the phone on her head and we were all giving her hints. I said, "This is something I hate, but most girls like on their period". After this hint Jill yelled, "TAMPONS!". This is only hilarious because I am not sure why Jill thought tampons were something I hate. =P We are still making fun of her for this answer.

Anyways, this post is green because the color of Wednesday is green. Wednesday was a fairly mellow day and we took it easy to prepare for our trip the the elephant camp. For orientation we had a Thai Visa class to better understand what we needed to do to get our visas/permits to work in the country and they need all but my DNA to grant me this permit. Fingers crossed it is an easy task. 

After our day of orientation and Thai classes we decided to go back to Charley Brown's Mexican restaurant for dinner and to go explore more of the Soi 11 neighborhood in the early evening. There were 6 of us who wanted to go and we decided to be cheap, so we all piled in to one shared cab. 

 

Naturally we hit a ton of traffic and by the end of the cab ride with five of us in the back we all had limbs that were sleeping and were good and sweaty. Our tall friend Dustin got the front seat, but he was still pretty cramped against the glove compartment. Being tall is Thailand isn't going so great for him. =P

The taste of these tacos was well worth the uncomfortable cab ride though. Tastes like home to me. You may be thinking that we shouldn't be sick of the food yet and we aren't but you try eating white rice for every meal and tell me you don't want a taco! haha

We really enjoyed walking around the streets of Soi 11, but there was an interesting variety of items for sale on the streets. There was anything from mens underwear, fake watches, and wooden souvenirs to sex stands in the middle of the walk way. Only in Bangkok could you find all of these things on one street right next to each other. Obviously it wasn't the sex shops that made us enjoy this area, but it really was a fun little street to walk down and we practiced our bartering skills. I also had the opportunity to practice my Thai: Mai Ow= No thank you, but in an impolite tone to get the street vendors to leave you alone. 

After a few hours of roaming the city streets near soi 11 we called it a night very early and packed our bags for Khanchantburi and the elephant park! =)

Wednesday wasn't very eventful. Don't say I never told ya! 555 (remember ha ha ha)

Night Night 

Xo

A Palace Fit For a Queen

Hello Hello Hello!

I am sorry to everyone for how long it has been since I have blogged. We have been go go go the last few days and very tired when we hit the bed at night. This post is in hot pink because Tuesday's color is hot pink and we are getting back to that day.

On Tuesday we woke up bright and early and headed to the GRAND PALACE! At the Grand Palace we were greeted by this man and decided we would be on our best behavior!

 The Grand Palace was built in 1782 and there are three courtyards. The inner courtyard is the most prestigious of the courtyards and it is the only one that only royalty has access to. We got lucky for our tour with a sweet little lady named Lucky. 

Sorry I can't get her to be straight!

Before starting our tour of the Grand Palace she taught us a funny way that Thai people explain going to the bathroom in a squatty potty. For women they say I am going to pick a flower (because girls have to squat really low to make it in the squatty potty) and for males they say going to shoot a rabbit (because the keys have to aim in to a really small hole). That has absolutely no relevance to the Royal Palace, but I thought it was quite funny. 

The Grand Palace was very large and the entire thing was a beautiful work of art. One part of the palace that you can't miss is the 18 karat gold dome in the middle of the the courtyard. 

 Every part of the palace was amazing and the more up close you got the better it was. Every little part of the Palace had a jewel, a tile, or a beautiful shape that catches your eye. I trully could have spent hours just staring at one side of the entire palace. This tile work was one of my favorites parts. 

The walls of the Grand Palace tell stories and thus have lots of amazing statues of gods and warriors. Here are some of my favorites.

Before entering the center courtyard temple to see the Buddha and bring him our wishes we had to be blessed with the lotus flower. Here I am receiving my blessing from Jill.

Here is a picture of Jill and I before we went to inside the temple.

 This is a side door because the main door was swarming with people ready to make their wish. Lucky told us that many people who are sick travel many miles to come to see the Buddha and wish for sight, limbs, the ability to walk, and the power to fight off disease.

Every part of the Grand Palace was beautiful and here are two pictures that show just how grand it was. 

During our adventure, a very sweaty one I might add, we found a few cool guys. This one was a little too serious for me.

These two seemed a little more in to themselves than us.

But this one was by far the most amazing of them all.

 I purchased him for my future home. Andie, I hope you and Dave have room in the storage for my 30 foot Thai statue. =P

     After our amazing time at the Grand Palace, we went back for another English teaching course. I want you all to know I have found a friend here who has me completely topped on the blonde moments. In the class the teacher was explaining to all of us that many Thai students do no understand the english word faucet, because they call it a tap, and asked if anyone could guess why the Thai students wouldn't recognize this word. My dear friend Lara raised her hand, quite ambitiously I might add, and said, "Because in Thailand they don't have sinks!". As this was day 3 in Thailand and we had all been using our sinks for those past three days, Lara's answer was quite hysterical to the entire class. I have a feeling her students are in for quite the adventure. haha

     We followed our orientation classes with a welcome dinner that was held on our behalf. The dinner was really good and we were lucky enough to have performers of traditional Thai dance to entertain us during the meal. Here are some of the pictures from the dances we saw. The costumes were very ornate and although they looked very heavy, the dancers did an amazing job. 

      After the welcome dinner we headed to our rooms for our routine naps and then headed out to an area of town that our Thai instructor recommended, Soi 11. Our group was beyond excited because we found a Mexican restaurant called Charley Brown's and decided to pop in even though we were far from hungry. We actually were summoned in by the owner by a bet with me that there was no way his chips and salsa could impress a girl from California. We spent the next two hours talking to the owner and having a great time learning about Thailand. Turns out the chips and salsa were amazing. Here is our group at the restaurant.

    After a round of passionfruit margaritas we headed to a called called levels with a great view of the city. I didn't bring my US driver's license out and ended up having to sneak in to the club. Using fake ids to get in to a 18+ club and I am 22! Here are some pictures from our fun night at Levels. 

At the end of the night we took a taxi cab back to the hotel and I was super excited when it started to down pour. It was our first site of rain in Thailand, but I know it won't be our last. 

I wanted to share my excitement about the rain with my friends, but you can see they were a little less excited.

I stayed awake and enjoyed the rain the entire cab ride home. Overall, Tuesday was a jam packed day, but a fun one nonetheless. Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. =)

Coming soon: Elephants and bamboo rafting! 

XO