After settling in at the Jolly Frog we spent the evening at Sugars and met up with the guys from Koh Samet, who hang out there every day. I'd like to say I'd seen them working but apart from one Tattoo I saw Jolie do and Bum's occasional taxi drive, they pretty much spent there lives at the small bar playing what only can be described as a Thai board game half-way between chess and checkers.
Tuesday night was pretty tame as we'd had a long day travelling. I'd probably not like to admit but the following few days pretty much amounted to a lot of lazying around in hammocks, reading and having the all important job of looking after Bums extremely adorable puppy Kartoun.
I was speaking to an Irish guy called Robert on the Saturday and shamefully admitted that all in all the view from the hostel garden (which was stunning) of the river Kwai was about as much as i'd seen of this place... he did agree though- it was one hell of a beautiful view.
Some memories of my trip will be with me forever from that very garden however.
Bum- a Thai in his early thirties- in his broken English told me and Fed the story of his struggle through life and how he'd ended up in Kanchanburi. So matter of factly he told us of his fathers shooting by the Thai Mafia and how his mother had died weeks after his birth due early labour from the grief of his fathers death.
Moving around many places as a child, he spent most of his childhood in Bangkok, but ended up living in Puket working as a driver. (He learnt to drive at 12 in a lorry!.. I did try ask how he reached the peddles but he couldnt understand what i meant.)
Eventually however he started recieving threats from gangs and mobs in Puket, and beat him- scares which still remain to this day.. so from there he went back to Bangkok, until the same happened again and he finally lived a happy life in Kanchanaburi.
Having said all of that though- you will never meet a happier friendlier person.
It just makes you think about your own life and the problems in which you face- sometimes you really have to put them in perspective.
Over the course of the week me and Fed had three massages: a back massage, a Thai massage and an oil massage. During the Thai massage the women kept telling me to relax, but sometimes its hard to relax when you have a ten ton women leaning on your back with her elbows using all of her weight! Those massages were good though- I now know there are many parts of my shoulders I never knew existed until I heard them crunch for the first time!
On the Friday it was Jolie's birthday. Having decided to do something with our day, in the afternoon when the suns heat had relaxed, me and Fed took a walk to the Kwai bridge- built by US, British, Australian and Dutch POWs.
Later on, returning to our Hostel we decided to get our third massage of the week. We'd worked through the various kinds so this time we went for an oil massage- which was amazing. For dinner that evening we decided to venture further down the road to a place named 'one more bar' run by an Australian and british couple... and Oh. My. God... I had the best pumpkin curry of my life in there- well I think it's a strong contender for best Thai food i've had so far award tbh.
As it was Jolie's birthday- Sugar had decorated the bar with balloons and banners and after a knock at the door from Bum, there was to be cake. Now in England you wouldn't knock on someones door at 10pm and say "we have to go now.. we have to get cake!"... but this is Thailand.
The three of us go in Bum's taxi and by taxi I mean a motorbike with somekind of carriage attached and raced across town to the Bakery- although suprise suprise the Bakery was closed... Bum was so upset but demanded we needed cake- so after frantically asking any passerby he could we ran back to the taxi and sped across town to Tesco Lotus.
I kid you not, it was like supermarket sweep- 1 min on the clock and run! We ran around desperately seeking a cake- although there wasn't much choice so we ended up with a cake with a chicken on it, although Bum insisted we wrote on it 'Happy Birthday' so manically looking for a member of staff we found ourselves inside the bakery and left Fed writing on the cake in one of the bakery icing tubes (the women working could not write in English) will be and Bum ran around looking for candles.... Then back on the road flying across Kanchanburi, cake in hand we made it to the party in time to get the cake lit and sing happy birthday to Jolie before it hit 12...
...now I never expected i'd be doing that in Thailand!
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