31 January 2011…What do you buy a girl who has everything?  That’s exactly the dilemma I face every Christmas, which awkwardly arrives each year in the same week as Julie’s birthday.  Well, this Christmas the answer was easy!  I bought her a tent and a sleeping bag and a sleeping mat.  Not because she only had 12 tents to choose from back in Australia but because she didn’t have any tents in Thailand and that’s what I knew she really wanted. 

It turns out I was right!  On our first available weekend we packed the car and shot off for one of our favourite places in Thailand, the district northwest of Bangkok called Kanchanaburi. 

Kanchanaburi is a spectacular place to spend a weekend – and we should know because we’ve now spent many weekends in the area.  It’s only a couple hours drive from Bangkok, full of beautiful scenery, 13^th century Khmer temples, magnificent national parks and uncountable waterfalls.  But Kanchanaburi is probably most well known for the Bridge over River Kwai, made infamous by the Japanese in World War II and made famous by Hollywood.  

A peaceful setting for these 800 year old Khmer ruins

We had two sites in mind for the weekend, the Prasat Meuang Singh Historical Park and Sai Yok National Park, both of them absolutely top drawer attractions.  To get to the historical park we had to pass huge trucks obscenely overloaded with sugar cane cut from the nearby fields.  It would not be a stretch to say we saw many hundreds of these trucks carrying their loads to the nearby sugar cane mills as we passed through the countryside.  

I take her to all the best spots for lunch

Prasat Meuang Singh Historical park is about 40 km northwest of Kanchanaburi on the banks of the River Kwai (sorry folks but Kwai pronounced the way you think means buffalo…this is pronounced like ‘square’ without the s).   It has the remains of a 13^th century Khmer temple and adjoining buildings, regarded as the furthest outpost of the Khmer empire.  The ruins of the main temple are not in the same league as Ayuthaya or Sukhothai but are very impressive nevertheless.  The whole grounds, with its wide long wall still intact, are set in a beautiful peaceful setting, large shady trees surrounded by well kept grounds, a green tranquil place to spend a couple of hours. 

We then headed north to Soi Yok National Park, about 90 km north of Kanchanaburi.  The River Kwai runs right through the park but its biggest draw card is the waterfall which comes from a substantial amount of water that has bubbled out of the limestone caves deep underground to pour over the 10 metre banks and down into the river.  

Foreign tourists seeing Sai Yok National Park in style

Soi Yok has some beautiful camping areas under groves of teak trees, one of our favourites with leaves the size of toilet seats.   We paid our camping dues (about one dollar each) and carried our gear to a private little grove high on the banks above the river, the whole secluded spot to ourselves.  Oh yeah. 

We explored the area, including the dramatic suspension bridge perched high over the river, the waterfall, the various restaurants and walking tracks, then followed that time-honoured tradition of any campsite – cocktail hour!  A beautiful sunset followed, boats up and down the river up until dark, then a cheap little dinner at a nearby food stand near the park’s main area.  The evening was mild, the setting was serene and the moment memorable, even for wizened campers like us. 

Another waterfall, another group of Thais enjoying themselves

And to add special affects for the evening, one of the houseboats tied up for the night down below featured all night Karaoke singers, crooning away without stop throughout the night with their squeaky microphones and broken voices.  

An underground privilege - the smallest mammal in the world, weighing only 2 grams

The next day was spent walking the numerous nature trails and walking tracks to the various attractions of the park.  By the time we headed home we clocked up over 9 km through beautiful bamboo and teak forests, past openings in the limestone ground where water just poured out (starting the creek that eventually made the waterfall) almost by magic.  We walked up to a cave which housed the Kitti’s hog-nosed bat, the smallest mammal in the world and shuffled our feat through an endless deep carpet of fallen leaves.  

But most poignantly, we also walked along a section of the old railway line that POW’s built as forced labour for the Japanese under absolutely atrocious conditions, tens of thousands dying along the way.  Standing in the beautiful groves of trees, listening to the wind bend the bamboo, the birds up high, the sun sparkling through the branches it just doesn’t seem human to forcibly build a railway through this remote jungle.  

You’re never sure what might be found in the deepest jungle

We finished the day by hiring a long tail boat and going upstream to explore the hidden turns and banks of this famous river.  The key manmade features in these parts are the huge houseboats where Thais come to spend their weekends on the river, often serenading the mountains with their Karaoke all night long.  And don’t we know that. 

Amazing walks through the bamboo jungles

All too soon we were back in Bangkok that night, another fantastic weekend and another catalogue of great memories.  And unique for us, a weekend where the car stayed parked for almost 24 hours as we soaked in a beautiful spot and made plans for our return visit.