It is SO nice to be away from Bangkok, the fresh is a definite plus, and it is so beautiful here. We are staying in a guestho
use that is literally right on the river.. when speed boat go by or it gets really windy you can feel your room rocking. When we arrived from the bus it was around 2 in the afternoon and after a group meeting and some lunch we all piled into a little boat and headed out to a cave that was a few miles away. We had to walk a short ways to get to the cave from the river and after paying the entrance fee we were led into the cave by our guide-- a little boy who couldn't have been more than 6 or 7, so cute! The cave wound around, up and down, parts were so narrow short and narrow you had to climb through... our guide stopped in every little room to point out the name of the room. Many of the rooms had buddhist stautes in them with candles and such. The cave was really very interesting to see, although it was sooo hot, the air was so humid and stale, the heat just sticks to you, we were glad to come out into the "cool" air outside.
use that is literally right on the river.. when speed boat go by or it gets really windy you can feel your room rocking. When we arrived from the bus it was around 2 in the afternoon and after a group meeting and some lunch we all piled into a little boat and headed out to a cave that was a few miles away. We had to walk a short ways to get to the cave from the river and after paying the entrance fee we were led into the cave by our guide-- a little boy who couldn't have been more than 6 or 7, so cute! The cave wound around, up and down, parts were so narrow short and narrow you had to climb through... our guide stopped in every little room to point out the name of the room. Many of the rooms had buddhist stautes in them with candles and such. The cave was really very interesting to see, although it was sooo hot, the air was so humid and stale, the heat just sticks to you, we were glad to come out into the "cool" air outside. 
After returning from the cave we piled back into the boat for one more stop, a WWII cemetary which is the resting ground for prisoners of war that were held by the japanese and used to build the railway that runs through here, which is rightly named the "death railway".
It was as we started to leave the cemetary that we noticed some clouds quickly moving in and some spinkles of rain. As soon as we all piled in the rain just started POURING down in sheets. We were completely drenched in seconds.
Fortunatley our boat driver had put the tarp up across the top of the boat, but the sides are all open, so it only helped minimally. As we arrived back at our guesthouse there was a break in the rain and we were all pulling our money out to pay the driver and, just my luck, as i pulled my money out my debit card was caught in a bill and fell straight into the water-- ironically seconds before this Laura had said, "I better not drop anything into the water..." I rushed to the edge in time to see my card float right down and out of sight. We all ran to the other side of the barge to see if it would float out the other side, but no such luck. Yet another bumb along the way... Fortunately Laura is going to be able to help me cover some costs until i can figure something out, otherwise i don't know what i would do!
Luckily the rest of the night went smoothly. We had some free time (my time to be really frustrated and then get over it) Laura was exhausted from not getting any sleep the night before and so she passed out on her bed and i went up to talk with the other members of our group. It was perfect sitting at the tables under the porched area and watching the rain pour down. The picture to the left is Laura and I with the other girl from our group, Eva. We were all set to head to dinner in the rain. The street we walked up was no longer a street, but more of a river. In places the water went half way up my shin.. thank goodness we brought rain ponchos and waterproof shoes!
Today is Saturday and we were up early to start the day. We met our guide around 8 and we down the street to a local eatery in order to try a real Thai breakfast. We had SPICY, and i mean spicy, chicken and rice and some kind of tofu and pork soup (yes, this is breakfast)... My mouth was burning, i couldn't even finish it!
Next we loaded into the back of a truck with benches in the back, its called a sangthaew, in order to make the hour drive to Erawen falls. The falls were beautiful... we hiked all the way up, there were 7 pools total and we were able to swim in the water, what a relief after hiking uphill in the sweltering heat!
Everything here has been so amazing, we have to keep pinching ourselves to realize that we are really here and its not all a dream! It was a bumpy road getting here but its all been so worth it.
(side note: we weren't able to go the tiger temple, we learned from our guide that it was not what we expected it to be and would have been much more expensive than we anticipated, and not worth the money... so we were ok with that!)
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