We started Crystal’s three week holiday by going to Kanchanaburi, a couple hours west of Bangkok.
It didn’t seem like we were eager to get started. I woke up at 7 a.m. and fell asleep again until 9 a.m. It took us a while to sort things out once we got up. We finally got on the road by about 11:15 a.m. I’d like to say I am the type of traveller who’s up at 6 a.m., car packed by 6:15, but I am not.
We battled Bangkok traffic for a while, but it wasn’t too bad for a Monday morning. We found a quieter route, and we ended up on an even quieter two-lane road through the country on the way to Kanchanaburi.
Along the way we realized we had forgotten a couple things we may need, like my passport and Crystal’s prescription sunglasses. Too late to go back, but we could adjust our route heading north and just go back into Bangkok in a day or two.
Normally I don’t carry my passport, but have pictures of it in my phone. I have been able to use my Thai drivers license for most things where I would need a passport and no one complains. I forgot we thought of crossing briefly into Laos and Myanmar on our trip. Apparently in Mae Sai we can go into Myanmar to a market. I don’t know much about it. I totally forgot we had talked about that. Crystal didn’t realize until about an hour in that we didn’t have her sunglasses. Oops!
We stopped at a Lotus grocery/department store across from the main public hospital once we reached Kanchanaburi. We had lunch at Pizza Hut (of all places) and I went off to the hospital to visit a friend who was staying with her mom in palliative care there.
After that, we found our hotel, unpacked, and proceeded to the famous bridge on the River Kwai. Some of you may remember the movie from the 1950s; 1957 to be exact. The bridge was built by Allied prisoners of war, forced to build it by the Japanese.
We spent the afternoon there, and at a nearby temple, until about sunset. I had been there earlier this year in my first trip around Thailand. The area is much busier now than before, when Covid was still a big worry., which is nice to see.
We made our way back towards our hotel and found a nice restaurant to eat at. We rested at the hotel for a while and went for a massage. Crystal had a Thai massage and had her back cupped. Look it up. It is bizarre. She likes it. I had a one hour Thai massage and I was worried the lady would break me in half! It was good, but I swear the lady must load bags of cement as a side job.
One thing I am struggling with is how I document our travels. I want to do more video, but I really like writing about what we do, and taking lots of photos. Having experimented with doing photos and videos while walking around, I find it is really hard to do both well. I would like to build our YouTube channel, but still be able to do what I have always done.
I can always write about things, but doing the photos and videos at the same time doesn’t seem to work well. While I contemplated doing daily videos, maybe a weekly summary of what we are up to would be better. Picking out the highlights of each day might work best, I think. Your thoughts?
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