While in Bangkok, we decided to take two different day trips. The first one was to a floating market, and the second was to visit Death Railway, Erawan National Park, and some elephant riding thrown in there as well.
Unfortunately I'm not sure which floating market we went to. There are several outside of Bangkok, and they're very difficult to get to on your own, so you must go with an organized tour group. A van came and picked us up at our hotel and took us to the meeting point where we were piled into a different van with about 15 other people.
We drove for about an hour and half before we were dropped off at a dock and all filed into long-tail motor boats which brought us to the floating market.
Over the years, the market has become more and more adapted for tourists. Before they probably only sold fresh food to the local people. Now the water lanes are lined with vendors selling trinkets and souvenir objects, calling out prices and trying to lure you over to take a look and make a purchase. Thankfully there are still some typical boats selling fruit or even hot food they're making right there in the boat.
We didn't buy anything, but it sure was a unique experience. We paid to get a tour through the market where we got into another boat, but this time there was a woman who paddled us through the river.
The day after, we took another group van into the Kanchanaburi region, Northwest of Bangkok for a 2 day excursion. First to visit Erawan National Park and then also to visit Death Railway and do some elephant riding on day two.
Erawan National Park is worth visiting because it's known for it's 7 layers of waterfalls, with natural pools to swim in and even natural "water slides."
It would have been wonderful to visit the falls without a tour group, but again it's a difficult place to reach and you would probably spend more money trying to get there by yourself. So when we arrived we only had 2 hours. Of course we didn't want to visit just the first few layers of falls, we wanted to get the seventh layer!
It's 2 kilometers from start to finish, which doesn't seem so far, but it's all up hill, in 90 degree weather with what feels like 100% humidity. However, once you arrive it is so refreshing to bathe in the pools. But you have to watch out for the fish that nip at your feet!
We were able to see all the layers except 4, and 6 which you had to veer off into a different direction, and we just didn't have enough time, we were already racing against the clock as it was.
That night we stayed on a floating hotel! It was the coolest place I've ever slept, and it was beautiful to fall asleep right over the rushing river. I was worried I might suffer from motion sickness since every once and while you could feel the whole structure bobbing in place, but it was ok!
Being in Thailand, it felt like we had to experience riding an elephant. There are number upon number of elephant "farms" where you can go feed the elephants and take a ride and pay to have your picture taken. Unfortunately many of these places treat the animals terribly. Thankfully this place seemed to treat them pretty well, however later by chance, we ran into another elephant riding experience and it just broke our hearts.
Burma Railway, also known as Death Railway, was a 258 mile long railway system that ran between Bangkok, and Rangoon, Burma that was built by the Japanese during WWII. It was built using forced labour mostly by POWS. Because of the horrible working conditions (over working, starvation, and disease)s more than 100,000 people died while working on the railway.
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