Thailand

Tuesday night, we are at our Hotel in Thailand after being on 3 planes and airports for a total of 19 hours of flying and a 3 hour drive to our hotel in Cha-am on the Gulf of Thailand. We arrived with one less piece of luggage, mine. It left Paris on an Air France flight that is arriving tomorrow.

I am convinced that the Air France Lounge Agent with whom I had an argument had some hand in getting even with me. I guess it is like a restaurant “do not” where you don’t argue with your waiter if you don’t want your food tainted. You can add airport agents to this list of do not’s. Lynne’s luggage arrived with our plane. While my bag with a PRIORITY luggage tag arrived at 8pm the following day, with my cigars!

Wednesday, it is sunny about 95 with a warm breeze, a very large pool and gulf swimming. We are on the 18th floor with our own deck overlooking the Gulf of Thailand. In this hotel, there are mostly Germans. When it comes to communicating, they speak English in both the hotel as well as in the Cha Am village.

Our hotel in Chia-am is right on the beach and looks like a Miami setting with high rise hotels and condos along the Gulf of Thailand but they are well separated by at least 1/8 mile.

The street behind the hotels is a little low key village with cheap Thai restaurants, custom clothing stores, trinket shops and other essentials for the locals. I am “shrimp” out and we have not had western food since being here.

Thursday-Friday, this place is relaxing and Lynne loves it. It was only 103 in the sun today, but we stay at the pool having drinks at the pool bar where the seats are in the water.
Saturday, we did a little touring to the Phr Nakhon Khiri palace

and the Floating Market in Damnoen Saduak.
Sunday, so we headed for the big city for a change of scene. We going north to Bangkok for the remainder of our trip. So we will be in Bangkok until Wednesday, the 11th and arrive home on the same day. We had originally intended in staying in Chia-am but too much sun, beach and pool.

Monday, we did a lot of walking since it was Makha Bucha a Buddhist holiday in Thailand. We walked to the Golden Mount,

The Democracy Monument

and the Wat (Temple) Ratchanatdaram Worawihan.

While it was only 2.1km (1.3 miles), Lynne thought she had just done a marathon with the swept dripping from shirt, but at we treated ourselves at The Democracy Monument, where we ate a very upscale Thai restaurant which cost only $30. Needles to say we took a taxi back to the hotel. While we took a metered taxi which means the meter is not working once you get in, so I negotiated a price of 200bht which was another experience since the cost of the trip went up 100bht at our destination, but I only paid him the original negotiated price of 200bht.

Tuesday, we drove to the River Kwai where the Japanese built the infamous bridge with prisoners of war labor during WWII. We visited the War Cemetery at Kanchanaburi which was very moving.

Then on the banks of the River Kwai, we visited a war museum showing how bad the prisoners was treated and how the area has developed into a memorial. Next we took a fifteen minute boat to the “Bridge on the River Kwai” that was depicted in the named movie but is not the bridge the Japanese actually built which was bombed 1945.

The area is very touristy and built up, so it is hard to imagine what it looked like 68 years ago as a desolate river bank. From here we took a one and half hour train ride towards Burma where the scenery is mostly sugar cane, pineapple and tapioca farms.

This is the same railroad the Japanese built, but modernized and again very touristy. Other then the scenery, the train passed through several prisons of war camps and we got of where there is a cave with a Buddha in side.

Wednesday, we went shopping and are heading home today.