Sharks!!

Four days ago I was lucky to be caught in a Shark frenzy with my camera, here are some stills taken from the Film I got for those too lazy to open the video, by the way if you are having trouble,open in Itunes or Quicktime.

Monks do not care for Material objects!!!! THE END

More from the temple wher they bathe bears for 50p, bring your bear the staff will give it a good wash, while the head monk zooms around on his superbike.....
We left Kanchanaburi for Ko Tao the next day, we are now at home, safe and sound, Amy a Divemaster, and working as one, so congratulations to her, raa raa..........

If you started reading here scroll down to Bangers, the start of the trip.

More at the Temple of wonderous animals.....

These are more photos taken at the temple, which show exactly what our 300 baht and some more are helping to keep.
Including the Head Monk of Thailand.
I believe that we were plumping the Tigers lunch with Pumpkin. Amy disagrees.

Ahhhhhhhhhh, F^^*@!g Big Tigers!!!

So the Tiger Temple is where the head monk of Thailand lives with his pet Tigers.
We got a taxi truck woth about 5 others, to this Temple, in the middle of nowhere about 30 minutes from Kanchanaburi. We entered, paid a fee of 300 baht, and walked in to the grounds in a bit of a hurry. As the Tigers are only kept out to exercise in the "Pit" for 3 hours or so. We had only 25 minutes thil they left again.
Luckily we made it, and were ushered down into this quarry, made specifically for the Tigers to interact with there keepers, each other and the public.
Approaching the pit, there was no sounds of screaming, or Tigers roaring, it was a peaceful place, and as we went down the slope, we turned and saw about 16 Tigers, cubs an' all sat resting in the sun. People in blue T-shirts at one end, with the tigers, and the front of the pit full of tourists looking, filming, stroking the Tigers. Mental.
Amy and I went down and was walked in turn around the semi enclosure, where the Tigers were kept on chains only big enough to stop a hedgehog escaping, approaching each one from behind, as to not scare them, told we could stroke them and a photo was taken doing so. The keepers took the photos, and we went to the next.
It was really cool, but not as mystical as we'd hoped. The story of the Tiger Temple goes as Amy will now explain.

It all started when an small tiger cub was brought to the monastery in the laste 90's, her mother had been killed by poacher's and she had been left to fend for herself. She became friends with the monks, who respect all creatures as sentient beings and soon the news spread and the local people and police started to bring other injured and orphaned cubs to the monks. It is said that mother tigers have even brought their babies to the monks when they knew danger was near. The poaching problem in Thailand seems to be getting worse, even though many may think of it as an outdated practice in our modern world. Other abandoned animals were also brought to the sanctuary such a wild pigs, buffalo and ponies.
The reason that the monastery tries to attract as many people as possible to get the chance to have their picture taken with the tigers is to raise for money for their big project, building 'Tiger Island'. This is a 12 acre island surrounded by a moat, where the tigers will live in their own jungle habitat and the cubs will be able to learn to hunt for themselves, rather than become too domesticated by a lot of human contact. Visitors will no longer be able to stroke the tigers but instead view them in their natural surroundings. So we gave them lots of donations and I am hoping to volunteer there for a week or so before we leave Thailand as they take on helpers and you get to stay at the monastery.
And this is why we wanted to go and see for ourselves. We believe it is a real worthwhile project, not greed endorsed like so many other such charities. And the Tigers are not on drugs like so many people think.

Thailand - Kanchanaburi

So we got a 16hour bus journey from Vang Vieng, to Bangkok. We had a 2 hour stop in Vientiene, Laos' capital. Seemed like a regular city, didn't see anything apart from the inside of a french cafe' s toilet. So nothing to report, except it was very clean and comfortable.
We arrived in Bangkok at some ridiculous hour, 4am or something, so decided not to wait around for buses and hopped in a cab to Kanchanaburi. Or better known, The Bridge Over The River Kwai.
It took an hour or so, but by the time we got there, the sun was already out and hot, we were very glad for that.
After a little discussion with some passer by we ended up staying at a place called Bamboo Bungalows. Very nice, well manacured gardens, right next to the River Kwai, with floating bungalows actually on the river. We stayed firmly on land as we needed our own bathroom and the floating rooms did not cater for us. Was basic but comfortable, and we slept for the day.
We wanted to be ready for our day following. The Tiger Temple.

Our Last Days in Laos

So we returned to our place, and as it is right by the river, we could clearly see why the Tubing had been cancelled. The river had fully engulfed the Island, although there was still "Eminem" blasting from the bar, and people crossing the bridge to enjoy the serenity of sitting in a fast flowing river. We laughed.
The photo's here show how high the river is, it has flooded our garden entirely. And the poor people staying next door can't be best pleased with swimming to and from there bungalow, (with the blue roofs).
So in a way sad to leave Laos, but happy to be heading back to the sun we had left behind. Amy and I had both started to loose our magnificent suntans as soon as it started to rain, and had to claim our skin tone back quick. So we booked 2 tickets back to Bangkok, so we could get on with our plan.
Oh and by the way the day we left we both got some kinda food poisening, as we were, shall we say, weeing from our bottoms, the bus to Bangkok was not the nicest place to be in such predicaments.

Sorry it is all back to front........

At this point in the Blog, I would like to apologise that you are all reading this confused as to where it begins and where it ends.
Well it begins at the page marked Bangers!. So scroll downt to that page and then you can read from the beginning of our trip, and it will finish when it says The End.
Sorry to be a pain in the arse!
The photos are from the trek, we saw a monkey, tied to a tree though, not a pretty sight, but the monkey was a strange type we had not seen before. Hence the photo.
From here, we crossed the river, back to the paddyfields on the otherside and finally into a waiting Tuk tuk. Was a nice trek, but would've been better two days before, we would've missed the rain, and seen all the caves, tubed back and have a whole much more to say about it too. But such is life.

More photos of Elephant cave

The thing hangin gon the wall here is a Bomb. It is from the 2nd World war, and now they use it as a Gong. They whack it eveeryday, it is still live, well unexploded. Crazy Laos.

The Elephant Cave

These photo's were from our second cave expedition of the day, the Elephant cave. The cave itself is home to a temple, as many are . I guess it saves on building materials.
The reason it is "The Elephant Cave", is the stalagmite that looks profoundly like an elephant. Check it out. Cool huh.
Also the big foot print is Buddha's, yep, "Buddha" has size 207 feet.
Also it was right next to a field of Buffalow, from which our guide showed us exactly the right poo to get Magic Mushrooms from.
We weren't alone on the trek, there were two others, a couple from Brighton actually, small world huh. Anyway, at the beginning of the trek, the guy, forgotton his name, lost both sandals in the mud turning them into flip flops. He then had to trudge through the mud, in makeshift flip flops. Hehe. It was totally the most unlucky thing that happened that day. As we all got filthy in the mud our guide suggested we took our shoes off completley, only to feel the mud squelching up between our toes. Not a pleasant feeling.
After getting to the Elephant cave, we were knackered, had walked about 8 miles int he mud, to get to these caves, and was expected to go the exact same way back. Amy and I had opted for the tubing experience down the river back to our place, but the river had swollen so much that the government had put out warnings to the guide that we shouldn't do it for safety reasons. I was still up for it, but had no intention of maiming Amy on a tree or rapids or anything at all really. So I will say for her sake we didn't tube back, but we will definatley not turn down the option to do a bit of exteme tubing next time.
We got back to Vang Vieng and ate our dinner, with the unpleasant taste of fresh Buffalow Shit Mushrooms as an entree'.

Trekking in Vang Vieng

More photos

Trekking in Vang Vieng.

So as I said, it rained, it rained alot, and we all got soaked. The river split its banks and the island was gone, beneath 4 ft of water. We went trekking, not really thinking about the rain, and believe it or not, not considered what it would've done to the trekking. We went onto find out that everywhere we were expected to walk was soggy and muddy. However we had paid for this trip, and was not gonna have our spirits dampened.
So we headed out into the middle of no where, where our guide, who wore flip flops the whole time, took us to a set of caves. The first was a water cave. Couldn't go in though, as the river was too high. Then the 2nd, no go, as it was too slippery and an old man had already slipped and smashed his camera. So we settled for a little lunch and was to enter the 3rd cave.
We finally managed to get to the cave, they gave us a head lamp which was suppose to be water proof. Turned out the battery was in a plastic bag, and placed into a plastic box, water proof!!
We went into the cave, about 500 metres, although it goes for much further. We didn't fancy going in more as it became harder to manage not slipping over. Apparantley you can walk into the cave for about 4 km and there is a waterfall, but no oxygen and highly dangerous. So we stayed within 1km.