Chanacanaburi? – The stuff five year olds dreams are made of!

A birthday spectacular in the town of Kanchanaburi…if I were five years old the zoo would be where it was at…now I’m 24, it’s the tiger temple! We arrived in Kanchanaburi and booked into some high class birthday accommodation at the Jolly Frog – a hammock haven on the River Kwai. Aside from the mix of 70’s style and paint splashed décor in our room, the air-con was a big luxury!
We booked our trip to the tiger temple for that afternoon and off we trot…arrive at some desolate wasteland and head towards the unknown once again. The set up looks something like tigers subtly (about as subtle as I ever am) chained to the ground, serenely strolling round their posts or impassively laying on the floor…it was all very peaceful which begs the question “are they drugged?”. However, had the tigers been supposedly characteristic - aggressive and prowling around, I’m not sure the experience would have been quite so pleasant! With everyone/thing under control and the flimsy piece of string dividing the apprehensive crowd from the tigers we are ready to go. You give your camera to one volunteer, your hand to the other and they take you around to each of the tigers, sit or stand you next to them and take your photo. Easy peasy! One lucky young lady was sat next to a tiger while the guide pulled it around until it’s head was lain on her lap…she looked mildly terrified!
We went for a birthday feast at the Jolly Frog restaurant and decided to splash out (on this special occasion) on a bottle of wine, we are quite prepared to pay up to three, four maybe even five whole pounds for the privilege!!….however, the only one on the menu was rice wine and cost about 85p for the bottle! The most happening place in town was the Country and Western/Britney Spears fan base bar round the corner which aside from the four staff members had just two guests! I got roped into playing pool with some older men (joy!) I think they kept letting me win…Amy took part in the Connect4 tournament to end all tournaments with ‘funny man’ Josh, there was some inspiring armchair dancing and a cowboy hat featured at one point too!...all this while the CD changed every two minutes to suit the clientele that walked through the door….Britney, Thai karaoke love songs, Country, Now That’s What I Call Music past and present. As a birthday treat we got noodles from 7/11 before crawling into bed.
The pre-birthday celebrations (the night before in Bangkok) were pretty non-existent until we were befriended by a group of folk who were out also celebrating a birthday. We bonded over some Oasis singing and they invited us out to a club…hmmm!? So we get in the taxi (where Jason attempted to eat a bug…which he rapidly spat back out and made the rest of us want to gag) and end up at some sort of aeroplane hanger where coincidentally they wouldn’t let you in without your passport – “well, actually that’s safely locked away at the hostel and not in my pocket waiting for some opportune thief to take advantage of me!” still the nice man let us is in and we were confronted with extortionate drinks and music almost as good as hard house karaoke. Finally we left and managed to catch the valet service in full swing outside?! Oh yeah, I remember now, I also left my car back at the hostel too!?
Our second day in Kanchanaburi we did another tour…elephant trekking, bamboo rafting, lunch, waterfall, cave, Death Railway and the Bridge Over the River Kwai…basically a bumpy ride on an elephant with a “guide”, I use the term very loosely since his guiding = picking up stones for most of the time and not paying too much attention to where our elephant was taking us…downstream, bamboo rafts which floated a couple of centimetres BELOW the surface of the river, lunch where the tour guide made everyone sing happy birthday to me and bought me a cake (plate of biscuits with a candle in the middle), waterfalls where me and Ayms (map-readers extraordinaire) got lost!, and the Bridge over the River Kwai, where in true Thai style safety procedures are pretty lapse and you can walk along the railway line regardless of the trains whizzing by!