Floating Market/River Kwai

Well after a bit of a traumatic night with not much sleep the phone rand at 5.50am as a wake up call by Kit the tour guide - I don't think anyone thanked him for that!! Had breakfast, mango, pineapple and some waffles with what I though was syrup but was honey, and then left Bangkok at 7.30am. We all piled into 3 mini buses so 6 people in each. i had Kristine, Kelly, Alissia, Bekki and Eliza in mine which was ok.
Today in Thailand they are celebrating the Kings 60th reigning year as he became king when he was 16, bit crazy but they love him.
We drove for quite a while and then arrived at a car park and realised we could take the long tail boats to the market so those of us interested jumped in. Got on the first boat at the front which was cool. I actually really enjoyed the boat ride, it was really interesting going along all the "canals" with the houses on stilts and little shops for people to jump out of the boats into. Seemed a lovely simple was of life. There were actually quite alot of Thai people sitting out front of their homes watching the boats, must get annoying the boats going by all the time as they are quite loud.
There was a nice breeze. The floating market was quite amazing as people were just going around on their boats and buying stuff from the stalls.
There was also a market on land so we wandered around that for a bit but the people who run the stalls harrass you to buy stuff so we got round that quickish. It is very hot!! Worried about burning but am using my sun block.
Met up with the rest of the group and after trying some fruit we got back in the buses and headed off to the River Kwai and arrived at 12.45, It was actually quite an impressive bridge considering how it was built. We crossed right over and there was a chained, distressed baby elephant there, some kids wanted us to buy food to feed it but it looked to sad. There were also some small market stalls but not too much of interest. It was a lovely river with pretty nice scenery.
We had lunch in a pizza place, I only had chips as not hungry...
We drove from lunch onto the War Cemetary which is very well kept. There are alot of grave stones there so is quite sad. Kristine and I went into the WW2 and Jeath War Museum which was very interesting and we were there a while. Very skinny PoW's which was really sad, strange that I havenever really heard about any of it.
At around 4.30 we got back in the buses and drove to where we were catching the overnight train. We were there a couple of hours early so went for a wander, there is the oldest buddist building/monument?? , apparently way before christ, there which we walked down to see but they were having big celebrations for the king. We ended up walking right in the middle of all these Thai people praying and so they were kinda staring at us... We moved back out the way. A random Thai bloke came and chatted to us, explaining about the king and that he supported Man U??
We popped to an internet cafe there quickly, very cheap!! We went to catch the train at 7.45pm but it was delayed until 8.10pm so we waited and then when it came we all climbed on to find our beds!!
It had no air con and so wasn't the most comfortable. Anyway, once again I only ended up have a few hours sleep.

Take care
Love
Dawnie
xxx