Kanchinaburi

We just got back from a really great weekend in Kanchinaburi. It was Krista's birthday on Sunday, and she is the biggest animal lover that you will ever meet, so Kanchinaburi was the obvious choice. We started the day on Saturday by going to the safari, which was really cool. We saw zebras, giraffes, camels, lots of deer (which they kept on stopping at...we finally told them to keep driving when they saw deer because we saw them all the time in Canada), bears, tigers, lions, crocodiles and elephants.

Before we left they were selling bananas to feed to the animals, so we bought some and I am so glad that we did! When we got to the giraffes, the driver told us to open our windows and feed them. As soon as we opened the windows, they stuck their heads right in and ate from our hands. In fact, we were trying to save some bananas for the animals that came later, but we couldn't because the giraffes could bend their necks in all kinds of weird directions and could always find the hidden bananas. After we drove through the safari, we went to watch a crocodile wrestling show and then got to go touch and sit on the crocodiles. After that we went to an elephant show, where they did all kinds of tricks and let us sit on the elephant trunks and touch the elephants.

After the safari, we went to the tiger temple, where apparently monks have trained a number of tigers and where you can go to pet the tigers and get pictures with them. It was really strange because I thought we would get to pet them and look at them a bit, but it was totally just for taking pictures. You went in with two guides, one who took your pictures and one who held your hand. They basically led you around told you when to sit, where to stand, took your picture, and then moved you along. It was a long line of people and it just felt really strange and really fake. It was still cool, though, to see the tigers up close and actually pet them.

The next day was Loi Krathong here in Thailand, which is a day where people make small boats out of flowers, candles and banana leaves and float them down the river as offerings to the water gods, sort of as an apology for polluting the water all year (so they throw even more garbage into the river! It's supposed to be biodegradable, but some of it totally isn't). It was really cool, we had dinner on a river cruise and got to float our own boats down the river (mine didn't tip over and my candle didn't blow out for a long time, which means that I have good luck and that my wish will come true!) We also got to seee everyone on the shores of the river putting out their boats, it was really gorgeous to see all of these candles floating down the river. They also had lanterns attached to helium balloons which they were releasing, so there were candles floating through the air as well as down the river. It was really peaceful and beautiful. We only ended up getting back to Bangkok at 1 am (and had to teach the next day!) but it was completely worth it!

Now it's back to work for another week and probably off to Ko Samet for next weekend! I uploaded more pictures of this past weekend onto Yahoo if you want to look at them.