27 May 2008 - The erawan falls (national Park)

23rd May

We got up around 8am as we were going to the erawan waterfall today. It is a national park about 1 and 1/2hrs from Kanchanaburi, and we had decided to get there by ourselves as a tour to go there cost double our daily budget!!

Before setting off we stopped at the 7/11, (a mini supermarket) and bought some bread, marmalade and a tin of tuna for a packed lunch, and of course a pack of biscuits!!

After 20Min's walk we got to the bus station, luckily a bus was leaving in 10 Min's so we didn't have to wait long. It was only 1.50GBP for a return ticket so we had saved ourselves a considerable amount of money.

We got to the fall at about 11am so we had almost 5 hrs before the last bus left. The fall had 7 tiers in all, some of which had lagoons you could swim in, we were looking forward to cooling off!!

We had been warned by the English girls the night before that there were fishes in the lagoons that nibbled on your toes!! I wasn't too worried as i quite like fish and its never a problem for me when we go diving!! However we got to the first lagoon and there were fish....lots of them both big and small!! Dan got in first, as a couple we have rarely managed to swim together as someone has to guard our stuff, you really cant trust anyone and we had been warned about stealing monkeys too!!

I did go in a bit although i have to admit the fish really put me off!! They follow you where ever you go and they do nibble you, at one point i had 4 or 5 nibbling on my feet!! Dan even had a big one sucking on his toes!!

We went up to the 5th tier but decided not to go any higher than that as it had already been quite a trek. We also met some people who said they almost got bitten by a snake on the 7th tier!!

We didn't have any encounters with snakes but we did see a monitor lizard in one of the lagoons.

Soon enough we had to get back on the bus, we had a great day and was well worth the journey. The waterfall was very similar to one we saw in luang prabang in laos!