The name's Bond. Jane Bond



"The name's Bond. Jane Bond."

Took the very high speed, skinny boat like James Bond used in one of his movie chase scenes. Our hats would have flown off in the wind if the driver hadn't warned us. I even took my glasses off, afraid to turn my head and have them fly off.

Ahead of us, the famous bridge spans the River Kwai and we see many tourists and locals walking across the trestles. Later when we board the train, these same tourists squeeze into little laybys and suck in their stomachs as the train rolls past. We move quite slowly, giving us lots of time for photos.

The train is the regular local milk run connecting small communities and it takes an hour to get to our lunch spot, a lovely open air restaurant with thatched roof and lazy ceiling fans. The train has large open windows and we can hang out, watching the last cars as the train curves. The seats are hard and made of wood but oddly comfortable. As least for an hour.

Not far away is a large cave housing a golden Buddha far at the back. Guano and smooth deep holes in the ceiling are the only evidence that he once shared this cave with bats.
This isn't the same Buddha, but our camera is back at the hotel so I substituted.

On the way home in the bus, our guide got off at his office and shortly after that our driver got caught by a red light and went through it. Unfortunately, he did this in front of a motorcycle cop. They spoke outside where he produced his papers and when he got back in we asked if he got a ticket. "Yes", he replied. "How much?" "Lots" was all he said. Finally he admitted it was 100 baht, which we knew from our guide is about an average person's daily wage. We were 5 couples on the bus and each chipped in 20 baht to cover his ticket. 100 baht is CAD $3.00.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Summer Palace

Image
Wow. Our days are full of strange sights and long hours. In the bus every morning at 7:00, and never home before 5:00. The summer palace was built by Rama V to commemorate the village where he met his wife. How romantic is that! Lo hiding between the antlers The gardens are gorgeous, with topiary herds of elephants, deer and rabbits. Sounds of peacocks echo through the gardens but they remained frustratingly elusive. Their cries were augmented by the screech of other unseen birds in faraway branches. But we did see an amazing variety of bougainvillea in all colours. Hans standing by the elephant's trunk. From the walls in the Reception Hall, yellowing faded faces of Ramas I to IX gazed out from acestral photos. Each Rama is believed to be an incarnation of Vishnu. Other rooms held lacquered furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl and stunning teak carvings. As with all Buddhist buildings, we have to remove our shoes and in some cases, we were asked the night before to dress respectfu...
Read more

At Sea

Image
Today we were scheduled to stop in Marseille but overnight the wind picked up and we apparently have heavy swells. Too heavy to allow a vessel of this size to dock safely, so the port was cancelled. Didn’t matter much to us since we hadn’t scheduled a tour and were just planning to take the shuttle into the old part of the city for a walkabout. Instead, we have a day at sea and that’s never a bad thing when you’re on a fabulous cruise liner. Already, I was part of a losing team at a game this morning and now I’m catching up on blogging. Later, who knows? There’s never a shortage of things to do on the ship. And there’s always the fitness room. I can only hope it will be full.
Read more