After a bug infested night, there are days and er nights that I’m really grateful for insect repellent. We got up as per our normal fashion about 8ish and headed back to the P Guest House for breakfast.
As arranged the night before we met up with the Belgian couple and headed off for and hour or so on the lake in a longboat. With the four of us splitting the cost, since we were paying for the boat not per person, the cost wasn’t too bad. Certainly would not have done it without being able to split the cost.
It was a pleasant way to spend a few hours having a look around and snapping photo’s. We saw the sunken Wat, or at least what we could see of it. Not really as impressive as it sounds since all you can really see is some crumbling walls sticking out of the water.
After the boat ride we walked the supposedly 1.5km into town (It feels a lot longer than 1.5km) and tried to find a bike or tuk-tuk to take us out to the three pagoda pass. Unfortunately the price was a little steep. To put that in perspective we could have paid less to take the bus to Bangkok. We decided to put that on the back burner hoping we could find or convince someone to split the cost later on.
Things really were not looking good to get to Um Phang. Since everyone shook there heads and indicated we would have to go back to Kanchanaburi. Again we put that on the back burner since we knew the Belgian couple was asking around as well and we just hoped they had more luck than we did.
So for a change instead of feeling like we were banging our heads against a brick wall we headed for the wodden Bridge (said to be the longest wooden bridge in Thailand). Thankfully we managed to find it, with a little help! We headed in what we thought was the right direction but after about 1.5km – 2 km we ended up at the gates of a resort. So we sighed and turned around thinking that we turned down the wrong road and headed back the way we came. Then a local lady indicated, in sign language, that we should head back towards the resort, indicating there was a path around it. Sure enough we found the path (with much clapping and gesturing from our ‘impromptu guide’) and getting around the other side of the Resort we finally encountered the bridge.
We wandered across the bridge being careful not to fall in the holes. We a plank of wood starts to rot through it is mended by the expediency of nailing another plank of wood over the top of it. We ended up on the far side and had a brief wander through the Mon village and encountered a movie set complete with camera crew, lights, cameras actors, guys with loud hailers and walkie talkies and security personnel. We managed to walk right through the middle of it……
We decided to head back to the guest house, relax, have some lunch and generally chill (the dining room of the P Guest House is right on the water so you’re looking out over the lake so is quite pleasant to sit in.
While there we ran into the Belgian couple who were all packed up and ready to leave. Turns out they’d had no more luck than we had in trying to get to Um Phang so were heading back to Kanchanaburi.
After a brief discussion of options we decided to stay the one more night since it was after lunch and we’d paid anyway and then bus hop most of the day tomorrow to get to Ayutthaya (3 buses). That decided, instead of relaxing we hiked back into town once more to check out our options of transport, departure times and cost. We decided to take the Air-Conditioned Mini Van since it departed on the hour every hour from about 8:30am and only took 3 hours instead of 4. That decided we turned around, brought some munchies, then cheated and took a motorbike 10 THB back to our guest house to face the horde of insects for one more night.
