Home » Thailand » The bridge on the river Kwai, caving in Northern Thailand.

We spent the first few days in Bangkok gathering information about potential next destinations, including trying to find out how to get visas for all the neighboring countries and how best to get there.

The bridge on the river Kwai, caving in Northern Thailand.

Odv
2006-04-13 20:08:24

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at the nearby hot springs. Elephant rides are on offer, but the elephants are controlled by their mahouts with sticks and metal hooks. When not riding they are chained to poles with hardly any room to move.

Unfortunately 100 US Dollars was stolen from the security box of our hotel. I noticed something was wrong when I got the bag back because the contents was no longer the way I had placed it. We called the police. After a few hours the hotel manager offered to refund our loss, because she said she felt responsible. But I have a suspicion that it was the hotel staff that stole it, most people might not check properly and will be long gone before they notice anything is missing, others don't have time to go to the police because they have to move on. Those who do discover it are simply refunded, which is no loss to the staff!

At the police station I discovered a less pleasant side of Thailand, they wanted me to sign a document in Thai, but when I added the text "I do not understand Thai" next to my signature, The police got into a rather nationalistic spin, about how their document was now "polluted" with a foreign language and that it was an insult to their King. I thought it rather insulting that the English was considered so inferior as not to be worthy to placed on Thai paper. I pointed out that I did not write it in my native Dutch, but in English so that they could understand, while I could not understand any of the Thai text and that I was in no obligation to sign a document I could not read anyway. Not that reasonable explanation helped, but they eventually got tired of not being able to impress me with the "seriousness" of the situation and forgot about it.

Tham Lod
Trying to forget the unfortunate incidents in Pai and the darker side of Thailand it had exposed, we traveled to Soppong, from where we took a car to the Cave Lodge near Tham Lod (Lod Cave). Originally planned for just a day or two, it was such a pleasant ...