After our Chang Mai trekking experience we headed back to Bangkok before we stated the second part of the tour to Southern Thailand. We had the majority of 2 days free so first off we went for a well deserved massage then a spot of lunch before we said goodbye to Clare and Taryn who were heading down to Phuket for a few days of sun. That evening we met up with the new group and guide who from the start seemed a little incompetent. He started the meeting before everyone was there, he forgot to introduce himself or any of the group to each other or organise a meal which resulted in only a few of us going out for dinner that night.

The following day Pam, myself and the Finish couple Katja and Jukka hired a longtail boat for an hour that took us around the maze of canals around Bangkok where we saw loads of houses up on stilts and kids swimming around in the water which I suspect may be mainly raw sewerage.
On the way back to the hotel we passed a red t-shirted protest (I don’t really remember the names of the groups but I know its yellows Vs reds and the yellows have a penchant for airports). We quickly hurried past them as I’d heard that there’d been a few times grenades had been tossed into the middle of the protests.

That evening we boarded the third overnight train of our tour down to the jungles of Koh Sok National Park which proved to be really good fun.
We spent our first afternoon relaxing down the river on giant inner tubes. The guy who organised it and joined s down the river kept pointing out the various snakes and birds along the river but unfortunately it was too wet to take my camera.

The Bungalows we stayed in where really basic but cool, you don’t get any hot water, but you do get monkeys playing on the roof and porch. I know which I’d rather have (although we did have to keep checking everything for snakes.

We spent the next day hiking around the actual national park although our fitness levels and the humidity proved to be our downfall again and we only really saw the most accessible parts of the park, only a few monkeys and waterfalls. We spent the afternoon playing in the river and on the rope swing.

The next morning was New Years Eve and we had to get up at 5am to catch the ferry to Koh Samui. It was soon apparent that the big black clouds in the sky were here to stay and the next 5 days we had planned beachy islands might not be as sunny as we’d hoped.

Kyoto’s, home to Temples, Shrines, Gisha’s, Parks, blah, blah, blah. When I arrived in kyoto I only had one thing on my mind: Monkeys. There is a monkey sanctuary/park in the Arishiyama area of town. It takes about 20 minutes to climb up a quite a steep hill to the park. At the top of the hill you get ushered into the resting area where there is a cage on one side, from which you can feed the monkeys, but you can also go outside and wonder amongst them. I think I stayed there a bit too long, a couple of them came right up to my leg a started grooming each other.

I spent a couple of hours wondering around the gardens of the Tenryuji Temple which was quite nice, but I suspect that it’s quite similar to the hundreds of other temples that are found throughout Kyoto. I also went down to the Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine which is a series of small temples linked together with pathways which are lined with thousands of Torii (the red gate things). I got a bit lost wondering around and once it was dark the shrines got a little bit spooky.

I lso spent a day in a city called Nara which apparently was Japan’s first real capital (back in 710). It has a large temple and park complex which is inhabited with hundreds of wild deer that have lost their fear of humans and will happily walk up to you (especially if you have handful of crackers that the street vendors sell). Alson in Nara is Todai-Ji, which is a temple that houses the Daibutsu-den Hall, the largest wooden building in the world. Inside is a 15m high Bronze Buddha (I’m about as big as one of it’s fingers). The place was packed with school kids and tourists, but I think it’s funny how people go to places like this and never seem to take their eyes away from the the viewfinder of their cameras. Maybe I’m a little guilty of that as well, but I try to put my camera away for a bit every time I visit somewhere.

I took most of today off to do washing etc. and also to travel down to Hiroshima which is about 2 hours south-west by bullet train. I’m going to have a look around the A-Bomb museum and Peace Gardens tomorrow and possibly go down to Miyajima.