Thailand trip - Day 2 , part 1

As days pass, I have to push and prod myself to finish the travelogue, thats the commitment ( er, compulsion ) to my blog.

We had booked for a full-day arranged trip on day 1. One package included 'Hellfire Pass Museum' which didnot sound too appealing,so we took a package without it, that cost a little less too.

Early morning the next day when the Travels van came to pick us up,out jumped a young Thai girl and greeted us with the typical thai Namaskara. And then she asked , very politely if we wouldn't mind going to Hellfire Pass, as she had other tourists who wanted to go there, adding quickly that we needn't pay anything extra. Hubby dear and I exchanged glances for a split second, read each other's expressions that said "what the hell, we are on vacation" and immediately said 'Okay' to her. The girl, our tour guide for the day Janet was overwhelmed with relief. She thanked us profusely and we started off.

As we travelled, I found something amusing about Janet's speech - whenever there was some number involved, she would lift that many fingers, almost as if shewas talking to a bunch of deaf people and wanted to be understood correctly. At Hellfire pass, she pointed at a map and started explaining about the railway Japanese wanted built between Thailand and Burma(Myanmar) during World War II ..." Railway was to be 317 km in Thailand, other 110 km in Burma ..." and I was distracted from the map - her hands were pointing 3-1-7 , rapidly followed by 1-1-0 (numbers approximate only) and my mind was going " how does shedo that so quickly?"

Hellfire pass was quickly done with and we moved to the next destination, Erawan water falls. Lunch was provided first, which was neither as tasty nor as filling as day 1. Janet, in her typical style, took the lot of us ( we were around8 ppl in the van ) to a chart that looked like the graph of a crashing stock-market , now you get the picture; pointed at the lowest point " this is level 1 of the falls" - one finger went up , hand moved to top of chart "and this is level 7" - seven fingers went up. "you will go from 1 to 7". Simple right ? so the happy group started walking.

In my mind, visiting any waterfall was akin to visiting Jog falls. Anyone who has visited Jog in recent times would know how insipid the experience can be - vans/buses/cars or whatever you are travelling in take you till the last point of the falls. After you avoid peanut sellers, balloon sellers, fruit sellers and other sellers of miscellaneous stuff, what you see is the huge cut of rock where the river is supposed to 'fall' and then, some invisible hand throws a bucket of water from top and you go "Wow!" in mock admiration. Seasoned to such experiences, I wasn't prepared for what was to come ...