Arrived safely in Kanchanaburi

Packed and ready

Wow, that was a long day but well worth it already! It seems like a heck of a lot longer ago than 28 hours that we left London. Getting to the airport, getting parked up, checking in all went as smooth as can be. We got given priority boarding, as we were classed as likely to "need more time to get sorted!" and we're sat down to enjoy some movies very pleasantly. Unfortunately the plane then ended up needing to go back in for repairs after taxiing up and down for a while, something to do with the cooling system this time, all very déjà vu to Egypt, but luckily fixed within a couple of hours.

The most stunning sunrise over India this morning

Food was pretty good and the movies not too bad either but no one got a whole heap of sleep and Freya ended up having a very grey/fainting episode walking to the toilet about 9hrs into the flight and spent the next two hours with her feet being held up in the air! Can't complain at BA's reaction to this though, they couldn't do enough for us...didn't bother telling them I'm a nurse either...they all seemed to have it well under control! And after finally clearing customs, our lovely driver Boonme was ready and waiting exactly where the guesthouse had told us he'd be...he was looking rather hot and bothered tho...guess they don't check the arrivals online before setting off here!

Our journey to Kanchanaburi was slow and tedious, but we all slept on and off having only had about 4 hrs each overnight, though none of us appeared to be struggling with the fact that our bodies were being told it's 7 he's later than we think it is! The views were stunning and we discovered a few things; that Bangkok has hot pink taxis, the Thais love to bling up their vehicles, and they drive on the same side of the road as us...never expected that one!

View from just outside our door of river Kwai

We were treated to an unexpected lunch by our taxi driver too, who suddenly just swerved off the main road to pull up right alongside a guy and his umbrella, a little haggling ensued and then we were passed back 9 hot wrapped corn on the cobsstill in their skins..."eat eat!" You can imagine the overtired English kids looks of confusion...mine and J's weren't much better!! They were really delicious but a bit drippy for in-car munching!

The guesthouse way exceeded what we expected and our little family room is actually more of a basic suite really and is the only room in the hotel with h views directly over the River Kwai (incidentally it's pronounced Kwair not Kwhy locally... who knew?!?). We had a quick mooch up and down the road outside to get bottled water then came back for a well deserved swim...it was 37 degrees!

80p dinners

After chatting to some locals about recommendations of good places to eat and booking some stuff to do tomorrow, we ended up in a backpackers outdoors restaurant called the Jolly Frog, it was mostly Thais in there and Liss, having drawn a fair amount of smiles and stares through the airport etc, got her first ever super fan...one of the he waitresses was completely besotted with her and persistently asked us to take pictures with her and made the biggest fuss ever! Liss eventually saw the funny side of it, and was laughing at the lady after a while...just as well because I suspect we might be going back there tomorrow...the food was delicious, the kids enjoyed it and it cost us 40 baht per dish...about 80p!! All that with loads of geckos walking across the ceiling chucked in for free entertainment... Not a bad start :-)