Day 204 - Seven Levels of Fun

Erawan National Park sits about an hour's bus ride from Kanchanaburi. The main draw there is the 7-tiered Erawan falls. Aside from being very pretty, swimming is permitted in all the pools. The water is clear except where the force of the water churns up the milky white limestone as it tumbles down. The shallows of every pool are populated by schools of fearless little fish that nibble on hands and feet. In fact, during the building of the death railway, men would use the nibbling fish (not here, in the river Kwai) to clean away the dead and rotting flesh from their wounds.

Levels four and six to seven were particularly fun. Six to seven because the rocks were full of natural hand and toe-holds, so it was east to climb up the falls between the levels. The Australian and I went up this way and were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves, thinking we had found an untraversed part of the falls. Then we noticed a group of people emerging from the woods and a sign saying , 'end of the path'. Turns out we weren't the pioneers we thought we were - there was in fact a path by which one could walk quite comfortably to level seven. Our way was till more fun though.

Level four was great because its rocks were covered in a slick brown algae, effectively turning them into natural waterslides. We each took turns winging our way down the different boulders until it was time to dry off and hike back to the bus.

Tired and pleasantly sore from our very active day, we quickly changed and returned to our favourite restaurant for a big dinner. We figured we burned up enough calories to order at least twice as many dishes as we had people.

After dinner, most of us went for massages. Traditional Thai massages start at about $4 US for a full hour treatment, and oil massages (more like Western massage) are about $6 per hour. Cz, being the most sore from yet another day spent trekking went in for a whopping 2 hour treatment. He came back so relaxed and happy that I think the cheap massages might be just the carrot to get him traipsing around the hills on a regular basis.