After breakfast, we left the hotel and went to the Saiyoke Yai Waterfall and National Park. My first national park… cool! According to Kong, the waterfall gained fame because one of their old kings bathed in it a few times. We were able to view the waterfall from afar and up close. Kong took us again to a spot where we could take our “Kodak Moments.” Hahaha. We crossed a hanging bridge on foot and we got to the other side where we were able to take photos of the waterfall. We then went down to the riverbank where we waited for our turn to ride a boat and visit the waterfall and some of the caves upriver. The scenery was tranquil and the views spectacular. Just like in the river Kwai, there was quite a multitude of floating restaurants, houseboats and there was even a very big riverboat (I think it was a restaurant - pretty much like the one we rode in Chao Phraya for lunch) in the middle of the river. The ride lasted for almost an hour.

We proceeded to Hellfire Pass which was a part of the Burma-Thailand Railroad Trail. The Japanese had thousands of POW’s construct the trail in this steep and rocky mountain. They labored all day and through the night by torchlight (!) and the torchlight cast an eerie light in the tunnel hence the name Hellfire Pass. It was quite a walk to get down from the road to the Pass. I cannot imagine what the prisoners went through to create a tunnel using basic tools and their bare hands in the middle of the night. The railroad track had long since been removed – proof was the tall tree smack in the middle of the track.

We had lunch at a place not far from Hellfire Pass. This restaurant was near the Death Railway Train Station. We ate lunch in a hurry because we had to catch the train. We were going to do the Death Railway tour on the train. The train was old – perhaps going back to the war era. But I’m not sure. There were tourists on board and there were local people too.

We got off the train and got on our bus again. Our bus boy and driver are always so smiling and I was glad to see them. Up next on our itinerary was the Tiger Temple! I was excited to see real live tigers up close! But I had to hold my excitement a while longer because we had to fill our a form and then we had to walk some more. But it was worth it. The tigers were so beautiful! They all looked healthy and pretty satisfied. In fact, they were either sleeping on their backs or they were just lazing around. They looked just like those huge stuffed tigers you see in malls except they were really huge. I had my picture taken with one tiger lying on his back and I kinda missed my cat a little bit because he slept on his back all the time. Meow. There were a lot of people lining up to get their pictures taken with the tigers. It was quite hot and there were huge electric fans cooling the air around us. One interesting thing I noticed was there other animals in the centre too. There were deer, pigs, goats, and horses. It was a great place to take care of animals.

When we got back to the hotel, we were all tired and very happy. For me, today was one of the highlights of the trip. I was so beat I slept when we got back to the hotel. After dinner, we invited Tana and Melissa to watch the movie “Premonition” on my computer. There was only one English-speaking channel and it was from Russia so the news was mostly about Russia and we didn’t want to watch it. Good thing I bought that DVD in Divisoria right before I left for Bangkok and it came handy for a quiet night like this. It was a good movie, I’d give it 7 stars.