Wife Without Borders: Getting our Travel Groove back: Kanchanaburi Road Trip

It's been 45+ days of no local cases of Covid-19 here in Thailand. Though social distancing is still encouraged and masks are mandatory, the country is adjusting what it campaigns as 'the new normal'. Borders remain closed unless you are a citizen and a few other exceptional cases but not without a negative Covid test and a 14 day state quarantine upon arrival (and yet all of our positive Covid tests have come from returnees in quarantine).

A large part of Thailand's economy is dependent on tourism so it's been dealt quite the blow. The government is incentivizing domestic travel by adding in holidays and offering rebates on travel expenses. Many hotels and activities are remaining closed until they can justify the costs of reopening and figuring out the logistics of all the new safety protocols.

Anyhoos, we decided to do our part to jumpstart the tourism industry and picked a place within a 2.5 hour drive of Bangkok: Kanchanaburi.

We upgraded for the trip and now I think we need a full size van.

Kanchanaburi is most famous for it's WWII significance of housing the bridge on the River Kwai. The bridge was built by Japanese prisoners of war, many of whom died in the labor-intensive process.

We stayed at Away Dheva Mantra, a sprawling resort on the river. We had a beautiful room with a large riverside balcony.

View from balcony. So relaxing to sit out in a rain storm. Felt like home.

The grounds were gorgeous and it was worth the trip just to be able to let our kids run around in nature. The windy riverside location coupled with some overcast rainy season relief made for cooler temps than we've been dealing with in Bangkok.

The resort had a gorgeous pool as well with large shallow areas perfect for Juliet to splash around in.

Shallow area

Another favorite feature of the grounds were their rescued bunnies.

We weren't overly impressed with the food there but also only ate one dinner there from their pool menu since the rest of the restaurants were closed or fully booked.

Also, we have a travel highchair that I could have easily brought along, and I knew better than to just assume a resort in Thailand would have highchairs in their restaurants so I even called to confirm. 'Yes, we have baby high chairs', I was told. When we arrived to eat they showed up with this.

I was like 'yea, I don't know if you've ever met a baby but that is not a high chair, that is a death trap'. To my surprise I saw several Asian babies and toddlers using the very same high chair during our stay. Freaks. Juliet just ate safely strapped in her stroller the entire trip. Every single non-resort restaurant we went to had proper high chairs with straps and trays and everything. So the next time I call a resort ahead of time about high chairs I know I need to ask specifically if they have a highchair that my child can't easily topple out of. You live, you learn.

Our main agenda while in Kanchanaburi was to 1)visit the bridge on the River Kwai 2) Hike Hellfire Pass 3) Do a half day experience at Elephant World (caring and cooking for elephants) 4) Hike and swim at Erawan National Park waterfalls. Because of Covid-19, many of these things had to be amended. Hellfire Pass is still closed indefinitely, Elephant World is only open for elephant feedings, and Erawan Falls were open but no swimming is currently allowed.

I'm not sure what covid-19 risk swimming in waterfalls poses especially since they are restricting the amount of people allowed in each day/time slot (we had to sign up ahead of time to reserve our spot and it was basically empty) but we complied with the rules. Jonathan and I both said that we preferred to go and hike it/no swimming with very little people vs getting to swim but with tons of tourists there so it was certainly a trade off.

Our resort was very near to the Bridge on the River Kwai. For those who don't know what I'm referring to, the bridge is famously part of the Thailand-Burma 'death railway' that Japan built during WW II mostly on the backs of prisoners of war and Burmese slave labor. It was brutal work in deplorable conditions and over 100,000 people died in its construction. It's been commemorated in the famous book/movie 'Bridge on the River Kwai' (which FYI is not available on Kindle) but is also the subject matter of the book 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' by Richard Flannagan and the movie 'The Railway Man' with Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman if you're interested in going down the history rabbit hole. Kanchanaburi has many war memorials/cemeteries/museums but with the kiddos in tow we only made the bridge the focus of this trip.

Having visited other sites of WW II significance in Europe, this had a much different feel. Instead of reverence, it was treated more like a tourist trap with hawking and prisoner of war memorabilia. Since the Thailand borders are closed the crowds were minimal which we appreciated. We were able to visit twice and take our time walking across and we ate twice on the river with a view of the famous bridge.

Forest said 'That's the famous bridge? It doesn't look famous.' I can always count on him to provide the comic relief. We also gave him the cliffnotes of WWII and he said Hitler and Voldemort had one very big thing in common: 'They were both EVIL. But Voldemort isn't as scary because he isn't real.' Touche.

We did Erawan Falls on Friday morning, hoping to beat the local weekend crowds and we did. The park was relatively empty during our 9 am time slot. We left Juliet with our nanny, Nanu, which turned out to be a good call because Forest ended up wanting to go all the way to the top which involved some scrambling (tough to do with a baby on your back). At first he was not enthused about boring old hiking but as soon as we arrived on the trail a dog appeared and started following us/leading us around.

Forest quickly fell in love with the pup and followed him eagerly up the mountain leaving me, Jonathan and Khun Sak (our driver) panting behind him.

The Falls have seven different levels of pools and increasing elevations. One through 3 are easily accessible with good paved tracks.

Level 3 was my favorite. The temptation to dive in was pretty strong!

After Level 3 things steepen up and after Level 6 the trail basically disappears and you have to scramble your way to the final stop.

I was glad we had the dog to lead us! It was about 1.9 miles from the car to level 7 with a lot of climbing so it was a satisfactory workout and so beautiful!

We took a good long break at the top and though we didn't swim, we did dip our feet in for fish pedicures. (After the national Parks being closed for 3 months, we figured the fish hadn't had a good dead skin meal in a while.)

And of course, Forest eventually 'fell' in. Who saw that one coming? This kid can't help himself with water. He's been "accidentally falling" into bodies of water since he was 2. At least this wasn't Lake Tahoe in March.

Oops! What happened? How did I get into the lake when my mom told me not to put so much as a toe in?

It was such a good day and hike and Forest surprised us with his good attitude. Our driver (who also has a 6 year old boy that he's taken here many times) was amazed at F's unending energy. He kept saying 'I've never met a kid like you'. Neither have we. Ha! I really wish we still lived in California or Scotland where these sorts of outings were a weekly thing. He'd really thrive with more outside active time and Bangkok is about the worst place for those opportunities.

After the hike we gorged ourselves on Thai food with a good view of a nearby lake.

If you squint your eyes and imagine it's 30 degrees cooler you can almost imagine you're in the English Lake District.

Then we raced home so that we could all nap during Juliet's afternoon siesta. Except for Forest, of course. He rested by watching Netflix. Then we headed back to the bridge area for a walk around and to find some dinner. PS-We like brining our Thai driver with us to dinner because he always knows what to order and how to explain 'American spicy, not Thai spicy.'

The next day we relaxed at the resort in the morning. I mentioned this already but we loved the pool!

It's so hard to find pools that are good for little ones here. They are usually massive and deep and even our strong swimming 6 year old has a hard time getting across them without tiring out. Juliet is a maniac in the water and constantly tries to throw herself out of our arms. I appreciated that the pool at Away had a large Baja shelf sort of step and a very large shallow area with long very shallow steps and fountains where Juliet could explore a bit independently and Forest could play without having to all out swim the entire time. I would stay there again just for this feature alone.

After Juliet's nap we headed to Elephant World to feed the elephants at the sanctuary. Elephants are a big draw in Thailand but it can be tricky to find an ethical elephant attraction. Elephant World rescues elephants that have been retired from unethical tourist businesses or been mistreated or harmed in other ways. Even though their full range of experiences wasn't being offered, we were allowed to purchase food and feed them for as long as we wanted. Forest and Juliet both really enjoyed this!

Juliet really got a hang of it by the end and would hand her banana leaf over to an elephant and then circle back to get another. She was a bit hesitant to give up the bananas though.

If you want this banana, you're gonna have to pry it out of my cold dead hands.

For our final night, Jonathan found a sushi restaurant. It had a really cool field adjacent where the kids enjoyed romping about.

Pretty amazing sushi display.

The next morning we decided to time our 2 hour drive with Juliet's morning nap. This totally backfired as she fought sleep the whole time and was totally miserable. She kept crying for 'momma, momma' which meant I was tasked with keeping her calm the whole way home. THE WHOLE WAY HOME. I still can't believe she never fell asleep. I thought sleeping in cars was the most natural thing for a baby to do. I risked my life several times trying to keep Forest awake in the car so that he'd nap well at home. Juliet was a pro at napping on the go up til 7 months when we stopped leaving the house for 4 months. Thanks Covid! But really, that was the only hiccup in a really good trip! We are trying to take advantage of traveling with a nanny while we have the opportunity and it really does help balance out some of those large-age-gap logistics.