White Guy in Asia (Part Duex)

Tay Za and his wife, Mimi, picked me up at the crack of dawn on Saturday for our trip to Kanchanaburi province. We planned the trip around playing a some golf at this country club Tay Za knows well. We teed off at 1:00 and played like trash. Oh well, good times. I played the 19th hole the best. After our round we cleaned ourselves up and headed out for dinner at the River Kwai. Not only at the river, but on the river via floating restaurant. The boat/restuarant was adjacent to "the bridge" over the River Kwai. Tay Za and Mimi are both Burmese and refreshed my WWII history of the Asian theater. This morning we stopped by the WWII cemetary and paid our respects to the fallen soldiers from the UK and Australia. The experience was very sobering, giving real meaning to the scope and the price that was paid by the greatest generation.

Today, on the way back, we stopped by a Buddhist temple famous for protecting endagered tigers. It was amazing. Although the monastery acts as a sort of zoo, there are no cages and no containment. Once you are within the walls, there is nothing seperating you from 20 or so fully grown tigers. I made friends with this tiger (See picture). We talked about how bad my Thai was. Then he took a nap ;).

Oh, and just to give everyone an idea about how bad Thai / Bangkok traffic is, it took us just shy of 7 hours to make it less than 135 kilometers (~90 miles).