Nash and I went on a weekend trip to Sangkhla Buri in the Kanchanaburi Province of Thailand.

The video says it all. We had a fucking good time. My best weekend in Thailand, so far!

I highly suggest the trip with a buddy if you get the chance…here’s how we did it.

We didn’t have any expectations. This is key if you want a chill and surprising weekend. You’ll end up doing things that you wouldn’t expect and wouldn’t be possible to plan ahead of time.

Take a buddy. Take 2 buddies max. This trip is better as a duo, since flexibility is where the spontaneity and magic of chance occurs best.

We left Friday night from Chachoengsao. The drive in Nash’s car took us about 7.5 hours including stops for gas and food. We arrived at the Mon bridge about 30 minutes before sunrise, we were tired, but it was well worth the effort to see the mist in the mountain tops and the sunrise. The Mon bridge is a walking bridge, so the one for cars is where you get the great viewpoint from. There were photographers set up to photograph the bridge with the sunrise behind it, and there were about 20 other tourists watching as well. It was magical being there in the wee morning while it was still twilight.

 

After the sun was up, we drove back across the bridge – it was time to eat. We found a town market selling food. There is a Sevy and a Family Mart there as well. The market had standard Thai food and Burmese food, since it was so close to the border. There’s a guy who makes fried bread – like a doughnut or beignet.

We wanted to eat on the bridge, so we took our food to go. We drove over to the start of the bridge. There’s decent parking for a car or bikes on the street connecting to the bridge. It’s a residential street. On this same road, we found a cabin to rent for a few hours of rest. We weren’t able to convince the lady of a discount, but we really needed sleep, so we didn’t mind.

The cabins overlook a ravine and part of the bridge. It’s definitely a beautiful place to stay. Here’s the location.

Later in the day, after a long nap, we checked out and went for lunch. We crossed the Mon bridge by foot and found a restaurant just on the other side. We saw a temple from the bridge and decided to walk up that way to find it. On the way, a kid told us to hop on the back of his bike and he would ride us up to the temple. Sweet! (this wouldn’t work with 3 people – this is duo-magic! )

The temples were nice, and the walk was nice. On our way back it started to rain a little, so we took shelter under an awning. We were stuck there for about 20 minutes, but we made the most of it by checking out the pictures and videos we had already taken. It was fun.

While we were waiting, a mother and daughter walked past us. The daughter must’ve been around 7 years old. They smiled and waved, and so did we. Then they ducked into a house across the way. The daughter brought us a spare umbrella for us to share and keep! Wha!?!? More DUO-MAGIC!

So we’re completely reeling in the feels and adventure of this trip already.

While we were chillin’ on the bridge, we watched people walk past us and we watched them sneak photos of us. 😉

We got our faces painted by the girls with the gold stamps and matching selfies. Of course.

We drove up to the Myanmar border, it was about a 15 minute drive. The car tire needed air, and it took us a few places to find it, but eventually we got some air. This added some flavor to the trip.

The bordertown was cool. We didn’t have enough time to go across, and Nash didn’t have room for a stamp in passport, but we drove up and down the street which had a wall separating the two countries. There’s holes in the wall/fence that people walk though. It’s a town, but part of it is in a different country….that doesn’t stop these people from their daily life.

We walked around the small village a bit, we checked out the market, and then we thought we might have enough time to hike a waterfall, so we checked out the closest one and drove over to it. The drive ended up taking longer than we though and the road was curvy with blind spots.

When we got to the waterfall parking area, we could see that this place hadn’t been maintained for at least 2 or 3 years. There were no park rangers, signs were broken, and the trail was overgrown. I happened to hear flowing water, and that was the only reason we found the trail head. After a few minutes on the trail though, we realized that it was too dark and too overgrown to be safe for passage. There was fresh elephant dung and getting mauled wasn’t on our list of ‘duo-magic’ things to do, so we retreated back to the car, and drove back to the Mon bridge town to find a place to sleep.

There was a night market to check out, and a beer store with a large variety of imports and liquors. We found a room at a Thai restaurant / hotel. The place was on the corner of the street and it was big. The room was decent, so we had a few beers, a few shots and passed out.

The next day – Sunday – first thing we did was grab a long-boat over to the ‘sunken’ temples. They weren’t underwater while we were there, but they were worth the trip. I think it was 300-500 Baht each? Not really sure…but we just walked down to the water front and asked a guy to take us there instead of buying tickets from the sales booths up on the bridge.

We knew that we wanted to hike some waterfalls before driving back to Chachoengsao. We found a couple places dotting the map on the drive, so we stopped at the next closest one – Kra Teng Jeng Waterfall. It was a win! And there was no entrance fee.

We were the only people there. The trail hadn’t been maintained for a couple years, or even hiked by the park rangers. The trail was overgrown at parts, so we just kinda pushed through until we found the trail again. It ended up being easier to hike in-the-falls about midway through, because the trail on the sides was overgrown. It was epic. We shot great footage of the water and got some great pictures. We felt like explorers, since we had to make the trail as we went along.

Some of the sign posts were ingrown by trees, and some were lying on the ground. There were parts where the hike required us to climb a wooden makeshift ladder on the side of the creek. It felt like boy scouts all over again!

I think we got 1 or 2 checkpoints from the top of the trail. We didn’t go all the way, because the trail was too overgrown.

On the way back, we checked out the “Big Tree” that a sign pointed to. It was definitely worth the short hike. It’s massive!

We jumped into the car and headed down to the park entrance to shower off and put on dry clothes.

On the drive back, we found some more waterfalls, small but beautiful and plentiful, just off the side of the road. We hadn’t seen them on the drive up, because it was night. These falls were popular. There were many locals and 1 or 2 tourists checking them out. Some of the Thai kids were swimming in them.

There was also a cave in the side of the mountain on the way back that we hadn’t seen before. It was inhabited by monks. So we stopped to say hello and take some pictures. The were kind and we left a donation.

As we got closer to Bangkok, we saw a large, abandoned airplane, either a Boeing 747 or and Airbus. It was MASSIVE, and it was gutted. It was parked in a field -on display. Nash though we would be able to sneak over the fence to check it out, but when we figured out that we couldn’t get to the fence because of a moat, we decided to just ask the guard if we could check it out. “Yep!”

So we climbed up this scaffolding into the plane. Holy shit was this cool! We stood on the wing of one of the biggest planes in the world! We sat in the cockpit, and in the first class seats. This was an awesome segway on the tail end of our trip.

We got back to Chach with enough time to get a good night’s rest for school the next day.

Rating: 11/10

Turn on your sound and play this full screen 🙂