The Road to Kanchanaburi

After the wedding (which I'll write about soon), my wife, mother, brother, and I took a road trip to my favorite Thai province, Kanchanaburi!

Pinky and I met my family at their hotel early in the morning. We had hired a van driver the night before to take us west to Kanchanaburi (it's a nicer way to travel than by bus or rail if you have lots of luggage with you), and soon we were off!

Soon Bangkok was far behind us, and the landscape had changed from skyscrapers and concrete to fields and palm trees.

Our first stop was at a cafe in Nakhon Pathom Province.

The cafe was tucked away in a lush and verdant garden down a quiet alley. 

There are millions of these amazing hidden gems all throughout Thailand, and you are never far away from a wonderful cafe or beautiful garden restaurant when traveling through the kingdom!

After taking a tour of the grounds with one of the staff, we were shown to a small greenhouse where we sat down to order our coffee.

The owner of the cafe came out to greet us, and told us that their specialty was coconut custard, which she made following her own grandmother's recipe. Of course, we decided to place an order of coconut custard to share! It arrived served inside a coconut shell, and it was really delicious.

 No Thai road trip is complete without at least one coffee stop!

After that, we got back in the van to continue the journey into Kanchanaburi Town itself. Our next stop was Wat Tham Sua, the Tiger Cave Temple, one of the most beautiful and important Buddhist wats in the province.

I want to note for my readers that this is NOT the infamous "Tiger Temple", which has gotten in hot water for drugging wild tigers for tourists to photograph. Despite the similar-sounding names, this temple has absolutely nothing to do with tigers!

There is normally a cable car that runs up the hill to the temple from the parking lot, but unfortunately it was undergoing repairs at the time and was not in service.

The only other option is to take the stairs up to the top. Our mom's knees were hurting, so she decided to wait at the bottom for us while my brother and I ran up to the top to snap a few photos of the large and impressive golden Buddha statue enshrined atop the hill.

The sky was growing dark, and it was threatening rain, so we didn't end up staying that long at the top (plus Mom was waiting for us with her coconut smoothie at the bottom, and we hated to keep her waiting).

After leaving the temple, we headed into Kanchanaburi Town's center, where we stopped in for a tour and a cup of coffee at the Kanchanaburi Railroad Museum (a post about that will come soon). We really wanted to visit the Allied War Cemetery, but by the time we finished visiting the museum, the rain was coming down in torrential sheets, and we put a pin in that for the moment. Instead, we got back in the van to drive another hour or so out of town into the deep jungles of far western Kanchanaburi Province.

Soon, we arrived at our far remote destination on the western border with Burma where we would be staying for the next several nights.