Thailand: Katchanaburi & Erawan National Park

We escaped the hustle and bustle of Bangkok to the more countryside town of Katchanaburi, which is famous not only for its fantastic waterfalls but also for its bridge on the river Kwai, in which during its construction approximately 13,000 prisoners of war reportedly died through forced labour.

We stayed a little out of town in the countryside with an old hippy who had some amazing stories of his travels and building various hotel resorts around the world.

The next day we caught the local bus to the 7 tier waterfall at Erawan.  This was to be our second encounter of mass Russian tourism, they were everywhere in the most unflattering attire, I mean it was hideous....  Then to top it all off they would insist of doing the most provocative of poses for photos as though they were taken part in a photo shoot for mens (or womens) magazine.  It was haunting, but once you looked past that (which was pretty hard) we enjoyed some of the most best waterfalls we had ever seen.  Oh and I forgot to mention the skin-eating fish which would wait in a shoal for you to enter the pools, then go to town on your feet and there were some big ones in there.

The foot-muncher caught on camera (small) 

This was not the last time we would encounter the Russians!!!