December 9, 2012

We had a leisurely breakfast with the owners before hitting the road at 730. If you are ever in Thailand, you should really consider staying at the Hidden Holiday House, (HHH). The owners are super nice, have a great knowledge of the area and the place is in a very quiet, beautiful setting. I can’t say enough good things about their guesthouse.

Our destination for the day was Ban Pong which is half way to Kanchanaburi. We took a lot of back roads to avoid all the traffic on the highway. We have found that the riding is fine until 930am and then it becomes hot. As long as you keep moving, you are fine. Once you stop, that is when the heat is more noticeable and kind of unbearable. But we are both getting much better at handling the heat.

Here are a few things we saw today:

Ban Pong is a busy commercial town, with lots of traffic and not much in the way of tourist attractions that we saw. We found a room with AC at what appeared to be the nicest hotel in town for 600 baht or about $20 USD. The hotel was right next to the river, tucked into a row of “inns”. We found out from our host at the HHH that these “inns” are really love motels, or “hotel no tells”. Their signs have two prices, one for 3 hours and one for overnight. Most conspicuously the car parks in front of each room has a large tarp like a giant shower curtain that is pulled shut to conceal the occupants’ vehicles. Luckily we knew all this before hand and were able to avoid them.

We spent the night in our “regular” hotel reading and watching a bit of Thai TV. American Idol type shows are all the rage here.