Erawan National Park

It seems I'm a bit behind on the blogging, I could blame it on midterms, but we all know that I am far to good of a student to need to study. So I suppose I'll go with the excuse that I'm to busy living life to write about it, which I can hardly be blamed for.

Anyway a week ago me and Jennifer were at Erawan National Park. Erawan is the most visited National Park in Thailand, and host to a 7-tiered waterfall. The best part is that unlike at Khao Yai National Park, at Erawan the waterfalls are swimable. The 7th tier is a bit over a kilometer from the bottom of the 1st tier and thats where we decided to start our fun. (that way we could experience the waterfall the same way the water does...minus the falls). The top fall was very awesome. The water was a bit chilly, but not as bad as I had thought it would be. There was a primary waterfall, which was a few meters tall, and off to the side of that there was a kind of secondary waterfall, which was a small flow of water over rounded limestone, making what looked like convex giant stairs. We were able to climb around and play on the stairs, it was great fun.
I'm not sure how they decided that this was a 7-tier waterfall, because between the tiers there were other small waterfalls and pools, that could easily be counted as a new tier. Anyhow, tiers 6 and 5 were beautiful and I could go on writing purple prose about them, but I'll wait till Jennifer posts her pictures and just show you those. (I really should get around to buying my own camera).
Waterfall #4 was really a stellar one that I enjoyed, because it had a waterslide. No, not a garish blue plastic one with a ladder, but a natural made waterslide made of rock. Following the lead of some Thai people I hopped in the water (its rocky near shore, but drops off almost immediately) and swam over to the waterfall and climbed up on the side of it. On the top, I sat down, at the start of the slide. It was evident where people had been sliding for there was a streak where no algae grew even though they covered most of the rock with a fine coating of sliminess. (luckily only the front of the rock, so climbing was not exceedingly dangerous).

You may have heard about Fish Foot massages before. I know some places in the states offer them. They are not for the ticklish. At the Erawan waterfall, there were many many fish similar to the foot massage fish in all of the pools. The difference is that the foot massage fish are rarely more than an inch long. Some of the fish nibbling at my feet at Erawan were a foot long, with most being around 6 inches.

After we got our kicks sliding down the rock we headed to the 3rd tier. On our way, the path diverged, and we decided to check out where the path less taken goes. It went across a dry river bed and into a bamboo forest. the path quickly disappeared, and although I was willing to get lost for a little bit, Jennifer wasnt, so we stayed in view of the path and walked around admiring the way the forest transitioned into all bamboo, and how much of a change in atmosphere there was.

Back to the waterfall we went to the 3rd tier, which seemed like the largest. It was fun because I was able to swim over to an opening under the water and let it fall down on my head and back. It kinda stung. But it was very fun just to swim around in the water. It was chilly, but it was very refreshing.

The 2nd tier was nice, but since it is one of the closest to the parking lot (and tier 1 is kinda lame) it was very busy.

When we were ready to leave, we asked the information desk when the next bus would be leaving. She said that it would be an hour and a half. So we did like any Thai person would do, and killed time by going to eat. Unlike Khao Yai, which had very few food options, Erawan had a row of about 6 different resturants/minimarts, so we just went into one that looked good and sat down to chow down.
When we finished eating there was still time to kill. We pulled out the newsweek and TIME magazines, which are perfect for trips that involve bus rides, and read those untill the bus showed up to take us back to Kanchanaburi, where we then caught a bus back to bangkok.