Kanchanaburi

Amy in Erawan waterfall

We're currently living in a hut in a field. It's one of many strange little African-style bungalows just out of the main town of Kanchanaburi. The hut's bedroom roof is thatched with straw, only a mosquito grill covers the windows and the bathroom doesn't have a roof, leaving us to shower by sun or moonlight. The shower itself is a mini-waterfall we turn on by twisting a bamboo tap. Take a look on the Little Creek website for pictures.

We were bowled over by the romance of it all - far away from the roar of Bangkok's traffic and with nothing but open fields, streams and mountains surrounding us. But that's where the fairy tale ended...

Returning to our hut at night, we found it infested with all manner of insects (attracted to the light that had been left on by the cleaner) and mouse droppings all over the place. We quickly hung the mosquito net and cowered inside, swatting bugs that got trapped under the cover and flicking their corpses out into the melee.

Once we'd cocooned ourselves inside, we were scared to get out again for fear of breaching our stronghold. We slept beneath a wall of hungry insects that were fearlessly searching for an entry point and were frequently woken by rodent squeaks, bats chattering and a fan I'd left on full pelt that chilled us to the bone.

Like a bad zombie film, we were glad when the sun came up and the brainless hoards, intent on sucking our blood, drifted away. We both walked away unscathed, but Amy has since been less fortunate, receiving a number of bites probably as an act of insect revenge (and prompting me to start a tally in the right hand column on this page). Recently we have found a hornets nest outside our door and a two-foot long snake skin, shed behind our toilet.

We've since moved to another hut which still has mice, but less insects. Which of course is far better.

What we've been up to: Yesterday we headed to Erawan Falls - a seven-tiered waterfall that stretches down a mountain. We trekked to the top (over 1,500 feet up - which took about an hour and a half) where the water was so clean you could drink it... if there weren't fish swimming in it. We cooled off in the water, then walked / climbed / fell back to the bottom again. We even saw some monkeys on the way down (probably fresh from robbing some tourists for their wallets).

We then took the 'Death Railway' that was built by POW in WWII for a two-hour trip back to town, crossing the Bridge over the River Kwai at the end. Just by chance it was November 11 - D-Day. For the first half hour the journey was hot, stuffy, crowded and with hardly anything to see - much like London Underground. But when all the locals got off, we could enjoy the rest of the journey and hang our heads (and tongues) out of the window like sweaty dogs.

We're off to see if there's anything worth eating on the floating restaurants in a moment, before heading back to Insect Armageddon again.

On Sunday November 14 we fly to Cambodia; a week later Chaing Mai (Northern Thailand), then South to some of Thailand's many islands.