You experience everything in Thailand (50)

The fiftieth episode today. Verily, a milestone for this series, in which blog readers share fun experiences with us. But we are not stopping yet, so feel free to send your story about something special, funny, curious, strange, moving, exciting or ordinary that you experienced in Thailand to the editors via the information form, possibly with a photo you made yourself.

After an (un)fair draw, the honor for this jubilee episode fell to our blogger from the very beginning, Albert Gringhuis, better known to you as Gringo. In 2010 he wrote a story about an adventure on the River Kwae in Kanchanaburi province, which has since been repeated several times. But it remains a beautiful story that fits in this series and will therefore fascinate long-term and new readers.

This is the story of Albert Gringhuis

A perilous adventure on the River Kwae

During a holiday in Kanchanaburi province, we drove north along the River Kwae. En route entered a National Park, ate at the river, viewed the waterfall and made a trip with a kind of motorized kayak on the river. During that boat trip we came up with the idea to spend the night on the site, on a boat. There were numerous so-called "rafts", see that as a large raft of oil barrels, why houses have been built. Some of those rafts have a fixed berth, others are towed from the base for the night to a berth.

We had rented a raft with a permanent berth, with 4 rooms, all extremely primitive, but come on, you want something during the holiday. Our luggage had to be dragged from the car down a long flight of stairs and some ramps to a second raft, which would take us to the residence a mile or two away. The raft that transported us was attached to the house raft, which was equipped with a small kitchen, two dining tables, plates, cutlery, etc. for dinner. A stereo system with TV was also picked up from a neighbor on the way, so that we could enjoy karaoke in the evening.

The house raft was well anchored on the shore, about 5 meters from the boat on arrival. We could jump in the water and then walk a bit on a kind of beach. We could also fish, but that was not a success. In our toilet with a wooden floor I saw through the slits that a kind of catch basket had been mounted under our toilet bowl.

Just a dirty chat in between: the urine mixed almost immediately with the fast-flowing water, the big message and paper remained in the basket. The water emptied that basket, but in such a way that small pieces of poop always ended up in the free water. Every time you passed through you could see a swarm of nice big fish around that hive, fighting for a piece of "food". No wonder, then, that the fishing with normal baits that we had tried before was not successful.

Dinner and everything else we wanted (beer, whiskey, water, etc.) was always neatly delivered by motorboat. In addition, a parlevinker's boat regularly came by, which also offered everything for sale. I should add that another house raft was linked to our house raft, on which 2 boys slept, who assisted us for all chores and errands.

Very pleasant that evening on the transport raft, the food was good, the drinks flowed freely and the later it got, the "better" there was singing and dancing. Now that Thai singing is sometimes a bit too much for me, so I also walked around a bit. I noticed that the water flowed much faster than in the afternoon and the beach had completely disappeared. The water flowed along the river bed at least 50 centimeters higher than before. (The next day, the boat manager said that happened every day because of a power plant upstream, which generates electricity from hydropower). Because of that fast current, the transport raft moved a bit every now and then and I took a look at the mooring lines. Well, mooring lines, on the current side the attachment was well made with a rope about an inch thick. On the other side, a similar rope, looped between the planks of the raft. Mwah, not really good, but this is Thailand, so I walked on. Oh dear, if only I had paid more attention to that! Although, if I had, the others would probably have laughed at me.

It was close to twelve o'clock at night, the mood was still good, but gradually we wanted to break up the party. Suddenly someone shouted, the cable is broken and you indeed saw the raft on the current side moving away from the house raft. Two guys quickly jumped onto the house raft to re-secure the boat and I quickly made my way to the front. But there was no stopping it, I was able to grab the railing of the house raft and tried to get the transport raft back into place. Well, that only took a few seconds. The fast water grabbed the raft and I was half in the water. The fish sniffed my legs – an unpleasant feeling – and with great difficulty I was able to clamber back onto the house raft. Luckily my wallet was still in my buttoned back pocket.

The raft with the remaining 6 people disappeared from sight within minutes in the dark. Quickly poked the two boys, who went after the raft with their motorboat, we could do nothing but wait. Well, not much can happen with such a raft, capsize is almost impossible due to the surface of about 10 by 6 meters, but still! They could also hit the wallekant the wrong way or ram another raft. None of that, the raft was kept neatly in the middle of the stream and the boys reached the boat about 4 or 5 kilometers downstream and were able to stop the boat.

After about an hour of waiting, the group came back on board with life jackets on the motorboat, no one was hurt, but everyone was quite shocked of course. We sent the boys back to the boat to bring the drinks and the leftover food, because in Dutch we were in need of a drink.

The owner of the boat dismissed our adventure the next morning with: "Well, that happens often, but real accidents never happen!"