Conclusion……..It seems odd but necessary to write a conclusion to a tour less than half completed but I could have easily returned to Bangkok at this point before starting a new tour. Instead I left the door open and carried on with a new destination totally unlike the tour I’d just completed. The three provinces on the ‘Western Province’ tour should not have presented any difficulty were it not for one thing. Temperatures were hovering just under 40 deg C. and those conditions were far from ideal for touring.
Nakhon Pathom was the first province to feature, and potentially an easy day-trip from Bangkok. Yet I’d identified half a dozen sites of interest in the province already and as early as the evening of the first day I’d missed my objectives with a combination of the heat, urban driving conditions and underestimation of what I actually found at the tour sites. When I finally left Nakhon Pathom I was late for my next objective, Potharam. The unique culture and history of this area could not be ignored either and it was night three before I reached Ratchaburi, not much more than an hour from Bangkok. Ratchaburi would also need a visit the following day. After four days I’d already collected a substantial amount as data for my website.
It was time to take a break from urban driving and head into the hills. Ratchaburi Province has an international border with Myanmar but mountainous terrain is not as extensive as it is in other provinces but it should provide some respite nevertheless. My selection of Suan Peung was based on its popularity rather than anything else. I soon found out it was one of Bangkok’s playgrounds. While I have to admit I played around at Kao Chan Waterfall, there was little else to interest me and I could think of many better places to relax. After just three nights in Suan Peung, I took the decision to head for Kanchanaburi Province to the north.
It now looked very likely I could complete this part of the tour in not much more than a week. Given that I’d visited Kanchanaburi twice before since I started my website, what else could I achieve? The answer was an awful lot since on previous visits I didn’t have private transport. The more remote WW2 site at Hellfire Pass was the highlight of this part of the tour but I managed to extract much more from my two days in the province.
The Western Thailand tour had ended far more comfortably than it had started but the wealth of material I collected made the tour a complete success without incident but I will remember that March is a hot month in Thailand and future tours should recognize this. In terms of cost, I saved on fuel due to the relatively small distance covered but the accommodation was more than I paid in the north of Thailand on my Natural Thailand tour, averaging nearly 600 baht. Continue to Nakhon Si Thammarat Tour.