January 14th to 16th- Kanchanaburi and teaching Ben to ride a bike

Our hostel guy kindly offered to book our sleeper train back to Bangkok for us. He rung up and was told that the train was cancelled. We all panicked for a few minutes with blank faces wondering how on earth we'd get all the way down to Bangkok in time to get the bus to our next hostel.. He came back into the room a few minutes later and casually told us he'd booked us overnight bus tickets now instead. Panic over.
   The overnight bus was pretty impressive, with seats that reclined right back almost flat, and gave you a vibrating back massage.. 
   Woke up In a daze in the middle of the night to face a torch being shined into our faces, when my eyes started working properly i saw that whoever it was had a gun in his belt. Startled I  realised it must be some weird security check, and mouthed this to saydi who was looking over with a  pretty terrified expression. 
   Next time I woke up was 6am and we'd arrived in Bangkok. 3 hours later by a different bus and we'd arrived in Kanchanburi. Our floating guesthouse is gorgeous. We have a room next door to Emily and Sayd on the floating raft, which is handy as we can hop over onto their balcony when we want. It's so lovely to open your door in the morning and sit on your balcony floating in the middle of a beautiful river with water lilies, and eat breakfast watching the sun come up. It's so peaceful and chilled out, we spent the day reading in the sun on our balconies. Everything gets much louder at night with party and karaoke boats competing to be the loudest and most fun.. The reception and cafe of our guesthouse is balanced precariously on what seems like random pieces of whatever wood they could get their hands on. It juts out over the steep river bank, and looks like it could and WILL collapse any minute. There's pieces of wood just nailed in any old where not appearing to be joining or supporting anything at all.. 
   Today we decided to hire bikes and cycle around to explore Kanchanaburi. This is when Ben quietly mentions to me that he has never been taught to ride a bike but that he's 'SO excited because i'm going to teach him and from today onwards he will be able to ride a bike!'... So I told the others and me and him went ahead to get bikes and have an hour or so attempt at teaching him.
   Spent the morning teaching him on a rickety old bike on a dusty track down to our hostel. He thought he'd get the hang of it in 5 minutes and be peddling off to the River Kwai Bridge within an hour, I mean, how hard can it be?... Instead there was stropping and angry bike shaking and insisting he could NOT do it. The Thai people popping their heads out to watch him struggling wasn't helping either.. Not long after insisting he'd never be able to do it he was cycling past me with big grins. YEY! Was still wobbly but said he didn't need any more practice and wanted to have breakfast and then cycle to the bridge.  
   6 of us peddling along in a row on wobbly, rusty bikes with no breaks braved the mental Thai roads. Not sure if all the horn honking was to tell us to move or because they'd not seen such a ridiculous sight. Thai boys kept taking photos.. Not surprisingly ben found his first bike ride cycling on the road with the traffic speeding past us not as easy as on the quiet track, and he wobbled about feeling like he'd fall under a wheel any minute. But he said he definitely wanted to keep going. The rest of us had our first bike ride after we'd grasped balancing, around a quiet industrial estate.. Quite different to the dusty, busy Thai road Ben was having his practice on.. But he made it to the bridge with us as frustrated as he was. 
  The Bridge over the River Kwai was pretty impressive. Decided we'd walk over it, I clearly didn't think this through... Found myself in a panic attack half way across trying to crouch down between the rail way tracks onto the narrow metal path. Nothing to hold onto and surrounded by gaps right down to the river between the metal struts. Everything was too out of control and suddenly was all teary eyed and manic breathing, clinging to Ben as he led me back to the safe ground. Ahh such a scaredy cat! 
   Had a look around a weird WWII museum which had so many randomly placed random objects you couldn't tell what was junk and what was part of the museum. Casually strolled across a huge lizard, iguana maybe? But definitely bigger, with a great long tail, sat by a wall. It eyed us up suspiciously and I convinced myself they look slow but if you get too close they wrap their tail around your ankle, trip you up and launch their teeth and claws at your eyes.
   On the cycle ride back Ben insisted that I cycle ahead with the others so he can take his time and feel less pressured to keep up. We all arrived back but with no sign of Ben, waited for him to turn up so we could order lunch but after 5 minutes he still wasn't here. I went back to look for him. Found him angrily marching his bike along the road with a mashed up big toe. He'd decided to cycle in flip-flops and had wobbled off and scuffed his toe along the dirty Tarmac as he put his foot down to stop himself falling. A flap of skin was missing off the tip and a chunk of nail, was all bloody and covered in dust and grit. I've watched mum bandage up many family scuffed toes so using the extensive first aid kit provided to me by mother doctor I cleaned his toe up and wrapped it all up nicely with antiseptic cream, bandages, plasters and tape.tAsks that was definitely ENOUGH learning to ride a bike for one day..