National Park & Kanchanaburi | #Vanlife Thailand

It's about eight o'clock at night now and we've just had dinner. We parked at the PTT in Chumphon. We arrived here around 4 30 and we drove around looking for maybe a beach to park on. We didn't find anything suitable however there is a place further up north which is another two hours away and we didn't want to drive anymore because we've been driving since like eight in the morning. We couldn't make it to the national park but we will tomorrow and tonight we're spending another night at PTT. We feel safe in these places. It's free and we use the restrooms. They have a massage here. They have a nice restaurant here. 7-Eleven is always open and Rene gets to check the oil at the rear wheel axle. That's him down there right now and he's still concerned about the little leak that's coming out so he wants to top the oil up in case it dries up. Can't be too careful with these things because our drive is long. We do plan on reaching Pai as soon as we can so that we can stay there the longest and then work our way down. After driving over 1,200 kilometers from Kuala Lumpur to Thailand, Phuakchap Kirikan, we end up in this national park called Hat Hwanakorn. In this week's episode, we give you a special tour of this place and we journey on towards Kanchanaburi. So let's see what 300 baht gets you. You got outdoor showers. You've got a cafe. Immaculate beach back there. A place to park your camper or your van. And I'm gonna give you a tour of the shower. It's back here right now. Brilliant outdoor shower. Turn it on. Wow. You have sinks. That's a toilet. Everything's really clean. There's a hand shower there. That's the toilet dog. I'll use your shower later? Okay. No drone shots. We were going to bring our drone into Thailand until we found out that it's absolutely illegal here to bring your drone. Be very careful about that. We are at Kanchanaburi now. We left Phuakchap Kirikan this afternoon. It was a very long drive but it's a very scenic, beautiful drive. We're here at the PTT. And we just met the owners of PTT. They actually live behind here. There's a nice big house. Their staff courses are just behind there. So it feels like almost like I'm promoting PTT the whole of Thailand but actually what it is is we want to get from Kuala Lumpur all the way to Pai and that's 2280 kilometers. What we do when we usually park up at a PTT is we open all our doors so that the heat of the engine rises and gets out of the van. And after that we shower and then we head off to bed. Good morning. That was a good night's sleep. We did drive through the Kanchana little town and we've decided to stay tonight in Kanchana and we're going to go to the River Kwai to see what it looks like in the morning and walk through the streets and also we've got to do some laundry as well as top up our supplies from Tesco. We saw Tesco just down the road and just enjoy this little town called Kanchanaburi. So let's get going. That's the bridge, the famous bridge over River Kwai. Let's get a closer look. Welcome to Kanchanaburi. This is the bridge over the River Kwai, famous bridge that was in the movie and although they didn't shoot the movie bridge here, they didn't do that shoot here, they did it in Sri Lanka. This was the bridge that they intended to shoot it as and that's not the original structure. They've rebuilt it since then. I think the original is made of wood, it's now made of iron. It's about 7 a.m here in Kanchanaburi and I suggest that if you want to come and see this bridge, don't do it in the evening because there's truckloads of tourists crossing the bridge in the evenings. Do it in the morning like at about 6 30 for sunrise, 6 o'clock for sunrise actually and for a nice shot it's at about 7. So to get my shot, I was standing over there. There's a pier and a jetty kind of thing, restaurant over here, temple straight ahead and bridge to my left. So I found this tourist. See, you recognize him. Hello, I was here about what 25 years ago doing my military training in Kanchanaburi. One of the toughest terrain but we enjoyed it. Still the same, black, the river is still here. We were here for three weeks. The bridge is just the R&R so I think every Singaporean knows that R&R is time to just rest and relax but otherwise it's not that siang. Those days they call it siang. Enjoyable training, love it. There's a beautiful lake in the background there and if you go this way behind me, you can go visit a cave and another waterfall. If you pay for Erawan, you get to go into the cave as well as Erawan waterfalls and this way down, that's the way to the other waterfalls and that's just a gorgeous view. Look what we found. We're thinking of washing Van Halen. What do you think? Like this. Those guys are washing their vehicles here. So are we going to wash our vehicle here? Yeah, you're going to be washing the car so... Because we're supposed to do laundry and in the end we found this place. Okay, I wash the car then you do the laundry. Okay. All right then. We ended up staying two nights in Kanchanaburi because it was such an amazing little town and then we made our way towards another town called Tak which was where we finally spent one night in a hotel room. Stay tuned as we show you the hotel we stayed in in the next episode and make our way further north towards Pai in Chiang Mai. Thank you for watching. Please remember to subscribe, like, share and comment below. See you in the next one.