Plenty of room at the Hotel Buritara

Lian's mom waves farewell.

On Wednesday morning Lian and I, along with her daughter, Eve, bid sawadee khrep to her mom and sister in Bang Khae. Our taxi takes us to a nearby bus station, where Eve will return south to university in Hua Hin and we will go adventuring west, in Kanchanaburi.

Originally I wanted to do what the travel books recommend, which is to roll through the countryside up to K'buri aboard the funky, antiquated third-class train that costs just a few dollars for the four-hour trip. But the clickety-clack charm escapes Lian, who has endured a lifetime of grungy backwoods railcars. "Is slow-slow and dirty, have a stink," she protests. "Toilet very terrible. Bus is fast and comfortable, I think you like more." Yes ... I will like the bus more.

By early afternoon we arrive in the pleasant town of Kanchanaburi, just a few kilometers away from the not-really bridge on the not-really River Kwai. I am impressed: clean streets, unbroken sidewalks, scrubbed edifices, a real sense of order that still maintains its Thai-ness. Kanchanaburi is what Chiang Mai could look like if it took a shower, brushed its teeth and put on a clean shirt.

Excellent place to stay in K'buri.

And now a confession: I did not do my homework before coming here: no TripAdvisor check, no Expedia inquiries, nada. So once we step off the bus, we have no hotel waiting for us nor any inkling of what's available, leaving us at the mercy of the songthaew drivers who prowl the bus station like cheetahs at the watering hole, waiting for fresh meat.

The grounds at U Inchantree.

Lian explains to the first driver to close in that we are in need of lodging. He nods and we pile into the back of his passenger truck. I notice that the neighborhoods get tattier and more backpacker-y as we go bouncing down side streets until we arrive at a squalid clutch of houseboats dropped in the muck of a swampy backwater near the river. Dark, depressing rooms. A huge hole punched in the door to the bathroom. Lian asks me what I think.

"Baan kii," I grumble, marching straight back to the taxi-truck.

"Not polite!" gasps Lian. "We never say!" But it really is a shithouse.

Now the challenge is thrown down for this driver to find a hotel suitable for a finicky farang. He delivers us to the open-air reception lobby of the upscale U Inchantree Kanchanaburi Resort, where the highly professional hospitality staff checks us into our tastefully appointed (but tiny!) superior room. After unpacking, we stroll the grounds, scope out the pool and locate tomorrow's breakfast buffet veranda overlooking the river. Now it feels like we're on holiday.

---

On the train into the jungle.

I won't make the same mistake twice: before we depart U Inchantree, I go on Expedia and locate our next night's lodging. Most places are full, but I settle on a rustic-but-charming little resort called Buritara, an hour or so up the tracks and a ways into the jungle. The pictures on the website look like just the ticket, and for only $34 a night it's worth a try. The next morning we catch the train west toward the jungle villages up the line, Buritara-bound.

Tasteful twin portals.

About the train, the bridge and the river: yes, this particular bridge over what used to be the Klong River really did get bombed during the war; yes, the Japanese really did use brutal forced labor to build a rail line through parts of Thailand and Burma. It was only after the hubbub around the 1957 movie "Bridge on the River Kwai" that Thailand cleverly renamed this stretch of the river Kwae Yai (downstream from Kanchanaburi it's still the Klong River) and proceeded to rake in lots and lots of tourist moolah. The nutty part is, the movie was set in Burma, not Thailand ... and it was fictional!

Looking across at where we should have stayed.

At last I get my train ride across the bridge and into the jungle, and it's exactly as I used to imagine Thailand would be before I came here: green, lush, exotic. Best of all, unspoiled. We get off at the end of the line and go in search of a ride to our glorious Buritara Resort.

No one has ever heard of the place.

Finally we talk to a non-licensed taxi driver who might know where it is, but it'll cost us 1,000 baht to get there; we talk him down to 500 and we're off. Turns out he doesn't know after all, but he makes some calls. Curiously, the Buritara desk is not answering its phone. Three hours and many kilometers later -- this guy really makes an effort -- we locate the resort down a long and deeply rutted dirt road, way deep in the jungle. The signs leading in are tiny and ominously deteriorated.

Resort accommodations? Really??

At last we arrive at ... shantytown.

The girl at the open-air reception desk smiles apologetically and I can tell she is thinking: "You poor bastards, what cruel god delivered you into this hell-hole?" We learn that the phones are out of order, which is why our calls didn't get through earlier. But if they had, would she have warned us away?

The girl leads us along crumbling walkways to our cabin, if that's what you care to call this pink stucco box. Buritara looks nothing like the clean, vibrant resort I saw in the pictures. Or maybe it did 15 years ago. Now the ruins are being consumed by the jungle.

We ask about dinner and are appalled to learn that Buritara has no dining facilities, except for breakfast that will be brought to us in the morning. Also, we are the only guests in the entire resort, and it is the cusp of high season. So we pay a staff member 200 baht to drive us into town for a bite to eat and a 7-Eleven run for provisions.

Not long after we retire, rock-and-roll drum practice starts up in the squalid staff cabins behind our pink box. We lie there in the dark listening to hours of thumpa-thumpa-crash-boom.

"This is terrible," we moan to each other, laughing. "This is terrible ..."

Early next morning we pay for a ride to the nearest bus stop that will carry us back to civilization: to Kanchanaburi, to the immense superstation in Mo Chit, and finally back to Chiang Mai via luxury coach. But not before using Buritara's own wi-fi to write scathing reviews to both TripAdvisor and Expedia. Hmph!