Kwailand
Trip Start
Mar 29, 2005
1
62
65
Trip End
Dec 17, 2005
Kanchanaburi, Thailand
Monday, December 5, 2005
Kanchanaburi is of course home to the famous Bridge over the River Kwai, the real one that is, not the one in the film which is somewhere in Sri Lanka. We arrived in town and suffered the humiliation of being cycled through the busy streets on a rusty samlor (rickshaw thing) by a friendly and very insistent old fella who should, by rights, have been in the back with the bags being pedaled by us in any normal world. We checked into our "Mullets Approved TM" guesthouse and set off in search of The Bridge.
We had hot-footed it here as it was the annual celebrations of something or other which meant there was a renowned sound and light show to be gawped at. Sure enough the town was in party mood with an enormous lively night market and fun-fair in full swing. We nabbed a couple of tickets for that nights show and set off to peruse the stalls. Every conceivable bizarre street snack from all over the country was on offer and interestingly as it was mostly for locals the knock-off items for sale were even cheaper than the already dirt-cheap prices in Bangkok.
The star of the show was the old bridge itself, and unsurprisingly through the idiom of light, sound and some extremely noisy fireworks depicted the rise and fall of the bridge and with it the Japanese "occupation" during WWII. It was very exciting with some imaginative rocket and bomb like fireworks, burning lookout posts, even a real life steam train, and although the commentary was in Thai it wasn't hard to get the gist.
EDs tours struck again the next day with a trip up to Hell Fire Pass - site of some of the worst suffering endured by Allied POWs whilst building the infamous "Death Railway" from Thailand to Burma. We shunned the convenient tour packages and set out on a local bus, time consuming but much more entertaining, which dropped us at the roadside near the museum and memorial. The museum was quite interesting and filled us in on bits left out by the film, most notably the brutal and disease ridden conditions under which thousands of POWs and conscripted Asian workers toiled and died to the single minded indifference of the Japanese. If that wasn't haunting enough we then took a walk down to the actual Hell Fire Pass, which is actually in amongst beautiful countryside, and strolled along where the tracks once run. Once again a place where something so horrific happened has now been turned into a peaceful memorial.
We were then on a bit of a challenge Anneka - we had to find our way to the station at the end of the surviving stretch of line in order to get the last train back along the 'Death Railway' and ride The Bridge Over The River Kwai! After a short bus ride to the wrong station, and consultation with many a local (all with differing views on where to go), we finally flagged down a songthaew that deposited us in the right place - and with time to spare! The train these days is just a normal crowded local train with wooden seats. Not the luxury steam train E had imagined. Silly girl. We finally got underway, hooning through the countryside over some debatably unstable viaducts and bridges with the stories of how the POWs had sabotaged the track ringing in our ears (we hoped they'd all been fixed!). Something that hadn't occurred to us was that you can't actually see much of it whilst sat in the train but it was fun nonetheless, and there were still some great views of the Kwai Valley. We also didn't pay much mind to the fact that most the other tourists on board transferred on to luxury coaches about half way along the ride, "great" we thought "look at us in with the locals!". Turned out this was because the train came to a complete standstill half an hour from Kanchanaburai and didn't budge for over an hour whilst a couple of express trains whistled past. We finally got back in to town, narrowly escaping being part of that nights sound and light show. At least we can say we rode the Death Railway, despite half of it being in the dark.
After paying our respects to the many British, Australian and Dutch servicemen who died out here and are now buried in the War Cemetery in town, we spent the next day checking out another museum, The Thailand Burma Railway Museum, to learn more about the history of the area. Before leaving town we had to go and have one last play on The Bridge Over The River Kwai! (this time in daylight).
