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  Kanchanaburi, Kanchanaburi, Thailand
Wednesday, April 23, 2008

4 days on, many extremely frustrating conversations with Indian Airlines and many attempted but fruitless attempts to contact Jet Airways in Delhi, I am still without any news of my backpack or it's imminent return. Difficult to think about much else at the moment but I will attempt to put this to the back of my mind for a moment and pen a few lines about the last few days.

In between numerous trips to the shops/ markets to pick up bits and bobs I've needed to get by, I have managed to see a few sights over the last few days which is keeping me sane (just about!). I made a morning trip out to the floating market at Damnoen Saduak, just outside Bangkok on Sunday.. along with just about every other tourist in Bangkok it seemed! Though I can imagine this used to be a pretty little network of canals, packed with morning traders exchanging fruit & veg it has now become a bit of a tourist circus sadly, with most of the boats now selling souvenirs and tat rather than local produce. If you can take this with a smile, the trip is still worth doing and provides good entertainment value- picture paddle boatloads of tourists all in regulation straw hats that are issued at the start of the tour.. at times there were so many boats trying to squeeze through the same narrow stretch of canal it was gridlock! Unfortunately some of the tour operators have started using motor boats to ferry their passengers around which is not only noisy, it probably isn't doing much to keep the genuine vendors coming either as the boats all travel far too fast and create so much wash the traders have to cling on for dear life just to remain in their boats!

In the afternoon I caught the river taxi to Wat Arun, one of the temples I didn't manage to get to on my last trip to Bangkok. It's quite a pretty a five-tier temple on the river in typical polychromatic porcelain style but I have to say I'm finding it hard to get overly enthused about temples this time round- once you've seen a few (and I saw many on my last trip) they all become a bit 'same same but different' to coin the Thai phrase. The views from the top of Wat Arun along the river and over the Bangkok skyline are pretty stunning though I have to say.

On Monday, having decided my bag wasn't going to show up in the imminent future, I decided to head over to Kanchanaburi for a few days while my visas are processing for Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. Kanchanaburi town itself is a bit of a dive - I think it's safe to say that anywhere the bars and restaurants all advertise 'fish and chips', 'big portions', 'english food available here' and 'get shit-faced for less' is not really my kind of place, but the big draw is the history. Kanchanaburi is home to the infamous Bridge over the River Kwai and the start of the 'Death Railway' - the 415km Thailand-Burma Railway constructed by POW's and enforced local labour under the Japanese during the Second World War. Over the 15 months of construction, around 16,000 POW's and 100,000 conscripted local labourers died from the harsh conditions imposed by the Japanese - overwork, beatings, malnutrition & tropical diseases... the Thailand-Bhurma Railway Centre gives a really moving account of the history of the line with original photos, video footage and remnants of tools and personal effects found on the line, and right across the road is the Kanchanaburi War Cemetary (Don Rak) where 6982 POW graves are laid out in straight lines amid immaculately kept lawns, having been moved from the makeshift jungle cemetaries that were used during the war. It's very hard not to be moved to tears by the facts and images on show!

Yesterday I shunned the package day tours and got up early to catch the dawn train from Kanchanaburi along the full route of the Death Railway to Nam Tok. The journey is very scenic, squeezing through solid rock cuttings and across trestle bridges clinging to the cliff face alongside the river, and really helps bring alive the incredible feat of engineering that was achieved at such cost! From Nam Tok I hopped on a local bus to Hellfire Pass - one of the longest and most brutal cuttings on the rail route, hand-carved from the rock by the POW's. There's a memorial museum there and you can walk an 8km section of the track which takes you past some of the most technical sections of the line where 3 tier bridges, cuttings and embankments had to be constructed  to carve a path through the jungle. Whilst the package tours only take you to Hellfire Pass itself for a cursory look, I opted to walk the full stretch of line, and boy was it hard going - unbelievably hot and humid, swarming with mozzies and other biting insects and with rough stone underfoot (which the workers would have had to tread barefoot). It really makes you appreciate what the men working the line must have been through!! The jungle scenery, tranquility (just me and chirping cicadas..) and views out across the mountains towards Burmha were absolutely stunning however!

Having unintentionally had my first offal expierence on Monday night at one of the restaurants on the tourist strip (I have to confess I just couldn't bring myself to eat it) I hit the night market last night for some fantastic street food- Som Tam (spicy papaya salad) & grilled, marinated squid. Now just killing time waiting for the bus back to Bangkok. I'd have liked to make it up to Erawan National Park & waterfalls this morning but time hasn't permitted, on top of which I don't currently have a swimming costume..

Time to try phoning Delhi again..

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