The Bridge over the River Kwai
Trip Start
Aug 10, 2007
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61
76
Trip End
Ongoing
Kanchanaburi,
Thailand
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Change of scene here in K, as the sights we've gotten used to in Sukhothai, Chang Mai and Kamphaeng Phet, the ubiquitous buddhist architecture, is here replaced by some more mundane sights. First, about 50 km down the road there's a buddhist temple (okay, somewhat buddhist again), where the monks have taken it upon themselves to look after tigers, which were initially kept as pets. By the time these eedjits realised that the tiger, though initially cute, is a bit more of a handful as a pet, once they're big enough to eat the kids, the tigers are too tame to be returned to the wild, but too wild to be kept as a pet
Kanchanaburi 2
. So within the temple compound, there are about four tiger cubs, and a larger number of fully grown tigers. Fun to see these beautiful creatures up close, and my first time seeing tigers outside a zoo. By the way, there are no tigers in Africa...Also, Kanchanaburi is the scene to sights from more contemporary history. During WW II, the Japanese built a 400+ km train track from Kanchanaburi to Yangon in Birma, in order to supply their forces in Birma with materials quicker and safer than by sea. In order to build the track, forced labour was used and tens of thousands of allied prisoners of war (POW) and forced conscripts from occupied regions were set to work to hack their way through the dense jungle, through the rocky hills separating the two countries, and building bridges to ford the river Kwae (famous from the film). Thousands of Australian, American, British, Dutch but especially Tamil and Birmese POW's lost their lives here, due to the combination of malnutrition, overexhertion and disease. The "Death Railway" museum here in Kanchaburi is probably one of the best musea I've been to in Asia, though simple, but incredibly well put together. And just outside the museum is a huge cemetery for the Australians, Brits and Dutch POW's who lost their lives here, and whose graves were found along the railtrack (as far as I understood, the Yanks were sent back to America, and the Tamils and Birmese didn't get a identifiable grave).
In anticipation of the long haul from here to Siem Reap in Cambodia (2 hours by bus to Bangkok, half an hour taxi to Bangkok Northern Bus Station, 4 and a half hours from Bangkok to the Cambodian border, 1 hour arguing with blatantly corrupt Cambodian border officials, 1 hour standing in queues waiting for passport to be checked, half an hour arguing about the price for a taxi, 3 and a half hours by taxi from border over as of yet unsealed road to Siem Reap outskirts, 15 minutes by tuktuk to town centre), I've bought myself Stephen Fry's debut novel The Liar, which I first read when I was at uni. Now, just to see if this gets a reaction: Noam, have you read it yet?
Writing this in the comfort of the hotel we checked into after this tiresome journey, it's good to be back in the land of Angkor and Anchor (that's phonetical plagiarism, I'd say) beer. Speaking of which, I think I'll have one now.
Cheers!
