A over nighter on the river

After the huge effort that went into organising our onward tickets from Bangkok we decided to head to the country for a little bit of history. Kranchanaburi is the location of the river Kwai, yes like in the movie, and it is a very sad place indeed (in terms of history). We stayed in a lovely floating bungalow on the river and spent most of the time looking at historical places related to the war. During the second world war the Japanese used POW's and enlisted Thai civilians to construct a railway line from Thailand to Burma and in the process managed to kill 15,000 POW's and 100,000 Thai civilians. The railway runs through some pretty picturesque countryside before hitting a gorge, which the workers had to hack trough with picks and shovels. On one part, where they had to construct a 300 meter long trestle bridge, it is said that every man that worked on that particular part died, hence the name, the "Death Railway". On our way out of town we stopped at the Don Rak Kranchanaburi War Cemetry, seeing all the head stones is a sobering sight.

01 Amanda on the death railway

02 The trestle bridge

03 The War Memorial Cemetry