Kanchanaburi

Phew! Just got back from a serious tour. But first – an addendum to the Bangkok Tales of Traffic Hazards in my last post. Later that day I also nearly got run over by an elephant! I was picking my way down Soi 33 after dark (summoned by Mike for an after-work drinkies at his local, if you must know) and performing the usual head-swivelling (Look ahead. Mind the street vendor. Look down. Step off the kerb. Mind the parked scooters. Mind the gutter. Look back. Mind the traffic behind me. Look up. Eek! Wassat?). You’d have thought that for something that big I would have seen it coming. Anyway, as it lumbered past me within patting distance I must have had my mouth open – like some damnfool tourist – ‘cos the owner held out an empty cup presumably to put money in. Not sure what, exactly, I would have been paying for (adrenalin tax, maybe), I shook my head and made my way across the street for a much needed libation.

Anyway, back to the trip. CavTours took us to Kanchanaburi the next day, Or, as it’s more famously known for, the site of the Bridge Over The River Kwai. As this was more of a cultural/historical tour, bear with me a bit and I’ll try not to make this too dry a blog. The town hosts the Don-Rak War Cemetery, which contains the remains of 6,982 Australian, Dutch and British war prisoners who lost their lives during the construction of the Death Railway, and the museum for the whole sorry Thailand – Burma railroad story. Being a sub-grade D student of history my ignorance was jerked up a notch or five by the end of the day. Without going into detail (history buffs like Mssrs Tompkins & Sharpe will know a lot more about this period of history than I) I did leave the area with two quite conflicting impressions:
1) what an amazing industrial and engineering feat this was – over 400 kms of construction across the harshest terrain without any heavy machinery whatsoever, and
2) the truly appalling treatment of human beings by other human beings – the death of 160,000 POWs and civilian workers working in intolerable conditions is unimaginable. You walk away from these museums wondering how anyone survived at all.

We visited the replica Bridge itself and, the next day, Mike drove us up to Hellfire Pass. This is another memorial further along the railroad as it meets the Thai/Burmese border which is itself the most mountainous part of the line. There is another museum above the steps which lead down to the remains of the railroad itself and the cutting that was manually hewn from the solid rock using nothing more than sledge hammers and chisels. This was built at the worse part of the construction when the Japanese were under pressure to complete the railroad forcing the POWs and civilian labourers to work 18 hours a day. A truly sobering experience.

On a lighter note, we did manage to take a break from the horrors of the past. Lunch on the River Kwai was an enjoyable Thai mixed spicy fish and squid affair with a few Singha beers. We overnighted in a resort further up the river called the Oriental Kwai, a collection of cottages set in woodland and a great place to get away from it all (check out http://www.orientalkwai.com/ if you are curious) Although there was a temptation for further adventure in the nearby town, after the stresses of the day we all settled on copious servings of gin and tonic with tempura snacks on the restaurant balcony overlooking the river. 'Twas enough!