Advertisement
Published: December 2nd 2006
Edit Blog Post
The Albino Buffalo
Can you imagine Becs riding this?! After a week of hedonism down on the beaches it was time to get educated from our visit to Thailand and see some of the local history. In an attempt to avoid yet another VIP bus, we decided to take the train out to Kanchanaburi, the location of the bridge over the River Kwai. This meant getting up at 5am to get a ferry across the Chao Phraya River to the train station, taking in a songthiew for good measure and by 9am we were on our third mode of transport for the day already! The train journey was great though and we got to take in some wonderful sights of the local scenery and seemingly endless paddy fields. We also got to marvel at the very camp and tight uniforms of the police officers that run the railway - guaranteed YMCA was running through all of our heads - and a very obliging police officer let us take a photo of him - get in!
Due to our early start we arrived at the very pretty Jolly Frog backpackers mid-morning with the rest of the day ahead of us. The main aim of our excursion was to learn some more
The three of us
At the infamous Bridge over the River Kwai about the famous bridge over the River Kwai and the disastrous events that took place during its construction. So, we dutifully hired some bicycles for less than the price of a diet coke and cycled over to the Thailand - Burma Railway Centre. The museum was fascinating and really well put together - you could tell that an English speaking westerner had done it as we didn't have urges to correct all of the spelling mistakes as we had all over the rest of Thailand! The museum eased us into the history of the railway, which included the bridge over the River Kwai, by explaining the Japanese desire to dominate South East Asia, and their use of World War 2 prisoners of war to construct the 415 km railway through Burma and Thailand. Engineers estimated that the construction would take 5 years, but the human labourers were forced to complete it in 16 months - which they did under the harshest conditions living in awful camps situated alongside the railway. Over 10,000 men died during the construction thus it became known as Death Railway. There were many relics and artefacts from survivors and their families, including diary entries, and all
Very moving
One of the thousands of headstones in the cemetary in all it was a very harrowing and moving experience. In spite of everything else, the Japanese did adhere to the Geneva Convention and accurately recorded the number of deaths and the location of the bodies. The prisoners of war also did this, and when the war ended a Graves Commission was set up to locate all of the bodies and transport them to a proper burial ground. 7000 of these men now rest in a cemetary opposite the museum which we had a look around. It was a sunnies on and scatter in separate directions affair, as it was extremely sad seeing the headstones of all these men. There were some particularly moving words on the headstones and the most upsetting thing to us was how young these men were - it certainly made us feel extremely lucky to be doing what we are right now.
Having taken all of this history in, a little lighter entertainment was sought in the form of stroking tigers at the nearby Tiger Temple. Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno is a forest monestary built in 1994 to propogate buddhism and conserve the forests and wildlife. There's a big problem with tiger poaching on
Tiger Temple
Becs tries to push start a Tiger the Thai-Burmese border leaving many orphaned cubs, which are sent to the monestary to be looked after by the monks. There are about 11 tigers currently living at the temple and we were in 2 minds overall about the whole thing. One the one hand, as described the tigers are being saved from the poachers, and the monks are currently trying to build a better habitat for them at the temple, but on the other hand, at the moment they are being kept in cages for the majority of the day and brought into the canyon to be paraded in front of tourists, prodded and poked, and immediately put on chains if they start to move around. Granted, tigers are huge animals which take some controlling, but we weren't overly happy at the way we saw them treated. However, an opportunity to stroke a tiger doesn't come your way every day, so off we were led into the canyon to stroke the beasts. It was a lot scarier than the leopard and cheetahs we've previously petted as the tigers weren't really that tame, and one false move and you'd be breakfast! A cub bared its teeth and growled which was
Tiger Temple
Me and a Tiger so loud that we dreaded to think what kind of noise a fully grown adult would make! At the end of the session the tigers were led back to their cages and a whole menagerie of other animals were let loose amongst us including peacocks showing their feathers in their full glory, horses, boars, and a huge albino buffalo which Greeny was tempted to take for a ride!
We got back to the Jolly Frog just in time to take our bikes on a 2km ride out to the bridge over the River Kwai for sunset (or what we could make of the sunset in the imminent rainstorm!) Whitters made it halfway across the bridge before her fear of bridges took hold and she had to hotfoot it back to solid ground. Smithers, Becs and Martin (who we met up with again in Kanchanaburi) made it to the other side before having to leg it back and jump on their bikes before getting soaked.
The evening was spent getting better acquainted, with the aid of some king browns, with our fellow passengers to the Tiger Temple and some nice new friends were made, some of whom we are hoping to
Beaut!
The view from our room at the Jolly Frog hook up with further along in South East Asia.
The following morning Becs was bent in every way possible during a Thai massage, whilst the 2 Jos tried to update the journal. At lunchtime we boarded an (un)air-conditioned bus back to Bangkok with some fragrant Germans and an American guy fresh from Kuwait whose first words were 'When I was in 'Nam...' Needless to say Whitters thought she'd tripped and fallen into hell and the I-Pod was firmly connected to her ears for the remainder of the journey!
Smell you later ...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.116s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 63; dbt: 0.0895s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb