Culture on the Kwai

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February 24th 2007

Published: February 27th 2007

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JimandKaz

Kanchanaburi - Death Railway

Picture postcard view from the train track on the soberingly titled Death Railway.

So, as we left in the last blog, we headed up from our paradise at Ko Lipe, via an overnight sleeper train, and some more random methods of transport, up to the town of Kanchanaburi. A favourite with travellers for its close proximity to 'The Bridge over the river Kwai', and the Thailand / Burma "Death Railway".

Without going into too much of a history lesson, for those of you that don't know about these things, the basics of the story are...

During the war (as Uncle Albert used to say) the Japanese (who had invaded and occupied much of Thailand and Burma) decided they needed a railway to provide supplies and people for their war on fronts in Burma. To this end, they decided in all their wisdom, that they needed to build a link between the Thai railway system and the Burmese railway. Only one problem - miles of inhospitable terrain and solid rock. Not letting this get in the way, they decided to make all the POW's which they had taken captive do all the work. 60,000 Allied POWs, as well as up to 200,000 asian labourers were forced to work gruesome 15hr shifts cutting and

Kanchanaburi

Home on the Kwai is all mine all mine

blasting through the solid rock, amongst some of the nastiest conditions suffered during WWII. For more info look up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Railway .

So, we thought we had to come and see abit of history and heritage on this trip. It aint all sunny beaches, booze and fine wines.

Booked ourself on a typical tourist tour, which contained amongst other things a visit to Hellfire Pass, the most famous landmark of the Death Railway, where there is now a fantastic but somewhat sobering memorial museum next to the actual track.

The tour also took us to Erawan Falls, which is located within Erawan National Park. A fantastic 7-tiered waterfall, with some excellent natural pools for swimming, and lots of fish - scary large ones, and small nibbling ones... it also contained plenty of cheeky monkeys, one of which stole a packet of crisps out of Karens backpack, when she turned her back! Naughty!!!

As well as this, we went on a train on a section of the Death Railway, which provided us with some great photo opportunities. We also went to see the actual Bridge over the river Kwai, which was n't actually very exciting, just another example

Erewan National Park - Erawan Falls

Locals at play

of Thailand lax attitude towards Health and Safety (you could walk right over the bridge on the tracks, with only your own balancing abilities between yourself and a long fall down to the water... quite worrying.

In Kanchanaburi, we stayed in a fantastic guest house, which was right on the River Kwai, our bungalow was overlooking a section of the river, which was very picturesque!!!

We also took another trip to Tiger Temple, which is basically a monastary, where they look after orphaned Tigers. You pay a 300 baht donation/entrance fee, which is supposedly going towards the building of a new 13 acre enclosure, with all the tiger trimmings. We got to walk rounds some rather large tigers, have photo, walk with tigers etc. Very touristy, but a once in a lifetime opportunity... also saw some tiger cubs, although they were caged up whilst the tourists were there, which made us sad.

Well, Karens starving, so thats the blog over for now... we made our way up to Chaing Mai, and we are gonna have a bit of a look around and see whats what. James is after a dapper suite, and Karen wants to do some