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Published: March 29th 2008
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A little history lesson for those of you that have never heard of Kanchanaburi and 'The bridge over the River Kwai' which was a famous book and was also made into a film (for those who already know, or do not wish to know, skip to the next paragraph): Kanchanaburi became a POW (Prisoner of War) camp during WWII when Japanese military leaders chose the River Kwai basin as the route for the construction of the 415 kilometre Thailand to Burma Railway. Work began in June 1942 and they used 60,000 allied POW's and also conscripted (forcefully) 200,000 Asian labourers to build it. By the time it was finished 15 months later, they had shifted 3 million cubic metres of rock and built 9 miles of bridges. This was at the cost of many lives, an estimated 16,000 POW's (around 7,000 of these were English) and 100,000 Asian labourers died during this time. Many from diseases, malnutrition and mis-treatment at the hands of the Japanese military. It had earned the nickname, the Death Railway; they estimate that 38 POW's died for each kilometre of track laid down and many of them are also buried in Kanchanaburi. The bridge there is a
famous landmark and so 4 of us decided we would like a cultural weekend to go and find out more, especially as it was Easter weekend and we had nothing planned.
We arrived in Kanchanaburi on Saturday morning, after a taxi to Suphanburi and then a 2 hour bus journey. The bus was not air conditioned but had open windows but you can imagine how uncomfortable it was in the 45 degrees heat at the moment in Thailand!! We were very glad then to arrive in our air conditioned, very nice accomodation, which was a snip at about 5 pounds each for the night! A novelty after about 5 weeks of just having a fan....oh, and the room had a hot water shower, which has also been a rarity believe it or not.
We decided to head straight to the bridge that afternoon. After taking many pictures, we decided to walk accross the bridge (along the railway). This was an amazing experience to actually walk onto the bridge knowing it's history. It was also interesting as there seemed to be no safety precautions; not only were we walking along a railway track, effectively, that trains actually run on
(and DID whilst we were on it), there were all sorts of gaps that you could quite easily fall down (especially if you were a little clumsy like myself) when everyone is trying to get past each other amoungst the herds of tourists! That said, I'm glad we WERE able to, as you get to soak it in a whole lot more. So we walked along the bridge and crossed to the bank on the other side and got a great view of the bridge in it's entirety away from the herds. As we were walking back, a train approached and we all had to jump onto these little platforms just offset from the track and almost overhanging the water which was quite a novelty. You can ride on the death railway as it is still in use today (mainly as a tourist attraction) but we didn't have time unfortunately.
As we crossed to the other side we all went to get a drink to cool down and went to look around the market that was nearby. Always a fatal mistake for me as, not only am I good at spending money, I am also a sucker for buying
things that local people produce....So there was this really friendly guy tapping away with a chisel type instrument and making the most intricate designs on buffalo hide and I bought some elephant designs from him. They were beautifully made and he gave us a good price but I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with them yet! We quickly moved away from the stalls and went into the nearby World War II museum which gave us some more information about the railway. We also saw the remains of the original wooden bridge (it was rebuilt in steel) and some of the artifacts recovered from that time.
That evening we went back to the area and sat in a lovely floating restaurant overlooking the bridge. We were surprised to see that the bridge was not lit up at night but saw some people walking over it with torches very bravely!! Emma and I had the most amazing grilled prawns that were huge (and I'm ashamed to say, cost about the same as I was paying for my accomodation for the night!) and we all had a lovely evening chilled out on the river.
The next day was
easter sunday!!! Yay! We managed to enjoy a chocolate bar in bed that morning in the nice cool 10 degrees room without it melting! We had a lovely breakfast at our hotel and sat overlooking the river. We then headed to the Kanchanaburi war cemetery where some 7,000 allied POW's are buried, many of whom are English. The Cemetery itself is beautiful (given the circumstances of course) there are lovely trees in the grounds and the graves are immaculately kepy in perfect rows and well kept grass and plants by every single grave stone. Apparantly the bodies were buried in an upright position to save space but in a way I feel this is slightly fitting that they are 'still standing' so to speak. All four of us wondered looking at all the graves in silence for some time. I couldn't believe it when, grave after grave I saw 'The Royal Norfolk Regiment' there were so many of them and I figured that they must have been captured in Singapore. (My dad has since looked into this and discovered that the Royal Norfolk Regiments 4th, 5th and 6th Battalions served in the Far East, as part of the 18th Infantry
Division, in the defence of Singapore and Malaya against the Japanese advance. The battalions ended up as prisoners-of war when Singapore fell in February 1942 . They would remain so until August 1945 during which time they were used as forced labour on projects such as the Death Railway) It was strange to think that I was half way across the world looking at the grave stones of men that once lived where I was from. Some of the messages that had been written on the gravestones sent shivers down your spine; one in particular 'I often think of how you died and couldn't say goodbye before you closed your eyes.'
We walked accross the road to the Thailand-Burma railway museum which was much more informative than the WWII museum we had visited the previous day and we watched a video interview with former POW's who were involved in building the death railway. We found out many more facts and first - hand experiences and the time we spent in this museum along with the morning at the cemetery, really brought it all home much more than just seeing the bridge. A little shell-shocked we went to a pizza
restaurant for our easter sunday lunch before getting on the hot sticky bus again.
We were all so affected by what we had seen and everything we had discovered over the duration of our stay. I'm so glad I made the trip out to Kanchanaburi and found out more about it, I'll certainly be reading into it when I return home. A good way to have spent our easter weekend!
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Ali Atkinson
non-member comment
Wow!
Hi Hun Well what can i say it looks absolutely fantastic, i'm so pleased your having such a good and rewarding time. Cameron loves your photos and is eagerly awaiting your updates. Thinking of you. Love Ali, Ian and Cam