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Published: April 11th 2009
Koh Kong - Mangrove forest
This photo is out of order becasue Travelblog puts the first photo up as the title photo! :-(
for those who didn't read this blog earlier - Travelblog (the provider that hosts my blog) deleted all the photos that were uploaded over a twelve-day period in April, including these ones. Their only comment is that one has to uplaod them all again. Given that it takes me a long time to wokr out which photos I want to upload, and that Travelblog makes the actual uploading very difficult, it's not an easy thing to do. So for the time being you just have to imagine that they're really great photos. Actually, the first one was quite nice, a speedboat riding through a mangrove swamp almost at sunset, taken from above....
Anyone thinking about setting up a travel blog, do NOT use Travelblog. If any bloggers out there have any suggestions about better blogs which work well for travellers and have a similar sort of interface, let me know.
Wasting nearly two weeks in Bangkok, as described in the last blog, I decided I at least had to get out of town for one day. I took the bus up to KanchabUri. The taxi to the bus station cost considerably more than the bus
Kanchanaburi - bridge over the river kwai
An old locomotive. I don't think there was any explanation ticket, as for some reason all the long-distance bus stations are way out of town. Kanchanaburi is famous for the “Bridge Over The River Kwai” immortalised in the book of the same name, which I haven’t read, and the film based on the book, which I haven’t seen.
Seat 61 , the website for people who want to travel by train, has this to say about the Bridge Over The River Kwai:
There is a small technical problem with the Bridge over the River Kwai: It doesn't actually cross the River Kwai..! Pierre Boulle, who wrote the original book, had never been there. He knew that the 'death railway' ran parallel to the River Kwae for many miles, and assumed that it was the Kwae which it crossed just North of Kanchanaburi. He was wrong - It actually crosses the Mae Khlung. When David Lean's blockbuster came out, the Thais faced something of a problem. Thousands of tourists came flocking to see the bridge over the River Kwae, and they hadn't actually got one... All they had was a bridge over the Mae Khlung. So, with admirable lateral thinking, they renamed the river. The Mae Khlung is now the Kwae Yai ('Big Kwae') for several miles north of the confluence with the Kwae Noi ('Little Kwae'), including the bit under the bridge.
It seems a fairly significant error on the part of the author. I’m not sure if the book pretends to be historical or purely fictional, but you’d think he could have taken a quick look at a map. I wonder if he ever wrote a book about Inuit and their words for “snow”.
The plaque at the site, with classic Thai face-saving, doesn’t mention this, but also doesn’t contradict it. Here’s the text in full. I’ve noted some of the more egregious English spelling and punctuation mistakes on the part of the translator/writer, but not the minor ones:
THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAE
The Bridge over the River Kwae was built during the Great Pacific War when Japan declared war on the United States of America and England, later became a part of World War II. The bridge was begun in October, 2485 B.E. (1942 A.D.) and completed in October, 2486 B.E. (1943 A.D.) On 16th September, 2485 B.E. (1942 A.D.) the Japanese army signed the contract with the Thai government to build this strategic railway from Thailand to Burma (now Mynmar ). The railway started from Nongpladuk station about 5 kilometres from Banpong railway station, and it crossed the River Kwae Yai at Ban Thamakham in Muang district of Kanchanaburi province. (In those days the place was called "Ban Tha Maa Kham" meaning "horses crossing".) The railway was laid northward passing through Kanchanaburi for about 4 kilometres along the River Kwae Yai, and at the bridge it made a sharp curve going along with the River Kwae Noi passing through the Thai-Burmese border at Three Pagodas Pass connecting the Burmese railway at Thanbyuzayai station. The total length of the railway was 415 kilometres: 303.95 kilometres in Thailand and 111.05 in Burmar . The prisoners of war taken from Malaya, Singapore, Indonesia and other countries in the Pacific region were forced to build the railway. They were put on the train in the south and got off at Banpongo station. They had to walk for 51 kilometres to get to kanchanaburi. The prisoners of war comprised British, Australian, Dutch soldiers as well as Malay, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Burmese, Javanese labourers totalling nearly two hundred thousand. The railway construction was very laborious and difficult as it had to go through thick jungles and high mountains, and dangerous animals were everywhere. The most difficult part was that they had to build the bridge over the River Kwae.The arduous task continued all days all nights amidst hunger and dangerous disease like malaria. The brutality of the war took over 100 000 lives of prisoners of war and labourers. Hence, the railway was called, "The Death Railway."
The Japanese army chose to build the bridge at Thamakham because the soil structure was solid and suitable. To speed up the work, the Japanese army built a temporary wooden bridge about 100 metres from the present one to transport construction materials. It took three months to complete. The present iron bridge spans were brought from Indonesia. The 300 metre bridge consisted of 11 iron spans and the other parts were made of wood. The total construction time was only 6 months, and the total distance was 415 kilometres. The official opening date for the railway was 28th November, 2486 B.E. (1943 A.D).The wooden bridge was later dismantled as it blocked the water way During the war, the Bridge over the River Kwai was heavily bombarded by the allied planes. The spans 4-6 were damaged and unable to operate. Finally, Japan surrendered on 15th August 2488 B.E (1945 A.D.). After the war was over, the British government sold the railway and all railway related materials to the Thai government at the price of 50 million baht. Later, the State Railway of Thailand repaired the bridge and replaced it with two iron spans and the 6 wooden parts were replaced by iron spans as well. The bridge has been in use up to the present time.
Kanchanaburi Municipality
Still, if the museum and the plaques are anything to go by, the bridge, and the “Death Railway” that continued on from it, were the site,
not so much of fighting, but of brutal treatment of POWs of various nationalities by the Japanese. There’s a fairly derelict war museum with rather bizarre displays, some in Thai, some in English, and some in both. In at least one case, a new wall has plastered over the right half of the English explanation. My suggestion would be that if you want to go there, go in the morning. It’s very hot, even though it’s right by the bridge, in the afternoon, and it’s confusing enough as it is, plus the stairs are a killer in the heat. If you’re really into the history of World War II in Asia you might find the museum stimulating but I found it confusing, disorganised and hot. It was hard to tell which war they were referring to half the time.
Anyway, I dutifully walked across the bridge, hung around the museum for a little bit, before retiring to an airconditioned cafe to drink fruit juices to rehydrate myself.
The other thing to do in Kanchanaburi, besides all the longer trips such as popping across the border into Myanmar (you can’t actually travel through Myanmar this way, but you can
Kanchanaburi - bridge over the river kwai
See my text for a verbatim transcript of the English text on this plaque pop across into the border towns for a few hours), waterfalls, caves, mountains, etc., which are all a bit far away, is the Tiger Temple. This is about 35 km out of town.
The first people I found willing to take me out there were a group of motorcycle taxis hanging around in one spot. I talked them down to 300 Baht ($AUS 25) return, with the guy waiting for me. I don’t know if that’s the going rate, but it sounded fair enough for that distance. Needless to say the driver I got was again the scrawniest one, weighing about one-third of what I did, particularly if you took into account my fairly heavy day-pack. It was only after I got on the bike that I realised how much I hate riding as a passenger on a motorbike. Going round a curve, he’d lean into the curve and I couldn’t resist leaning the other way. Of course this meant he had to lean further, and by the time I realised what I was doing if I leant back we’d have been over too far. So I had to learn to anticipate where he was going to turn and
Kanchanaburi - bridge over the river kwai
I don't get it. All war is pointless? All war is backwards? All people do war? try to at least not lean the other way. I concentrated on keeping my chin level with the back of his helmet. The hardest part was anticipating when he’d want to overtake or move further to the left to be overtaken, since I couldn’t see his rear-vision mirrors. Usually when you do such a complicated physical dance with someone you just met at a taxi stand, you at least have protection, but I was wearing shorts, sandals and T-shirt, with my head only protected by a pair of sunglasses - and I’m not even sure if they’re polaroid!
After about forty minutes we arrived at the Tiger Temple. Entrance to this is expensive, I think it was 700 Baht (nearly $AUS 30) or maybe even more. We were asked to not wear too bright colours or flashy things that might make the tigers want to play. Of course there are tourists everywhere, and no temple in sight, although plenty of monks. There are also heaps of volunteers, mainly Western-looking, who do most of the actual work in guiding you around the place and such-like, all in English of course.
Apparently the tigers run free in the evening. I
don’t think they were all chained down, although they had chains so the volunteers could yank on them if they got playful. The volunteers also had water pistols and such-like. They keep a very tight rein on things, as I guess you have to when you’re dealing with tigers. The volunteers literally take you by the hand and lead you to a tiger, sit you down, snap your photo, lead you off to the next tiger, snap your photo, etc. They’re very strict about only taking one person in a group at any one time - some parents were annoyed that they had to be separated from their little children. It’s all a bit weird, I’m not sure if tigers are actually meant to act like. Of course, despite being Buddhist tigers they still eat meat - boiled chicken, and dried catfood.
The tigers are bred from wild tigers which villagers captured. The ones that tourists get to see are all human-imprinted, raised this way from birth, indeed there are a lot of tiger cubs that one gets to see as well. I think it might be better to raise them more naturally and hope that they could be
Kanchanaburi - bridge over the river kwai
he bridge. The sign says "WARNING Take care when walking on the bridge. Move to safety platforms when train approaches bridge. State railways of Thailand will take no responsibility for any accidents". If it looks like it would be easy to fall to your death through the gaps between cross-beams just next to the walkway, that's because it would be. released into the wild, as these ones obviously never can. Apparently according to their website, they are working at doing this with some of them. Because it was late in the afternoon, we got to see them parade the tigers back to their enclosures, with volunteers, feeding the cubs while the Abbot posed for photos. There’s also a leopard cage, and a bunch of cows, deer and buffalo wandering around the place whom they fed vegetables in the evening. In all it’s probably worth visiting just to get the photo of you with a tiger.
I was intending to finally leave Bangkok on Monday, but woke up with awful gastro so didn’t fancy a 12-hour bus ride, and anyway I had to go pick up my visas. I got the Kazakh one fine, although I was worried because it was hard to get into the building and no-one turned up till about 10:20 (they’re supposed to open at 10:00). Since it was a Thai public holiday I thought they might be shut.
I then rang the Uzbek embassy as discussed the previous week. The guy promised to open up specially for me, since it was a holiday. He
Kanchanaburi - bridge over the river kwai
The river - I'm confused as to its name now - with restaurants on it said “did they tell you that it’d been authorised”, which I took as confirmation that my visa had been authorised, and I said yes they had (because the guy I spoke to the previous week told me that it had). So I made the 90-minute or so trek out there, by two trains and half an hour walk. When I got there I gave him my passport, and he said “Oh, Australian ... did they tell you that you have to go through a travel agent?”
“No”
“I’ll go check”.
And he came back and confirmed that they can’t issue visas to Australians. Australians wishing to visit Uzbekistan have to go through a travel agent. I asked him if this was like a Letter Of Invitation, and he said “no”, but actually it is. I hadn’t done enough research beforehand, mainly worrying about the Kazakh one, but later I found out that this is actually the case. It’s true for most other non-ASEAN and non-European nationalities too.
Many of you may not know that I in fact have two valid passports. Although I travel on my Australian passport, I also have a Swiss passport, due to my parents being
Kanchanaburi - bridge over the river kwai
The bridge again with a little tourist train on it. I don't see what's the point, when it's such a short walk. The real train runs over it once a day too, I think.
born in Switzerland. After some discussion with the Uzbek guy, we determined that I could get in if I applied with my Swiss passport. However this would take three working days, which was no good as I had to leave by the next day (my Thai tourist visa was expiring). The annoying thing about this is if they’d told me that at the beginning, I could have applied with my Swiss passport and got the visa. I don’t know what the guy on the phone was talking about, I can only assume he had me confused with some other applicant. I wasn’t planning on going through any places with Uzbek embassies until Kazakhstan, which is leaving it a bit late, specially to organise the Iranian and the Turkmenistan one. At the moment I’m thinking of changing the Chinese leg of my trip to go through Beijing, so I can apply at the embassies there.
Anyway, the next day I headed off for Cambodia. Having already seen Angkor Watt in June last year, I didn’t feel I necessarily had to go there again. So I decided to go through the less popular border crossing at Koh Kong. This is a
Kanchanaburi - JEATH War memorial
"A country" - hope that means his own country! bit further - a five or six hour bus ride with Thais to a town called “Trat”, then a two-hour or so minibus ride, mainly with tourists, to the border, then a half-hour taxi ride from there to Koh Kong itself.
Lonely Planet still describes Koh Kong as “a dusty frontier town of smugglers, gamblers and prostitutes”, but this is old information. Last year all the bridges on the road to Phnom Penh (Cambodia’s capital) were finished, the road having been upgraded, so it’s much less remote now. Also the number of tourists has increased, with more and more tourist facilities, and a lot of expats living there. It’s become quite a nice tourist place and I imagine in 10 years might rival Sihanoukville.
The border crossing was less seedy than the Poipet one (the most popular one, on the way to Siem Reap), with no child beggars in sight. Still, it’s Cambodia. The official rate for a Visa On Arrival is $US 20. Cambodia mainly uses US Dollars, although they do have their own currency, the “riel”, which they mainly use for small amounts (ie instead of coins). However at the border they were asking 1200 Thai
Kanchanaburi - JEATH War memorial
Entrance. Unfortunately my camera batteries went flat here, so I didn't get more photos. Thankfully they revived just long enough to get *some* photos of the Tiger Temple. Baht.
I objected to this, and pulled out a $US 20 note.
She shook her head “Only Thai Baht.”
“Well how much is $US 20 in Thai Baht”
She wouldn’t answer. It’s less than 800. (715, by my calculations, at the rate that was going around then)
“Don’t argue with them, for God’s sake” said the American next to me. But while a little bit of bribery is a way of life in Cambodia, a 70% mark-up is going too far.
She shut the window, and processed a couple of other applicants on the other window. A few minutes later she came back. “1200 Baht”.
“Can I get a receipt?” This is code for “this sounds like bribery”. She shook her head.
“Well I’ll give you $20 then”.
This went on for a while. I don’t know what would happen to people who don’t have any Thai Baht. Finally they called me inside. I thought they were going to inspect my bags, which was fine by me, or make up something about not having a certain vaccine (which was fine by me as I’ve been vaccinated against pretty much everything), but they just said that “just for you”
they’d give me a “special price” of Thai Baht. This is still $US20 for the government and $US 8 for themselves, but I felt I’d pushed it far enough. Of course there’s many stories about them doing similar things at other borders. Other borders at least used to have the official price printed up so you could point to that, but they’ve obviously taken it down at this border crossing. The other point is it’s probably a good place to smuggle stuff - even after I pissed them off, they still couldn’t be arsed searching my bags, so nefarious types should be fine crossing into Cambodia at Koh Kong.
Having diced with death by riding as a pillion passenger on a motorbike, I thought I’d try riding one myself. It’d have to be safer, being in control. At least I’d know what was going on when a gust of sideways wind hit me, rather than the little driver in front of me who had no idea. I hired one from the guesthouse, for 250 Thai Baht (just over $AUS 10). I’d ridden a motorbike before, once when I was about 17, but picked it up pretty quick, I guess
Daniel in the Tigers' Den
This one showing some ofl the keepers. I'm sick of people taking far-off photos of me, so I gave them the camera with the zoom lense attached. you never forget, like riding a bike. Riding on the “wrong” (right) side of the road (the first day on this trip where I was in a country which drives on the right) didn’t really bother me either except on one round-about. Of course, going the wrong way around round-abouts is perfectly normal in Cambodia, so that was fine too.
I rode out to some waterfalls, called Ta Tai Waterfall (there’s several sets of waterfalls around the place), and swam there for a long time. They’re quite nice, and worth seeing if you go to Koh Kong. They’re now signed (never used to be), although I missed the signs because I was concentrating on the directions I’d been given. There’s a group of people there now collecting 5000 riel ($US 1.25 at the unofficial exchange rate) - it used to be 1000 riel - what for I don’t know, as there’s no cleaning or maintenance done on the falls. I imagine like a lot of things, that money goes to support themselves, and adds no other value.
After riding around a bit more and having lunch in town at Fat Sam’s, where fat Sam himself, a very friendly
Daniel in the Tigers' Den
There should be one or two more photos but the batteries went flat again here Scotsman, chatted about the expat community in Koh Kong and his Cambodian wife and child, and told me that it was Cambodian New Year the next week, which meant that everyone would be on the move back to their families and some things might be shut. I didn’t know this, and it did sort of alter my plans.
After this I headed out to the Mangrove Swamp, supposedly one of the largest mangrove forests in Asia. This again has recently been “touristified” with a brand spanking new concrete look-out, and a new walk-way with rickety old little walkways leading off it. It’s just a mangrove swamp, but quite a nice little walk, although overrun with tourists (local and foreign). On the way back, almost at dusk, the forest made loud popping noises, varying between the popping sound you can make with your mouth, through to the sound of two drumsticks being hit together. They were loud and frequent, sounding like some kind of new-age sort of music. I couldn’t work out what was causing them, so if anyone has any idea, leave a comment.
Somehow I was staying at a place which seemed to be frequented only by
Daniel in the Tigers' Den
Oh, it let me take one more photo. That's the whole bit where all the tigers are, you can see the last tourists for the day lining up on the left Germans, not that there were many people staying there. The downside of this is that the “middle-aged” German who ran it, while helpful, was quite grumpy, but the upside is that they made German food, at more-or-less Cambodian prices. The rooms were $US 3 a night. His grumpiness perhaps carried through to his staff, at least one or two of whom seemed unbelievably surly. Perhaps there’s some secret sign I missed that only Germans are welcome, although everything was in English, not German. Anyway, if you don’t care about service with a smile, this place called “Otto’s” is OK, but I’m sure the dozens of other places to chose from are, too!
After this I took the ferry to Sihanoukville. This is the English name for the town, named after Norodom Sihanouk, born Prince, and promoted to King by the French at the age of 18 (in the hope that they could push him around, but he ended up winning them independence), later Prime Minister, then President, then King again (this time a constitutional monarch), and now "King Father"; I think there was also a stint as Opposition Leader in there somewhere. The (more scenic) bus, was to get
to the Vietnamese embassy. This embassy is famous amongst travellers as
the place to get your Vietnamese tourist visa. They turn it around in minutes, whereas all other places take a few working days. The form was simple, and they only required one photo. I couldn’t remember the name of the border crossing where I intended to leave, so I walked over to the wall to look at the map. The customs guy saw me do this, and took the form off me and wrote “any” in that field. They told me to wait and about ten minutes later I had my visa.
Apparently it’s not that easy if you’re a South African. A travel agent came in with two visas, talking in (I think) Khmer. The Vietnamese guy replied in broken Khmer, from the sound of it saying “I can do this one, but not that one” - I speak no Khmer, but that’s what the tone said, and the conversation was mainly “no .... no.....umm no...” The conversation wasn’t working, so the travel agent switched to fluent English, which the Vietnamese guy was more fluent at, but still not much more helpful. He just said that he
Another shot of Bangkok
Phra Sumen Fort (built during the reign of Rama I - 18th century) didn’t know the reason, but they couldn’t process it. Finally the travel agent was able to work out that South Africans must apply for Vietnamese tourist visas back in South Africa, not anywhere in Cambodia. Neither I nor the travel agent have any idea why, which made it hard for him to go back and explain to his client.
Anyway, I hung around Sihanoukville an extra day, although I probably would have been better off moving onto Phnom Penh - other than the tourist traps, there’s not that much to do in Sihanoukville. I hear that Ream National Park is nice, but didn’t get organised enough in time to get out there. I then took a bus (about six hours) to Phnom Penh, which I’ll write about in my next blog. The bus ride was fairly uneventful, the scenery is moderately interesting at the Sihanoukville end, with some mountains, and a few rivers, but soon becomes rather flat and boring, mainly rice padis or non-descript farmland of some sort. There’s a few nice Buddhists temples, and a few towns. Normally the most exciting thing to do on the roads in Cambodia is watch the traffic play chicken with each
Another shot of Bangkok
A small road behind Kao San Road temporarily becomes a river after a short tropical downpour other, or see how many motorbikes you can find with more than five people on them, but from where I was sitting at the back of the bus (assigned seating) I couldn’t even see that. As luck would have it I got stuck next to the second-biggest guy on the bus, so could both of us could hardly move for the whole trip.
So that’s how I (finally) left Thailand and made it to Phnom Penh. I’m feeling much better now, almost fine, well, yesterday anyway, and my allergies have gone and so has my cold (or cold-like symptoms) which may have been partly to do with the pollution in Bangkok. I don’t think of Bangkok as terribly polluted, it’s so neat and green, but with so many cars and motorbikes on the road, I guess it still is a bit (obviously not as bad as it used to be!)
I had plans to go through Ratanakiri, into the more remote parts of Cambodia. But it’s hard enough to get around up there in the best of times without any Khmer, although it’s just been opened up a lot in the last few years, and with the Cambodian
Koh Kong
A statue, I don't know of what, just off the main road New Year it’s probably not a good time. Also it would add a couple of days, and would mean I’d miss out on Saigon (and I can’t find good information saying that the border crossing up there is open to foreigners, although I’m 99% certain it is), so just today I’ve decided I’ll spend a day or two in Phnom Penh, and then just head straight to Saigon. This is the easy way, but at the moment I’m just concentrating on not falling any further behind schedule.
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