Now On To the Death Railway

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I am so exhausted it is not even funny. I just had a thirteen hour day! I had a very early pick up time for my excursion to the Bridge on the River Kwai and the Death Railway. Both of these sites are 2.5 hours outside of Bangkok in Kachanaburi. After the usual pickup of different people at different hotels and a quick van change on Khao San Road, we were on our way.

Once out of Bangkok, the hustle and bustle of the city quickly fades away and is traded in for beautiful, lush fields of palm trees sporadically dotted with beautiful temples. You also see the usual fare of street vendors, traditional homes and we definitely were in some more "urban" areas with stores, shops, garages (by the way, gas is about the same price here pretty much the only thing that is not dirt cheap) and the like. I even saw a couple of factories for spirit houses. We had a couple of stops at red lights and what we call our squeegees, here are young kids selling wreaths and flowers for offerings at shrines. There's an oxymoron there somewhere!

As we neared the town of Banpong, I was this huge welcome sign that said "Welcome to the City of Nice People". I just had to write that because I just found that really funny. We stopped for gas there and our guide turns around and asks "Who wants to go to Thailand?" ... puzzled looks all around the bus and then we realized that she was asking who wanted to go to the toilet. Ah giggles all around! As we neared Kachanaburi, the scenery changed and became just breathtaking. Beautiful mountains, lush green spotted with palm trees. There were rice paddies and fields were the earth was a vibrant red clay colour. Just beautiful.

Our first stop was the Kachanaburi War Cemetery, at which 6,982 Allied soldiers are buried for differing countries including Canada. The majority of them are under the age of thirty. What was interesting about each of the headstones was that they each had a personalized message from a loved one; some poems, scriptures and some just saying I love you from mom and dad! I never used to like history and therefore my knowledge is definitely lacking but regardless, you cannot be jaded in a place like that.











The next stop was the JEATH War Museum, which I found a little disappointing but interesting nonetheless. The museum itself is situated on the Mae Khlong River that separates into two tributaries, Kwai Yai and Kwai Noi. The name of the museum comes from the first letter of the principal countries that participated in this regional conflict, that is, Japan, England, America, Thailand and Holland.



























Just a couple of minutes walk and I was at the Bridge on the River Kwai, built in 1943 and crosses the Kwai Yai. This bridge was a constant target and was bombed in 1945. The only original portions are the curved beams (8) otherwise it has been completely rebuilt. I walked across the entire bridge. It is a bit difficult to really soak it in when there are hoards of tourists looking for their photo op. And you guys know that I don't get this incessant need of having pictures of oneself at these kinds of sites. I realized at one point that most people did about 1/3 of the way in, took their photos and were out of their so past the hoards it was actually a little bit more of a serene experience. After that I stopped to look into a few stalls and I finally found malas ... not they're wood but the woman lowered the price when I said that one was for my mom!!!





















Then we hopped back on the bus and were off to grab the train at the Thakilen station.





















We were going to be on the train for about an hour but it involved crossing Hellfire Pass or the Death Railway. This is a regular train just like the one that Jana and I took to go to Ayutthaya a few days back. I walked and a nice Thai man offered me his seat but then I saw an elderly gentleman so I gave it back up to him. After a whole lot of sawadee kha's and bowing I had to find a place to park myself. I basically stood in the connector between two cars; the door was opened so it actually gave the best vantage point (and truth be told, the best breeze!). As you need the Pass, the train slows right down and you can hear the creaking of the wooden tracks underneath. Quite eerie. This particular railway, by the way, was built by the Japanese in 1942 and it runs between Thailand and Burma. For the building of the railway, 250,000 Asian labourers and 61,000 Allied POW's were utilized of which approximately 100,000 labourers and 16,000 POW's died between 1942-1945 of beatings, starvation and disease. The railway runs for 260 kms to the Three Pagoda pass on the Thai-Burmese border (of which I saw a replica when I went to Muang Boran).


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enjoying the breeze from the window</td></tr></tbody></table>














As we hopped off the train, we could still see large mountains and I noticed a large temple right on top of one of the mountains. At the station itself, there were quite a few monks but also many women dressed in white. This was a religious order and that was there home. The only way to reach it apparently was on foot.







We stopped for lunch at this quaint little restaurant, basically a converted ferry boat and therefore right on the water. It was a buffet style lunch and actually quite tasty (and again with bad muzak ... this time Alone Again Naturally, Arthur's Theme and some Bryan Adams song). We then made a quick stop at the Sai Yok National Park to see the small waterfall; not exactly Niagara Falls!





















And then the skies opened up and torrential downpours (at which point I realized that the emergency rain poncho was actually in my carry-on ... smart girl I am). The rain only meant that as we made our way back into Bangkok, not only did we have the beautiful mountains but we had a rainbow.



So on the way back, I was just starving and not really in the mood to be hunting down a food stall so I committed a sin and went to McD's ... BUT I had the Samurai Pork Burger so it's not like I didn't try the "local" flavours ... it was only half wrong, I say.

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