Kanchanuburi & Bridge over River Kwai

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On Dec 3, we took a mini-bus from KhaoSan road in Bangkok to Kanchanuburi, which is about 2 hours north west of Bangkok.

The day before, when I booked the bus ticket, I asked whether it is a small bus or a big bus.
The agent told me it is a mini-bus. I forgot to ask whether it is air-conditioned or not.

It is not. With about 2 hours of no air con, the passengers in our mini-van are pretty upset.

When we got to Kanchanuburi, we were dropped off at our desired guesthouse, which I made a reservation a few days ago. It is situated by the river. Our room is on a big steel raft, with a pretty river view.

Unfortunately, our room "moves" every time a speed boat passes by. And the noise from a nearby floating discoteque goes on till around 11 pm.

Kanchanuburi is famous for the River Kwai Bridge.
This week is the week of the River Kwai Bridge Festival.

We went to the fair grounds. Again, there are many vendors. I cannot believe that there can be so many vendors in Kanchanuburi, as it is not a big town. The atmosphere in the festival is very nice. There is a carnival, with many vendor. There are a few performances and some exhibitions. There is even a old trading sail boat on display.

In one of the exhibitions, it showed the prisoners of war who built the Thailand-Burma railway. A lot of people died building the railway, probably at least 100,000, mostly Asians.

For the next few days, we just did some local exploration and took it very easy.
We visited a few Wats (temples) and also visited the Hellfire Pass Memorial.

The Hellfire Pass was a section made for the Burma-Thailand Railway. The difficulty
of the construction of the rail road can be seen by the landscape.

http://www.dva.gov.au/commem/oawg/thailand.htm

We visited the area where there were at least 100 floating barges, which are used as
floating discotheques (Karaoke's). Right now, there are about 1 or 2 floating barges
going up and down the river each evening, which already kept the residents up at night.
We suppose we are in the low season. We cannot imagine what the high season fanfare would be like.


Tomorrow (Dec 10), we will return to Bangkok by train and stay for 2 days.
On Dec 12, we will fly from Bangkok to Yangon, Burma and tour for 4 weeks.
Internet may not be as readily available in Burma, so please be paitent with our travel reports.

Tidbits:
We ate the cheapest noodle soup (10 baht, about 30 cents) today, which has rice noodle, with two fish balls, and a few very thin pieces of BBQ pork.

The US dollar lost about 15% against the Thai Baht since we last visited in January 2006.

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Photos

2006-12-03 15-31-53
Just outside the River Kwai Festival, seems a bit quiet from the outside, but we haven't seen anything yet.

2006-12-03 16-33-23
Since we arrived in Kanchanaburi 3 hours ago, we haven't had much for lunch. So it is only fair to starting snacking in the fair ...

2006-12-03 16-34-22
This fair has lots of interesting things, including pet squirrels for sale. Here the vendor is cleaning and feeding a squirrel.

2006-12-03 16-38-33
Here you go ... the famous River Kwai Bridge. There is a light/laser show at night re-enacting war time ariel attack during the festival.

2006-12-03 17-09-48
The bridge is still in service, but tourist are allowed to walk on it when no trains are passing.

2006-12-03 18-01-19
The market inside the fair is big and seems to have more people than Chatuchak weekend market in Bangkok.

2006-12-03 18-27-03
I bought beef jerky on sticky rice for only 10B. Doesn't seem enough to eat, so I added more protein to the meal. (another 10B, bugs are expensive)

2006-12-04 09-33-56
Balcony of our room. Our room is on a barge floating on River Kwai. The River Kwai bridge is right behind Phyllis about 2 KM away and we can watch the laser show from our balcony.

2006-12-04 11-18-57
This "tricycle?" was taken from a front seat of a bus. This is very common around here. Some tricycles can carry 3-4 adults with small engines, about 120cc.

2006-12-04 13-01-40
Tourism is big in Thailand. Tourist Authority of Thailand (TAT) provides easy access to a lot of good information. We look for TAT in every city/town where we go. Here we are visiting a Tourist Police Station.

2006-12-05 12-26-56
Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum.Check out this site: http://www.dva.gov.au/commem/oawg/thailand.htm

2006-12-05 13-44-54
This section of the railway overlooks the Kwai Noi Valley. It was a very hot afternoon and eerily quiet.

2006-12-05 14-02-04
Here is the Hellfire Pass. Solid rock cut away by hand tools. During WWII, Japanese forced 60,000 POW and 200,000 Asians to construct the Thailand-Burma Railway. About 12,000 POW and 100,000 Asians died in the project.

2006-12-07 12-17-24
Here is the barge we stayed in. Photo taken from the guest house restaurant. Looks nice, but lots of noisy speed boats in the morning.

2006-12-07 12-19-36
The guesthouse restaurant is a good place to go in a hot afternoon.