Kanchanaburi - Riding The Death Railway

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Kanchanaburi is roughly a 2 hour drive from Bangkok, it lies out west toward the Myanmar border and it is most famous for its World War 2 role, more specifically ‘The Bridge Over the River Kwai’ as part of the Burma - Thailand railway infamously known as ‘The Death Railway’. Kanchanaburi is a strange place in itself, it is rather a quiet place and hosts numerous western themed bars down its main drag and our chosen abode was Apple’s Retreat which was set on the bank of the River Kwai on the opposite side of the river to the main drag. The accommodation was recommended to us by a chap we met in Vietnam, now the problem with recommendations is you often experience different things; combine this with the out in out lie on Apple’s Retreat website and in our guidebook stipulating a pool, really got G pissed off!

Once we had checked in and deposited our packs we headed out to visit the Death Railway Museum, this was a really well set up museum, its explains in great detail the building of the railway, the human cost of building it and also the reasoning behind its creation, it also gave some background information about its role inWW2 and why the Japanese decided to build it.

The war in Europe was under away, the Americans where still neutral and hadn’t come into the war yet, the Japanese decided to invade and conqueror South East Asia and December 1941 was deemed to be the best time to attack, that the British and French would be weakened due to the European war and their attention would be on the war, they wouldn’t worry about their colonies out in Asia. With some success the Japanese occupied a lot of Indochina, Malaysia and Singapore.

The Japanese decided they needed a land route to bring supplies from Occupied Singapore through to Burma, hence the railway! The work began on the line from the Burmese side in October 1942 whilst at the same time work started on the Thailand side the two sides joined on 16th October 1943. The joining of the Burma - Thailand railway occurred at Konkoita. The workers had no modern equipment at their disposal, they had to make use of shovels, picks and hoes to move earth, this was then transported in sacks and even baskets to other areas and the creation of embankments with rock and stone for the railway where completed by human power.

The Japanese transported 60,000 Australian, British, Dutch and American prisoners of war (POW), and 270,000 Asian labourers mainly Malay and Burmese but other nations were included, to start work on the railway. The human cost of the railways creation was immense, of the 60,000 POW’s 12,399 died. In addition to these some 70,000 - 90,000 civilian labourers are believed to have died. The reasons for this appalling death toll were: lack of proper food - the rations were extremely poor, consisting of rice with a little dried vegetable and dried fish was the basic food of the POW, bearing in mind they were forced to work a 16 hour day! Starvation was prevalent and this led to a range of diseases such beri beri, pellagra, dysentery, cholera, tropical ulcers and malaria. In addition to these POWs faced inadequate medical facilities and brutal treatment by the guards and railway supervisors.

Between December 1943 and August 1945 some 220,000 tonnes of military supplies were transported over the railway.

Anyone wishing to ride the railway this museum sets a tone and provides an excellent understanding of what these POW’s endured and how it was built. Across the street to the museum lays the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery known locally as Don Rak, here lies 38 allied POW’s for every kilometre of track laid, it’s a quiet a moving place.

We then set off to a local bar for a reflective beer before returning to our guesthouse for dinner.

We headed out to ride the death railway, this costs 100baht and we wanted to ride it all the way from Kanchanaburi to Nam Tok, it was a two hour journey through some spectacular scenery. After a few minutes we pulled up to a station full of tourists, markets stalls and numerous tour groups who now bordered our train, rather confused as to why they were here, we then crossed the Bridge of The River Kwai! Quite shocked how quick it was, we decided to walk down the following day to take our pictures, incidentally, it was quite interesting to see a busload or two of tour groups alight the train the following stop - they had travelled from Bangkok to ride over the bridge and literally did that.

After two hours we arrived at Nam Tok and went about to find the bus to Hellfire pass (also known as Konyu Cutting), we had to jump into a large tuk-tuk who took us to the bus stop where we jumped aboard a local bus to Hellfire pass. At Hellfire pass the remnants of the track are still visible and a number of the villages surrounding the area where original POW camps, our guestbook informed us that locals frequently stumble upon burial sites - the Japanese allowed POW’s and labourers to bury their dead in a proper ceremony and even contributed to the cost. Taking advantage of this and the fact that the Japanese think its bad luck to disturb the dead the POW buried records of what they were going through and lists of names and numbers along with the dead to later dig up and use as evidence

The Hellfire museum is a brilliantly laid out and extremely informative museum, it is combined with the memorial walk along what once was the track. You can see where the railway has been cut into the rock. The museum is an Australian - Thai initiative and was the brain child of a former Australian POW a chap called Mr J G (Tom) Morris, who made a return visit after 40 years to locate the Konyu Cutting - in1984 he successfully located Hellfire pass which had been immersed by jungle, after application for funding to Australian Government were successful he build at memorial in 1987 which allowed access to the site he was again granted more finance and in 1994 he built the Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum, walking trails and information displays. The museum was opened to the public on 25 April 1998 - there is no entrance fee for this museum but it does rely on donations to keep it going.

After visiting the museum and performing the shorter memorial walk - there is one for 4km, which we couldn’t do, nothing to do with our current fitness levels, but because the last train back across the railway had already left and we were informed the last bus back Kanchanaburi left at 16:30, so with this in mind we headed back to the street and sat at the roadside for almost an hour, we were joined the Aussie chap who had jumped into our tuk-tuk earlier. A local family in a pick-up stopped and told us jump in the back, after some broken rambling by us along the line “you going to Kanchanaburi?, how much?” and he nodding his head saying 10 baht each he set off and 2 minutes down the road he stopped and told us to get out! We were waiting for the bus in the wrong area and he had simply dropped us at the bus stop and was joking about the 10 baht, we thanked him profusely and off he went with his family, instantly our bus came round the corner and we jump aboard.

The three of us venture out for a few beers and food when we got back, we stumbled back later than planned, conscious of our horrendous bus journey the following day - we were not looking forward to that!

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