A Day Spent in Kanchanaburi

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On our second day in Bangkok, we got up early and took a two hour drive to Kanchanaburi. This is the location of the famous Bridge over the River Kwae that was built by the Japanese during WWII. They transported 60,000 POWs to build the bridge, mostly from Singapore. The POWs were mostly Australians, British and Dutch but there were other nationalities including Americans.



We first visited the war museum that took us through the process of building the railroad and bridge. The railroad was being built to link Thailand and Burma to support the Japanese troops. They pushed the POWs to finish a five year project in just one year. Next we visited one of the many cemeteries dedicated to these POWs.



It was then time to move on to the railroad and the famous bridge. The original bridge was bombed in 1945 but it has been reconstructed. The train only runs once a day so we were able to take our time exploring the bridge to see how it was built. We were surprised to see how small it was. We then went to the train station to take a ride on the train. The original railroad was over 400km but today around 150km have been restored. Our guide said it was part due to funding and they do not want to restore to link to Myanmar (Burma). The train ride was pretty bumpy but it was interesting to see the path the POWs built. We had our lunch in the local village where we got off of the train at the Tham Krasae restaurant. It was pretty good, Thai food.



The Saiyok Elephant Park was our next stop, or should I say adventure. We saw the best elephant show in Chiang Mai so we were here to just ride an elephant. And what a ride it was. You start on a platform to get on the elephant. No problem and neither one of us are afraid of heights so things started out well. We were walking along and went up a hill and then on the way down the hill I seriously thought we were going to fall off the elephant. I must have had a normal reaction because our Mahout started laughing. “Oh my god” he said and then would laugh. AAAAhhhhhhh, then more laughter. Too funny. We got a better grip and things moved on. The guide said the Mahout would take some pictures of us on the elephant so we were not surprised when he got off and asked for the camera. Then he had Jason move off of the chair onto the elephant. More pictures and then he started walking away. Apparently, Jason was now the Mahout and our Mahout was the photographer. He did a great job but our elephant was kind of doing her own thing. Every once in a while he would get her back on track. Jason said we were on auto-Mahout because he does not speak elephant. We went into the river and found out that our elephant is quite the comedian as she soaked us. I thought it was part of the show but no one else was getting wet. Oh how the Mahout laughed and once again took some great pictures. We wandered a little longer and then time to get off. A fun time was had by all!



We walked a little ways back to the river and got on a bamboo raft. A motor boat pulled us up stream and then we drifted back down. We had someone on the boat making sure we went the right direction so all we had to do was relax. It was very peaceful.



The traffic in Bangkok is some of the worst in the world so it took us a while to get back to our hotel. We washed the day off and then went across the street to eat at the Mango Tree restaurant. Our guide said it was famous so we gave it a try. More yummy Thai food.



Tomorrow off to Hua Hin for some sun and relaxation.

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Photos

Scenery on Train Ride
This is what most of the scenery looked like on our 1 1/2 hour ride.