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Published: September 30th 2011
by Jan In the last seven days we picked up the tempo again, sharing the time between three cities and in each and every one of them absorbing the historical sites from a (not so) distant past. From World War II, towards two previous capital cities of Thailand, each from its own era and its own collection of historical temples!
This is one Speedo, a fun one, the origins of where we picked up the title and more about the other Speedo, later on in the blog.
Kanchanaburi Our first stop on the Speedo was Kanchanaburi, a small city situated next to the river Kwai, home to the famous Death Railway Bridge, better know as the Bridge over the River Kwai, building of which was well documented in a movie titled in the same way.
But this bridge is only one of 688 bridges that were built as a part of the so-called Death Railway, which was built during the second World War. A good 400 kilometres of rail-track connecting Thailand and Myanmar (ex-Burma). It was a project arhitected by the occupying Japanese army who wanted another route to supply its troops while occupying Myanmar
and then progressing further West to India and beyond.
The railway was built by Prisoners of War (POW), mainly from UK, Holland, USA and Australia, and by a second group,
romusha. Approximately 200.000 people have been "recruited" from all over South-East Asia with promises of jobs, money and better life. People from Burma, Thailand, Singapore, Laos, Vietnam, as well as Indonesia and Malaysia.
Together with 60.000 ailed prisoners they formed a work force that completed the rail-track in just over 15 months. The terrain was hard, the reason why plans for the rail-way were abandoned by the British years earlier, it required numerous bridges and deep mountain cutting.
Almost 13.000 prisoners of war and 90.000
romusha lost their lives. Majority of them died in the third and the last stage of constructions, when the working hours have been prolonged up to 16 hours per day. The diseases, lack of food and clean water were too much. This stage was called the
Speedo.
Later the rail-way was torn apart by the British, fearing it might be used to supply Karen separatists in Burma.
During our time in Kanchanaburi we visited two museums dedicated to the people
who lost their lives. One in the city itself, Thai- Burmese Railway Museum, which is an excellent place to start. It's a bit pricy for Thai standards (110 Baht) but well worth it. At the end of the visit you enter a small souvenir shop which gives you a down-ward view of the the Allied War Cemetery. The other museum is about 80 kilometres outside the town, Hellfire Pass.
Its one of the passes where the POWs had to cut in to solid rock to make enough space for rail-tracks to be laid down and for a train to pass. It was all done by hammers, picks, shovels and dynamite. The pass was named by the POWs itself. Due to long working hours the pass was light at night by torches making it look like hell. Over 70% of the crew working on this pass died.
We wrapped up our WW2 history lesson by a short train journey on the railway itself and a walk over the famous Bridge on the River Kwai, something that I somehow forgot to do while visiting six years earlier or something that just slipped out of my memory.
It's amazing how
much the town has changed in this time. I remember it as a quiet town. But remove the bridge and the river and you could convince me that I have never been here before. There are loads of bars on both sides of “the tourist street” filled with ex-pats who made their homes here. Massage parlours and tattoo shops are everywhere and when the night falls the ladies of the night fill the bars. It has become a mini tourist ghetto. But just a five minute walk away it's just a normal Thai town with everything that goes with it.
As a part of the trip on which we visited the Hellfire pass we stopped at the Erawan National park, home of 7-stage waterfalls, surrounded by lush forest filled with monkeys. There is a trail leading up-hill and on the way you pass, as you might of guessed, 7 waterfalls. A few of them are suitable for swimming and in all of them you can get a free-of-charge fish massage. Just be ready, these fish are big! At the salons they are usually just a few centimetres long, here it's more like 40 cm. And when they massage you
D.W. Woolley
Picture taken on 4th of September 2011(bite your dead skin of) it hurts a bit.
At one of the waterfalls (rocks surrounding it form a pair of boobs) you can slide down the rocks into the water and we took full advantage of it.
Ohh, it would be rude if I forgot to mention our tour-guide. Lucky the word guide is “gender free”. Out tour was led by a lady-boy who, in a very squeaky voice, told us his (or her, I never know) name is Pinky! Bless 😊.
Wat,Wat, Wat??? Next up on our Speedo was another historical site. Five hours drive to Ayuthaya was like a history time portal. Now we were surrounded by temples, the remaining sites built between 1350 and 1767 when this city served as a capital to Siamese kingdom. During its time as a capital Ayuthaya was a commercial city visited by Dutch, French, English, Japanese and the Chinese and virtually all foreign visitors claimed it has been the most illustrious city they have ever seen.
Nowadays the city is a great place for a one-day visit, visiting the Khmer style temples (Wat in Thai) scattered around the city. We rented bikes and hit the
road stopping at numerous temples. I have seen most of them on my previous visit to Thailand but I wanted to visit Wat Phra Mahathat again, as I missed one of the highlights of Azimutha. All over Thailand we have seen postcards, posters and paintings of a Buddha head surrounded by tree roots which have been growing around the temple ever since the Burmanese destroyed the site during their successful attack on the city.
In the evening we visited some of the temples again to see them light up. We hired a tuk-tuk to take us around, stopped at a couple of the temples, took a few pics and moved on.
We spent two nights, one full day, in Ayuthaya before getting on a bus again, jumping even further back in history all the way to the mid-13th century to the time of Sukhothai kingdom.
Sukhothai is a small modern city, but less than 20 kilometres away we visited the Sukhothai Historical park. It's another collection of temples, but these were built in Thai style, giving a completely different impression than the ones in Azimuthal. Well, when I say different...when you are starring at the temples for
a couple of days in a row, they all stark looking pretty much the same. Rocks and Buddhas 😊.
We rented out bikes again and hit the paths within the park and observed the sites. Similar to Azimuthal we spent one full day in Sukhothai before moving forward. Seven days, 3 cities and loads of history!
Our next stop was a small border town, just a few kilometres away from Myanmar, where we sneaked in to Karen Refugee camp...more about it in a few days, when Polona will publish her blog.
Budget tip
Most of the guest houses and agencies will offer you this trip. But if you want to save some money all you need to do is hire your own tuk-tuk on the street. They charge about half of what the agencies do. When it comes to temples I will let pictures do all the talking (writing).
In our previous blog post
Taken by Bangkok, chewed and spit back into the atmosphere Polona mentioned we visited the Gary Jones in the notorious Bangkok prison.
Two links below for anybody interested about the subject:
Blog: I am a prisoner in the Bangkok Hilton Article: Letters from the inside Link do zadnjega javljanja na radiju - od 14.20 naprej
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Maja
non-member comment
OMG
SOOOO jealous. Now I know where calendars come from :))