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Published: October 8th 2006
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Bit of a crazy one, in two days I've walked over the River Kwai Bridge, sat with tigers, swam in waterfalls!
As most of you will see and probably read there's been a lot of pictures of me either getting drunk or drunk on my travels especially in Thailand. However all of us agreed that we would take some time out to look at the Thailand - Burma Railway line and the Bridge over the river Kwai. I knew that a lot of people had died in the production of the railway and it would be chance to pay some respect to that. I'm lucky enough to be able to travel around and feel safe because a lot of people gave their lives so I can. With one of my best friends serving in the army as well who may have to risk his life eventually, something I couldn't do, I felt this was something I needed to see.
When The Japanese invaded south east asia during the Second World War, one of their key objectives was to build a railway that connected Burma with Thailand, particularly from Bangkok to Rangoon to reinforce their their position in Burma and eventually attack
India. The Japanese had a workforce of at 100,000 conscripted Asian Labourers and 60,000 Allied POWs captured in fighting such as Singapore, Malaysia, Inndonesia and the Phillipines. This workforce was herded up to Thailand in horrific conditions, made to work 16 hours a day without a break, lived in appalling conditions and were malnourished to the point of starvation. About 25% of the Allied POW workforce died, of that 6,318 were British, 2,815 Australians, 2,490 Dutch and the remainder were from the USA. There is no record kept of the asian deaths but it is widely considered that 100,000 to 170,000 people died in its construction.
We visited a number of places here the famous Bridge over the Kwai, which was bombed by the allies during the war and 2 museums, one by the river was absolutely rubbish, effectively a junk yard but the other the Thailand-Burma Railway Museum next to the Kanchanaburi war cementary was a really informative place and well worth a visit. I knew a little about what happened here and had seen some shocking pictures but this really brought home how bad it was in Asia during the war. All of us were moved by the
war cementary, where most of the British and Dutch are rememered. I'm always shocked by the ages of the people, most are under 30, my age. It is, like in every war, a waste of a generation, which takes decades to repair. I hope we never see the like of these conflicts again but with the current climate, I can never be sure.
After these visits we headed to the Tiger Temple about half an hour from Kanchanaburi. This is a buddhist temple was approached by poachers with a tiger cub who was to be stuffed. After it went wrong, the buddhist monks agreed to look after the cub, that eventually died. However over the years more tigers have been given to the monks and they agree to look after them. The tigers are tame by tiger standards and as a visitor you are allowed to sit by them and stroke them although I wasn't quite sure about that!! I decided that I'd just sit by them. What got me about them was their size, their paw and their heads are huge!! But at the same time they are really tame and did all the things my cats do, roll
around, most were asleep and many were quite happy to be stroked. I sadly didn't have a giant ball of string to test how playful they were but I reckon they would have gone for it. We also watched the monks walk the tigers back to the cages and that was a sight in itself, the wardens having to throw stones to move all the other animals out of the way so this Procession of wild animals can walk past. Its like Thailands answer Birmingham's nature centre so theres all sorts of animals walking round, peacocks, Pigs, cows horses and at one point these tigers.
The following day we went to the Erawan national park. As it was 400 Baht to get in, we were gonna make the most of it. We walked the full trail to the top of the park which the footpaths, to say the least were a little crazy! Rather stupidly I wore flip-flops to do this trek and about 40 minutes in realised this was probably the most stupid idea of my trip so far. I ended up walking most of it bare foot so the soles of my feet are a bit sore at
the mo. The views were amazing though, with waterfalls at each of the 7 stages which you could swim in, as well as a really smooth rock that doubled up as a slide. It was a good day as the pictures should show.
From here its back to Bangkok again, hopefully not for long as I really want to head to Chang Mai as soon as possible.
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anonymous
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ste
disco stu hate u more everyday man good to hear ur havin the best time get some of the hotties numbers man i knew u wouldn't let us down nice pics