The Bridge over the River Kwai

Day 24 (23/04/08): Kanchanaburi, Thailand

After ten hours in the bus, it rolled into Bangkok bus station in the early hours of the morning. I hadn't got a huge amount of sleep, but sleep is for the weak. Helen was planning on skipping Bangkok for the moment and going straight to Kanchanaburi, and I decided it sounded like a good idea. I really wasn't ready to face the bustle of Bangkok, and a quiet river town sounded like a good place to recharge my batteries.

We managed to buy some tickets for a 5:30am bus to Kanchanaburi, leaving us only 10 minutes to find it. We ended up running around the station, asking different people where the departure terminal was. We got pointed in multiple different directions, finding three places that were labeled as 'Terminal 10'. Fifteen minutes later we found the right place, and luckily the bus was still there. The bus trip was pretty uneventful, and two hours later, still early in the morning, we arrived in the small Thai town of Kanchanaburi, on the banks of the River Kwai, and obviously, the famous bridge.

We found quite a nice backpackers to stay at, right on the river side. It has a nice lawn with hammocks and deck chairs overlooking the river, perfect for relaxing. The room I was staying in was right on the river as well, literally. It's on a small floating platform, which you reach via a short gangplank. The plank is quite a test of dexterity, as it is hinged in three places. I wonder how many people have fallen into the river.

We decided that a couple hours of powernapping was definitely the way to go, and I crashed onto the bed, happy to be horizontal for the first time in a long time. A few hours later we were both awake and keen to explore the town. The first place we walked to was the 'Thailand-Burma Railway Museum'. A private museum setup recently to explain and give information about the construction of the famous railway line. For the uneducated in the audience, during WW2, the Japanese used a large number of Allied POW's and local forced labour to build a railway line linking Thailand and Burma. The working conditions were terrible, food scarce, and medical supplies non-existant. As such, thousands of the prisoners died from disease, malnutrition and violent beatings. The bridge over the river Kwai (one of eight bridges built), is the most famous due to a novel, and later a movie based on its construction. The museum was really good, it presented an excellent overview of the whole railway, its history, background, construction, effects, aftermath etc. While a lot of the information was very sobering, it served as a very good reminder of the inhumanity of war.

The second stop, right across the road from the museum, was the large cemetry housing the graves of close to 7000 Allied servicemen who died in the construction of the Thai side of the Railway. After the war, there had been a huge operation to recover the bodies of all the dead POWs and bring them together to be housed in one large cemetry. The cemetry is incredibly well taken of, the gardens are immaculate, with several full time gardeners constantly attending to it. At the cemetry were a few Australian soldiers, practicing for what I assume is an Anzac day demonstration. Anzac day is only 2 days away, and there are some signs around town advertising dawn services. I am not sure how many NZ'ers died working on the railway, they weren't listed anywhere, but a large number of Australians died. Quite a large section of the cemetry was Australian.

In the heat of the blistering afternoon sun, we walked the 3km across town to go and see the famous bridge. The bridge itself isn't that impressive as far as bridges go, but its the history behind it that is interesting. The bridge itself was covered in tourists, most arriving in the big package tour buses, snapping silly posed photos before being herded back onto their buses for the next destination. All around the bridge were touts selling all sorts of maps, books and other tourist trinkets about the bridge. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but something a little more somber to honour the dead would have been nice.

We walked back and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing on the lawn, watching the river and reading books. Going up and down the river was a small boat towing a large barge that looked like a large floating gazebo. It was packed with Asian tourists, singing some truly awful kareoke. I realised that my bed was right on the river, and hoped they would stop singing by bedtime.

It was the middle of the week, in the off season, so the town was pretty quite in the evening. Apparently Kanchanaburi is quite a popular spot with Thai weekend holidayers, so there were a number of pubs and restaurants around the place, all pretty much empty. So after a quiet dinner, I retired to bed to read my book.