March 26, 2017

Why did we choose to cycle to Kanchanaburi? We needed to go somewhere after our week in Rayong as we still had ten days before our flight and didn’t want to spend 10 days in Bangkok. Why Kanchanaburi? well it is where the Bridge Over the River Kwai is located. There are other things to see in the area and it is only 145 kms from Bangkok. The other added bonus is that there is a train station and we were hoping to get the train to Bangkok.

We had a lazy start to the day with a full-cooked breakfast at a little place near the guesthouse. We walked the 700 metres to the train station to ask if the bikes could go on the train. The lady at the counter said yes they could. Yeah, finally we can put the bikes on the train, we don’t have to cycle in the mayhem of Bangkok and we can go back to the Wats that we passed on the way to Kanchanaburi, and take an extra rest day here.

 

After we got the good news about the bikes, we headed out on our discovery of the history of the Bridge Over the Kwai and the “Death Railway”. We first visited the war cemetery.

The Japanese used prisoners of war and civilian labour to build a military supply rail line from Burma to Thailand. Fifteen thousand prisoners of war and 100,000 civilians died as a result of sickness, malnutrition, exhaustion and mistreatment. More than 5,000 commonwealth and 1,800 Dutch are commemorated in this cemetery.

The names of 300 men were commemorated on a wall, these were men that had been cremated due to disease and their ashes were placed in a mass grave.

The initial cemetery had white crosses, now they have small plaques with name, rank and age and on some of them a message from a relative.

The cemetery is very well maintained with small flowers or shrubs around each grave marker. A lot of these soldiers were over the age of 30 and were posted to Malaysia or the Far East as it was referred to back then.

I took this photo as my Dad’s middle name is Shelton (his Mum’s maiden name) and Dad also served in the Royal Artillery.

We then did a very foolish thing. We walked to the Bridge. It was hot, the high 30’s and we walked over 3kms to the bridge. We thought it was only 1.5 ks from the cemetery. It wasn’t and we were both a little grumpy by the time we got to the bridge.

However, once we cooled down a little, with an iced tea, we enjoyed walking over the bridge.

The odd thing is the bridge was not built over the River Kwai, it was built over the Mae Klong River. However, after the movie came out the savvy Thai’s changed the name of the Mae Klong River to the Kwai Yai River. The bridge hadn’t moved, the name of the river changed!

The bridge is still an active railroad. There are signs on the bridge warning you to get out of the way if a train is coming. There were areas where you could stand. Fortunately, there are only a couple of trains a day so the risk of being run over by a train was slight.

The middle spans of the bridge were destroyed by allied bombers. The middle two spans were rebuilt with square spans, the rest of the bridge had curved spans.

There were a lot of tourists visiting the area, it was very busy with lots of food stands and souvenir stands, floating restaurants and a small vege market.

We were off the bridge when the train came.

Near the bridge was a Chinese Wat, it was very colourful and peaceful. I think we were the only westerners in the area. Most of the other tourists wandered half-way across the bridge and didn’t investigate the Wat.

There was a small tribute to the Chinese soldiers who lost their lives building the railway as well. China Expeditionary Force Memorial Monument.

Ralf spotted a bee hive. Of course, he had to go and investigate. My daft hubby who is allergic to bee stings, gets close up and personal with a hive. Fortunately it was dormant!

As we headed back over the bridge we listened to this little busker. On her sign it said for education. Ralf gave her some money, the change in his pocket about 15 Baht (about 60 cents). He should have given her more than that to keep her in school she had a dreadful voice, but she sang with gusto.

There is a museum near the bridge which we visited. Not worth spending the 40 baht for that museum. It was a little higgledy piggledy with no real rhyme or reason to the displays. Some had displays of the various heads of states during the second world war and a history of each one, then there was another display of Thai leaders dating back to 1590. It needed some organization and cleaning.

In the courtyard there was some jade jewelry being sold and this soap carver was working. He did some lovely work, but I didn’t get the significance a soap carver and a war museum.

We took a tuk tuk back to the guesthouse, where we enjoyed a cold beer before going back to the vegetarian restaurant for a good meal.

When we booked this place we had the choice of staying in the rooms on the river or the room near the reception.

I am glad we choose the room near the lobby as when the thunder storm started around 9:30 p.m. the rain would have been very loud on the tin roof.