Spent two great days in Kanchanaburi and off to Bangkok tomorrow for shopping at the weekend market!
The Bridge on the River Kwai is in Kanchanaburi so I have been learning all about the death railway which is really really interesting. Yesterday I hired a bike (as usual) and cycled round the museums and the cemeteries. The Thailand-Burma Railway centre museum was excellent with so much good information about something I knew relatively little about. The Japanese sent 270,000 Asian labourers and over 60,000 Australian, British, Dutch and American POWs to build the railway line from Bangkok to Burma. Of the 60,000 Allied POWs who worked on the railway, 12,399 died. The number of Asian labourers who died is unknown as no records were kept but it is estimated to be over 90,000. They died because of poor living conditions and Japanese brutality even though the Japanese had agreed to stick to the terms of the Geneva convention. One man died for every sleeper on the railway. I visited two allied cemeteries which were both very moving but so beautifully kept, just like the ones in Normandy.
Today I went on a tour and visited Hellfire Pass which is a cutting into the mountain dug by POWs so that the railway could pass through. After that we caught the train and rode on a part of the 130km of railway still in use (415km were originally constructed). We finished the tour with a trip to the actual bridge over the river kwai which is, in fact, just a bridge and wasn't quite the trip highlight you would imagine!
Also went to the Erawan National Park which has a seven tiered waterfall. Was on the tour with a lovely French family from Bordeaux with a daughter also called Chloe. They adopted me for the day and we had a great time swimming in the waterfalls, particularly at tier 5 where you can slide down the rocks (safely I promise).
Anyway dinner time now and shopping in Bangkok tomorrow. Going to have to say goodbye to my gorgeous hotel with little bungalows all along the river!
Home soon,
The happy traveller xxx
