Rather than spend another day in Bangkok for our last day here, we decide to get back out of the city and take a day trip out to Kanchanaburi. This is the location of The Bridge on the River Kwai and the Death Railway.
The trip out to Kanchanaburi is about 2.5 hours by car, and we stop about half way there to visit a floating market. In days gone past much of the trade and transportation in Thailand was carried out on the rivers and klongs (canals) that run through the country. The Thai people would go out each day in small boats and buy and sell goods, fruits, vegetables, meats, or whatever they needed – the exchanges would be carried out from boat to boat and/or from merchants on the banks of the klongs.
Our driver takes us to a small pier where we hire a mini version of a longtail boat to run us through the market and see the sights. Initially it looks like this may be a dud trip and prepare for disappointment because for the first 5 minutes or so we do not see any sort of boat or market activity, then we come alongside a couple of ‘shops’ that front onto the river, but see mostly the same old stuff we have seen everywhere else – Mrs. Columbus is giving me that ‘maybe we should just go back look’ when the boat turns a corner into what looks like complete chaos. There are boats everywhere, about half are filled with tourists taking in the spectacle, and the other half are filled with goods of all varieties imaginable – there are boats with fresh fruits all cut and cleaned and ready to eat, there are boats with fresh flowers, boats with meat, boats with beverages, and even boats with propane burners and woks making fresh fried dishes.
There are times when there are so many boats jammed in side by side that it seems like no-one is going to be able to move, but somehow the Thai boat drivers seem to be able to bang their way around each other and push on ahead. The klongs seem to go everywhere, and as you pass by a maze of endless passages seems to evolve, but the driver seems to know exactly where he is going and before long we are back at the pier where we started. A short break to have a drink and some mango with sticky rice that we bought from a boat vendor and we are back on our way.
Thailand was not really an active participant in the second World War, aligning with neither the Axis or the Allies, although various parts of it were occupied by both the Axis and the Allied forces during the conflict. The Japanese Army occupied much of the northern part of the country, and wanted to construct a rail link from Bangkok to Rangoon (in Burma) in order to move war supplies more easily. As the rail line got close to the Burma border the country gets a lot more mountainous and construction of a rail line there would require crossing the range of mountains that separates Thailand and Burma. Over 250,000 locals and Allied prisoners of war were conscripted to work on the railway, and over 100,000 died as a result of the harsh working conditions and poor nourishment provided by the Japanese.
The rail line was entirely built by manual labor (no heavy machinery was used at all), and follows the Kwai River for much of the route. Today the line ends at Nam Tok well inside the Thai border, and the link to Burma has long since been dismantled. There is a train that runs from Bangkok all the way to Nam Tok, but most tourists get on the train at Kanchanaburi or Tha Kilen for the trip up to Nam Tok to see the most spectacular parts of the railway. There are places where it seems like the tracks are clinging to the side of a rock face with the river directly below and the jungle is so dense in places that you can sometimes feel leaves and branches pop in through the open windows.
The train is definately worth the $3 USD ticket price (Tha Kilen to Nam Tok) and after some lunch in Nam Tok we stop to see a spectacular waterfall that is at the end of the line – the actual original Thai-Burma rail line would have gone right past the falls, but there is now a park here and people can swim in the pools that are formed at the bottom of the falls.
From there we travel by car back to Kanchanaburi to visit the war museum and see the actual bridge that crosses the Kwai River. The bridge that stands there today is not the actual bridge that existed during the war – the original bridge was a wooden structure that crossed the river, and later a second steel bridge was added, however, both bridges were frequent bombing targets by Allied forces during the war and both of the original bridges were destroyed. The current bridge was re-constructed on the site of the steel bridge, re-using some of the spans and supports of the original structure. There is a very small section of the original wooden bridge that remains on one side of the river and is now part of the war museum.
The original bridge was made famous in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai made in the late 50s, and the movie is based on the book of the same name that is the account of one of the POWs that was interred in the camp there. The movie is still well worth watching even if there are no Hollywood style special effects, and the movie was filmed in Thailand so is a great representation of the geography we have been seeing.
There is war memorial and cemetery there also that gets onto most tour routes, but we are running out of time and must start our journey back to Bangkok – our return flight to the US leaves at 10pm and we have a 3 hour drive ahead of us.
The somber note of all the war stuff seems a little fitting as we are all more than a little saddened with the thought that it is time for us to leave – it seems like only yesterday when we were arriving for what has turned out to be a great trip.