We got a little earlier start this morning and after a little discussion at breakfast we have decided that we are going to take the train over the Kwai River and up to Nam Tok.  Nam Tok is the last functioning station on the original Thailand-Burma Railway as the rest of the line into Burma was torn up years ago and there is no longer a rail link between the two.

Although slower than traveling by car, the train ride is very scenic and in places follows the path of the river – in some places so close that the track is laid on trestles that hug the cliffside on one side of the train and drop straight down to the river on the other.  The train ride is great and nowhere but here have I seen vendors get on and off the train at each station and and walk up and down the train selling hot food, drinks and souvenirs.  One vendor in particular has a try of doughnuts that look awfully tasty, and so we buy a couple to try – they are soooo good that we anxiously await his next pass of our car to buy some more, but sadly he is sold out by now 🙁  The good news though is that at the next station someone has brought him another fresh tray, so we promptly gobble down 4 more 🙂

The very friendly and helpful staff at out hotel have arranged for a songtheaw driver to meet us at the end of the train ride and take us to a few attractions we have on our list.  The train is late getting in to the station, but our driver is there patiently waiting for us to arrive!

Our first stop takes us a little farther down the road to the Hellfire Pass historical site.  The Hellfire Pass is a ‘cut’ through the rocks where the original railroad line to Burma ran through.  During the war the Japanese were in a hurry to complete the rail line so that they could move war supplies into Burma and increase the pressure on the British colonies in Burma and India.  After conscripting tens of thousands of POWs and and tens of thousands more local laborers the progress was still not going fast enough so they started working the crews 24 hours per day – the cut got it’s name because at night the light of the torches reflecting in the cut made the men feel like the were working in hell.

The cut is one of the biggest on the railway and is close to 100 feet deep in places, and about 2000 feet long and tons of rock had to be hammered and blasted out and then moved by hand – you really need to stand in the cut to fully understand the size of the undertaking.  This is last of our ‘war’ stops so the trip gets a little more upbeat moving forward, but I am very glad that we took the time to see some of this – there is a lot more we could explore here, but time is limited so it is off to our next stop.

On the way back to Kanchanaburi we make a stop at the Sai Yok Noi waterfall.  We were here before with the girls, but Russ did not see it, and it is conveniently close to the main road so we stop in for look around and to dip our feet in the refreshingly cool water.

Our last stop on the way back to the city is the Krasae Cave.  The cave is basically a huge cavern in the side of the rock face that the train ges right past.  The cavern is easily big enough to fit a 4 bedroom house inside and there is a Buddha statue and shrine inside.  You have to walk out on the railway trestle to get inside the cave, and the walk also provides a great view of the river, and the railway trestle clinging to the side of the rocks.  We have come late in the day after the train loads and buses full of tourists have come through, so we mostly have the place to ourselves and get to enjoy some peace and quite while looking around.

The songtheaw driver we have is great and we ask him if he will take us farther into town for dinner.  We make a quick stop back at our hotel to get some instructions about a place we want to go to for dinner.  Bee, one of the ladies at our favorite Thai restaurant back home is originally from this area, and she told me about a place to go for a special noodle soup that is very well know among the locals.  We have the name of the place written in Thai and show it to our driver who smiles and says “yes, noodle!” and off we go.  We are happy we had the name of the place written for us as there is no way we would have found this place on our own 🙂 and it clearly caters to locals.  There is no menu, they make soup period – but it is fantastic! Full of rich flavor and different from any other soup we have had in Thailand – hopefully I can try and find a recipe or something to try and make this at home, but I suspect it will not be nearly as good.

Our driver from earlier in the day told us to just give him a call when we are ready to go back, so we wander around a bit along the waterfront and then give him a call to head back to the hotel for the end of another day.

Kanchanaburi is an area in central Thailand a couple of hours west of Bangkok in the foothills of the mountains between Thailand and Myanmar.  We visited here for a day trip 2 summers ago when we were here with all the kids to see the Bridge on the River Kwai made famous by the movie of the same name (you can see the original post here). It was our last day here and we just added it on a bit of a whim, but decided that we should go back sometime and spend a few days there to get a better look around.

With the help of some friends back at Iyara Thai in Redmond (thank you Nina, Bee and everyone) we got a lot of good tips and suggestions on things we should try to see when we are here.

Our first day here began with a late start as it was the first day we did not have a fixed agenda and we all just wanted to unwind a little.  We got to breakfast not long before it closed, but managed to get in and out before they shut it down.  We decided to take a leisurely walk up to the River Kwai Bridge and have a look around as Russ was not with us when we went here 2 summers ago.

We took a nice walk across the bridge and wandered around the market a little and then decided to take a boat on the river to see a few of the sites – this was one of the things on that was mentioned to us from our friends back home, and it did not disappoint!

Our first stop was at Khao Poon Cave and is one of the many caves in the area that has carved itself into a limestone hill.  The cave consists of 7 ‘rooms’ that are connected with stairways and passages that wind down into the hill.  The cave must be fairly popular with the tourists as it is quite well lit with fluorescent lighting 🙂  Some of the rooms are fairly large, and as we wind our way lower we start to see some bats flying about.  It seems a little eerie at first, but it is absolutely true that bats have great sonar for flying about because even with us moving around in the cave and getting fairly close in some places not a single bat hits any of us.  Mrs Columbus ever daring as usual crouched down low to enter into one room where there were dozens of bats constantly flying around, but she held her ground and took some time to marvel at the sight.

Our next stop was at one of the war cemeteries that are in the Kanchanaburi area.  The cemetery contains about 1700 graves of fallen soldiers that gave their lives during the 2nd World War, mostly POWs that died during the construction of the Thailand-Burma Railway.  The place is immaculately manicured, but it is a bit sobering to stand there among those who gave so much so that we could enjoy the freedoms that we enjoy today.  It is perhaps a bit fitting that as we arrived the clouds opened up and we got caught is a big downpour – the rain is bit refreshing and it drops the temperature a bit so maybe a fair trade.  The storm passes in about 20 mins and we know that in about another 20 we will be mostly dry again so it does little to slow us down and off we go to our next stop.

Our last stop on the boat trip is at the JEATH War Museum, this is a small museum with artifacts, clippings and photos also from the war (JEATH stands for Japan, England, Australia, America, Thailand, Holland) and the museum is laid out to resemble a typical prisoner of war camp – it is hard not to see why some many prisoners died in these camps as the conditions were horrible.

After the somber (but interesting) locations we hop back into our boat and return to the main pier by the bridge.  We wander around the market a bit buying some snacks and fresh fruit before waking back to our hotel for dinner and then a massage before bed 🙂  All in all a great first day here.

(BTW, for anyone who has been looking at the photos and thinking ‘can he make them a little bigger for older eyes’ 😉 I have gone back and fixed the links so that clicking on a photo will bring up a full-sized version)

We got back to Thailand just a couple of days before their national election.  The polling was today (July 3) and the government had forced a ban on all alcohol sales since the night before (not that it has a lot of impact on us but some of the backpackers are grumpy) so that the people are all fresh to get out and vote. More than 90% of the eligible population is expected to vote, which makes me a little sad when I read about the anemic turnout we get in our elections back home.

Thailand is very divided politically and in previous years protests and unrest have popped up in Bangkok depending on who was in power, and who was unhappy at the time.  The Thai people we talk to tell us that no matter who wins 1/2 of the country will be unhappy with the result.

It is expected that no party will win enough seats to form a majority government, so they expect that it will take a couple of weeks of wrangling after the votes have been counted for someone to form a coalition government and then the people will decide if they are satisfied or not.  It is not expected to impact us at all, but it is interesting to watch how the political circus works in other countries – I guess at some level it is pretty much the same 🙂

It will come as no surprise to anyone from around here, but the winter/spring has not been kind to us Seattleites and the last few days of rain has done nothing but reinforce that 🙁   There is however a good cure for this problem and in what seems to now be our standard summer ritual it is off to SE Asia again!

We had made a commitment to Brooklyn for a trip when she graduated, but she decided to ‘bank it’ last summer because of the political situation in Bangkok, but still had her heart set on going back to Thailand and has decided that this is the time to cash it in.   In situations like this it sucks to be a parent, but if I have to suck it up and chaperone her for a few weeks, then I guess that is what parenting is all about.

We are doing a couple of things differently this year to mix it up a bit.  First, I decided to send Mrs. Columbus ahead on her own as sort of an advanced scouting party.  I figure that she can go ahead and get the country all fired back up, because according to her most of the place completely closes down when we are not there.  Second, I am hoping that we will have better internet connections as I am going to try and be much better at getting some photos online and integrated into this blog.  And third, we are going to add a couple of new spots into our travels in addition to going back to a few of our old favorites.

In Thailand we are going to spend some time in Kanchanaburi which is in the ‘central’ area a couple of hours outside of Bangkok.  We did a quick day trip out there a couple of years ago and realized that there was a lot more things to see and do out that way, and that it really needed a few days to scratch the surface.

Of more significance, I have finally convinced the great adventurer herself to give up a few valuable days to visit one of the neighboring countries.  The first stop on our trip will be to go to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat! Ankgor Wat is a world heritage site and a must see in every SE Asia travel guide, and something I have wanted to see for a long time.  I think we could easily spend several weeks exploring Cambodia, but this time we will just pop over to explore the ruins and leave the rest of the country for a future trip.

Brooklyn and I leave shortly and meet up with her cousin Russ who will be joining us again this year, and a paltry 16 hours in transit later we will meet up with Mrs. Columbus who will have certainly gotten the Thais back into shape and the country all opened up in preparation for out arrival.

We only have a couple of days left here in Thailand, so this morning Mrs. Columbus decides we should take the day and go for an adventure.  Her idea is that we should ride the local bus across the island to Phuket town, do a little shopping and sightseeing, and then catch the local bus back.

In telling stories around the dinner table we would refer to this as ‘The Chicken Bus’ as one can envision bus travel in foreign lands where you may end up sitting across the aisle from someone who is carrying their livestock with them to the next place.

It turns out that our experience was fairly civilized.  It may vary a bit by season, or the time of day you are using it, but when we jumped on at around mid-day there was only us and one other couple on the bus for the whole ride.  The bus wanders it’s way along the beach, and riders can just jump on at any point, and presumably jump off when they get to where they want to – no having to find a specific bus stop close to somewhere you want to be.  The bus runs every 1/2 hour and the fare is a paltry 30Baht (about $1) per person.  The route to town is about 20 miles, and the taxi fare to go there is about 500Baht, so it seems like a decent bargain even if all you wanted to do was go to the next beach.

We get close to the center of town and are starting to talk about where we want to wander around to, when a couple of locals jump on the bus.  We think nothing of it, but when we get to the last stop on the route, we find out that they are local taxi operators.  Basically the program works like this: the taxi drivers get a kickback (paid in gas for their car) if they bring tourists to certain shops (jewelry stores, souvenir shops, etc.) the more of these type of shops you stop at the less the taxi charge is going to be.  So mixed in with seeing a handful of things you actually want to see, you spend about 1/2 your time seeing a bunch of stuff you have seen before.

Well Mrs. Columbus shrewdly haggles her way down to just one stop (which turns out to be 4) and off we go.  All in all it is not that bad of an experience – if we had been better prepared we could have taken better advantage of the ride, as it seems like we could have gone anywhere in the town as long as we fit some stops in.  The driver is quite friendly, and he offers us a ride to the airport the next day for 600Baht (vs the 800Baht the taxis outside our hotel want) so that seems like a good deal and makes the stops at the retail shops more tolerable.

At the end of the day he drops us off at a ‘bus stop’ so we can catch our bus back to the beach.  There are other people waiting here so it looks good to us, and our driver tells us that the bus should be by anytime, or if we missed that one (we were right close to the 1/2 hour) there will be one more in 1/2 an hour before the bus stops for the night.  We start to chat up the other couple waiting here as they are going to the same place as us, and the time starts to tick by.  A local taxi driver starts to hassle us a bit, telling us there is no more bus coming and that he will take us back for 500 Baht. We are fairly confident there will be a bus, and we know that we could walk up the street a bit and get a taxi for 400Baht so we tell him no and keep waiting.  After about 40 minutes we begin to think that maybe we did miss the last bus and decide with the other couple to split a taxi back to the beach.  We flag down a tuk-tuk and he agrees to take us all back for 400Baht – as we jump in and start to pull away from the curb, we look back to see the bus turn the corner and approach our stop…….

Not that we are really complaining, the extra $4 for direct service does not seem all that bad, and we have another 20mins or so to chat with the people we met.

Finally it is back to the beach where we settle back into the rest of our routine, a walk on the beach, dinner, relax – a tough way to spend the day 🙂