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 🙂

Our last day in Cambodia finds us with another relatively early start (for people on vacation) as we have a few things left on our list to see and need to get back to the airport by 2pm for our flight back to Thailand.

As usual our guide Theoun is already waiting for us when we come out of the breakfast area, and after loading what seems like more baggage than we arrived with, it is off to our last set of temples.  Today we will go to a group of 3 temples in the Roluos group – Lolei, Bakong, and Preah Ko.  These temples were built about 50km south-east of the main Angkor complex and are much closer to the Tonle Sap (more on that later).  At some point the king realized that the area was prone to flooding and the king relocated the capital to the Angkor area and started building his new temples there.  The main Angkor complex is a tough act to follow and these temples are not nearly as big and impressive as what we have already seen (sort of like looking at the original smaller pyramids after seeing The Great Pyramid first) but given that they were built in the 800s it is still a little inspiring to see what people made by hand over 1200 years ago – some of them like Bakong are still in quite good shape, and it is hard to image that they have lasted that long.

As an aside, after seeing all of these temples I have decided that I would quite fancy having a moat – I have requested to the gardener to get started on one as soon as we get home, so that I can have some crocodiles delivered before the rainy season begins back home 🙂

The final items on our list for Cambodia before heading back to the airport is to visit the Tonlé Sap and one of the floating villages.  The Tonlé Sap is a lake that most of the year is long and narrow (a few km wide and about 100km long), but fairly shallow (around 1 meter) and flows into the Mekong River and into the Pacific Ocean.  During the rainy season though the Mekong actually has such a high water volume that it over flows backwards into the Tonlé Sap and the lake expands dramatically to about 35km wide and almost 150km long and it’s depth increases by about 10x to around 10 meters.  The lake floods out the fairly flat country side and at it’s peak covers around 16,000 square km (around 6100 square miles)!!  The flooding creates a unique farming environment and they can harvest 3 crops per year from the well fertilized soil. Additionally, the flooded area provides a great spawning area for fish, and during the high season tons of fish are caught as one of the area’s major food sources.

A unique side effect of the expansion and shrinking of the lake is the existence of the ‘floating villages’ around the lake area.  Technically they are not floating, but are actually all built on high stilts over 20 feet off the ground.  Most of the year the ground below is dry and the houses and buildings are just raised up off the ground.  There is a ‘main street’ and people walking about, gardens growing, etc. but when the lake floods the entire village is suspended above the water by the stilts and the only means of moving about is by boat.  All the items that are on the ground are either moved up into the house, or are moved out by the road before the waters get too high.  At the time of our visit the village is not yet flooded, but our guide informs us that the water is rising at a rate of about 5cm per day (about 2 inches)!

We drive in from the main road about 1/2 way to the village where we board a longtail boat to go out to where the village is and then out onto the lake itself.  The lake was impressive and has already flooded enough that we cannot see the other side, and as we are going down the river from where we started we can see areas where the forest floor is now covered in water.  On the way back in from the lake our boat stops at the main pagoda for the village and we are able to get out and walk around.  It is a bit of a surreal experience to walk down the street and have to look up at all the buildings, but aside from that it is mostly a regular village, there are homes, merchants, and we even spot a barber chair at one building.  Near and dear to Mrs Columbus’ heart is a walk by the local primary school where dozens of young children are laughing and playing – it seems that we have wandered by during recess and the children are just hanging about in their classrooms.  Our guide tells us that it is OK to go have a look inside and even takes us into a couple of the rooms.  The little Cambodian faces are all smiles and the kids are waving at us, just excited to see some foreign faces.  The experience is a little moving, and we stop to buy some notebooks for the teacher to distribute to the kids in one of the classrooms before we head back to our boat to go home.

A quick trip back to Siem Reap for lunch and then our driver takes us back to the airport to checkin for our flight back to Thailand and the next part of our journey.  I definitely think that there is much more to see in Cambodia and I hope to be able to come back in the near future to explore some other parts of the country as we have barely even scratched the surface.  The people we interacted with were incredible and we are continually reminded of how happy people can be with so little that we are leaving a little humbled inside.

Our return flight is uneventful, and we are greeted in Bangkok by a taxi driver that we have used before.  We were able to call him from Cambodia and arrange for him to take us to Kanchanaburi which is our next destination.  The trip is about 3 hours, but we hit the Bangkok traffic at the end of the work day so that adds another hour to our drive time, by the time we get to our hotel we are all ready for a quick bite to eat and then some quality sleep time.

I don’t normally like to take pictures where the main subject is people.  It is mostly in my head, but I think that trying to capture the perfect ‘image’ of a person is something I need more practice with.  I have taken some portraits that I am proud of, but it still feels like something outside of my comfort zone.

That said, it is certainly much easier to take pictures of people that are so photogenic!  I must say that I am glad that there are rules about smuggling people inside of luggage as I fear that Mrs Columbus would have taken as many of these home with her as her baggage allowance would have permitted:

Not that we are complaining, because we are actually very blessed with what we have – even if they are sometimes a little sketchy looking 😉