Kanchanaburi is a town west of Bangkok, made somewhat famous by its proximity to the Thai-Burma Railway. The Thai-Burma Railway was built by POW labour and indentured workers, victims of the Japenese’s need to join up their empire by rail during World War 2. An estimated fifty thousand POWs, and one hundred and eighty thousand South East Asian workers were forced to work on the railway, where brutal conditions and the brutal treatment by Japanese soldiers competed for the men’s lives. It has been said that every railway sleeper laid cost a man’s life. Half of the men who toiled on the Death Railway died during its construction. If not for the 1957 movie Bridge over the River Kwai, few people outside the Commonwealth would know about the atrocity.
The first stop in my pilgrimage was the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, a short walk in the blistering heat from my hostel. The cemetery contains the remains of six thousand, nine hundred and eighty-two Australian, Dutch, and British POWs, and is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and works are conducted by local workers, to a high standard in my opinion.
Over the road was the second stop in my pilgrimage, the Australian-run Thailand-Burma Railway Centre, a museum displaying many artifacts from the railway.
The centre puts the terrible conditions in context, including the small box car many POWs were transported in like sardines, with no ventilation and toilet facilities.
I spent a few hours chilling in my hostel before I decided to walk to the actual bridge over the River Kwai, which was exhausting.
By then it was late afternoon, and I was too worn out to spend much time walking around, I got a coffee and a nearby coffee shop, and then got a Grab back to my hostel.
The lovely, grandmotherly lady who owned the hostel fed me that night with local dishes cooked in her own kitchen, including Tom Yum soup, bamboo shoots and pickles, rice, and two varieties of chilli paste, as it is an article of faith amongst Thais that no dish cannot be improved by a little more bite. In return before dinner I headed over to Seven-Eleven to buy iced coffees for the two hosts. The next night my host fed me leftover papaya salad. No wonder I choose to book another night before braving Bangkok again.
The last night in Kanchanaburi I was showered, shaved and in bed by eleven. I promptly started coughing up a lung, and most likely part of my spleen as well. At midnight I dressed and left the hostel and braved crossing the four lanes of traffic to the Seven-Eleven for supplies. Back in the ground floor of the hostel, I sculled half a bottle of cough syrup, some alarmingly-labeled Chinese medicine, and paracetamol tablets, washed down with iced tea. Feeling slightly improved, I returned to the dorm, where I could only hope that my absence allowed my room-mates a chance to sleep.
If you liked this post, please check out the rest of the posts from this trip here!
Adrian's Got The Moose 