The River Kwai

We are spending two days exploring the River Kwai and various sites associated with the Thai-Burma Death Railway. We had an early start with a pick-up from our hotel in central Bangkok shortly after 6.00am. Our initial party of about 12 set off by coach to Kanchanaburi, where we arrived after a breakfast stop at about 9.00am. First stop was the Death Railway Museum, which was excellent - very well set out and informative - and then across the road to walk the paths of the cemetery, the final resting place of nearly 7,000 Commonwealth and Dutch prisoners of war. Such a tragic loss of life.

Next stop was the famous ‘Bridge over the River Kwai’ - the bridge now surviving is a steel bridge, built after the original wooden one which was 100 yards downstream. It was bombed a number of times during the war, hence the non-matching central sections.

We were able to walk across the bridge, but then found out it was still an active line and a train would be arriving shortly!

After lunch, our group of 12 separated depending on whether you were booked on a day trip from Bangkok or had hotel accommodation in the area and were doing a 2-day tour. We spent the rest of the afternoon with a German couple from Magdeburg. The afternoon was spent at Hellfire Pass. This was an area of the railway almost exclusively manned by Australian POWs, and Australia has set up an excellent commemorative centre there, with a museum and then the opportunity to walk some of the track bed through the notorious Hellfire Pass. This is reputed to have been one of the most difficult sections of the railway to construct, manually blasting through a section of granite rather than the usual limestone.

The picture shows a representation of the quantity of stone 1 man was supposed to clear in a day (the block is about 2 ft deep) and the amount of food he was given.

After the Interpretive Centre, you descend steep stairs to the trackbed, to walk through the pass to a memorial area. I’ve included Diana in the picture immediately below, to give a sense of scale. You can still see many of the old teak sleepers, though the track itself is long gone.

Then on to our hotel by pick-up truck and long-tail boat. We have spent the latter part of the afternoon peacefully in a small villa floating on the River Kwai.

After a good night’s sleep, rocking gently on the current….

….we were back on the river this morning (Saturday) to travel up river to visit a Mon village. The Mon tribe are indigenous to this part of Thailand and nearby Myanmar, which is only 24km away as the crow flies. Most of the hotel staff at this resort and a number of other similar sites on the river are Mon Burmese, who have fled the turbulence in Myanmar to seek safety and work. They can get an identity card entitling them to remain in Thailand, renewable annually, provided they find a sponsoring employer. Our guide explained that they live a very basic life, but everything is provided by the hotel and they just save all their earnings - some to send back to Myanmar, some to support their children (who are Thai citizens) etc. We were left unsure of the ethics of it all, but all the staff seemed very happy and enthusiastic and spoke very highly of their employer.

After an early lunch, we boarded a train at Nam Tok station to travel part of the Thai-Burma railway, including crossing one of the wooden bridges originally built by the POWs and still supporting the line today.

A taxi met us with our baggage at a station further down the line, Tha Kilen, and brought us back to Bangkok’s Don Mueang airport for our evening flight to Chiang Mai.