Trip to Kanchanaburi

Roxanne and I watched 'Bridge over the River Kwai' and also some of 'To End All Wars', and were both keen to see Kanchanaburi and the bridge. We wondered if we would be
disappointed.

Kanchanaburi is only about 120 kms out of Bangkok but it was a bit of a mission to get there. Fortunately Ku came with us - and led the way. It was a while since she had been. We caught a taxi just outside the door, then a ferry across the river, then an open minibus to the railway station - only to find that we were about an hour early for the train which left at 7.45. So we wandered the local market, had a roti for breakfast and admired all the local produce laid out for sale - remembering some of the smells and the varieties of fruit and vegetables from Gadong in Brunei.

The train trip to Kanchanburi took about three hours and stopped at every local station. Our carriage was shared with a bunch of enthusiastic European trainiacs, including the man who carefully screwed his videocam to his tripod and then stuck the tripod out the window to film the engine, which kept blowing black clouds of smoke back past the windows. It was still cool enough that we didn't really need the little fans down the centre of the carriage. The seats were wooden. Ku and I chatted over the engine noise - Roxanne spent a large amount of time listening/singing along to her discman! The scenery was lovely once we were outside Bangkok itself - lots of banana trees, coconut palms, sugarcane and rice paddies being dug with what could have been a traditional plough except for the motor that replaced the bullock. All those slices of life that you normally see from train windows!

Another local openbacked minibus when we arrived which took us first to the war cememetry and then to the River Kwae itself. The cemetery was beautifully maintained; the graves laid out in neat rows with different flowering bushes planted between each one. A place of stillness and a chance to wander up and down the rows reading the inscriptions for the soldiers represented there. 15,000 prisoners of war and 100,000 civilians died in the process of building what became known as the 'Death Railway'.

The river itself was much more commercially exploited. See photos at the Kanchanaburi link above for what the current bridge looks like. We walked across it and then ate lunch at the floating restaurant below the bridge (third photo down) - a delicious meal ordered by Ku and including green papaya salad and steamed morning glory greens. A joyride flight over the bridge punctuated our meal several times with the reminder that the British actually bombed the bridge we were sitting beneath. The original remnants of the bridge are further upstream and we didn't have time to go and see it. However, we escaped the dust, heat and commerce to a boatride downstream which was very refreshing and much more peaceful.

Back to the River Kwae station, except that the train that was there was not ours, but instead the Eastern and Oriental Express, which is very flash and will take you all the way from Bangkok through Malaysia and down to Singapore. We could see champagne bottles in icebuckets near the windows in the dining car.

Eventually our more humble train arrived and we slept a large part of the way back to Bangkok. The view outside in afternoon sun was more tranquil than in the morning and the sun had set by the time we got back, grabbed a tuktuk to the river and then a ferry for a considerable way down river - lovely lights along the banks as Bangkok prepares for celebrations of the King's birthday this weekend. A couple of changes on the relatively new SkyTrain (could have been London's Underground - but high above the street) and we were home for a much welcomed shower before going out in the evening to a local restaurant for dinner.

A long day, but a fun adventure with some sobering moments to reflect on war and the damage it inevitably inflicts.