Kanchanaburi, Kanchanaburi, Thailand
May 10, 2014
The train groaned and clattered slowly out of Bangkok Noi’s single platform station. We managed to make the later train at 1:55pm with about ten minutes to spare so had enough time to grab a couple of beers and some nibbles for the journey. The tickets were great value, £1 each to travel over a hundred kilometers West towards the Myanmar border. You can’t go wrong at that price and rail travel is my favorite way to go. I find rail travel so much more relaxed and your able to take everything in as it passes you by. The train up to Kanchanaburi was brilliant. We had the cheapest tickets for 3rd class which I guess is a standing carriage as it has seats lined down each side then a massive area to stand in the middle. You could probably transport your flock of sheep on here if you really wanted to. The more expensive seats looked worse as they were all squashed in next to each other and had harder wooden benches to sit on. Our carriage had big massive windows that were all down as far as they would go and a cooling breeze rushed in once we picked up even a small amount of speed. It took a wee while just to leave Bangkok, it’s a big place.
The journey was really interesting as we slowly snaked our way past peoples homes that were clinging as close as they could to where the carriages pass. Every 50 yards or so the horn was sounded and we would trundle across small side streets with scooters waiting on either side. Far too many small roads for there to be a proper crossing with a barrier on all of them. An hour or so later and the view out the window changed. 7-eleven’s and buildings gave way to green rolling hills and dirt tracks. This was the life. Tickety tackety we bounced around on the uneven lines as we meandered our way through rural Thailand and the beautiful scenery it possesses. It’s not much more than 100km as I said but it still takes about 4 hours to to get there as there are a lot of quick stops at small villages along the way that slows it all down. I liked that though and there were some lovely looking wee places along the line that looked worthy of exploring.
Eventually just after 5pm we rolled into Kanchanaburi station and clattered to a halt. Not really sure where we were heading or staying we trudled off in the general direction of what looked like the town to see where we could stay for the night. At this point we stumbled into three other travelers doing exactly the same. Paul and Sharon, brother and sister from Australia and Paul’s girl, a local named Fon. We asked a few people where there was to stay and then somehow ended up wandering off for an hour only to end up at the wrong end of town in the middle of nowhere. This is where Fon’s translator skills ruled and soon we were scooting off in a taxi to the other end of town where there were a few guesthouses and hostels kicking about.
A quick beer together later and we had all dumped our gear at the Happy Frog guesthouse we had found and were off out to grab a bit of food and a drink. Fattened up we headed along the road to check out the Rasta bar we had spotted from the taxi earlier. Only to find it must have been a Rasta bar in a previous life and was now a girly bar that hadn’t changed the decor. Not to worry a few doors down was the new and improved genuine Rasta bar so we chilled out in there for the rest of the night before mooching back in a haze to grab some much needed sleep.
Sleep was pretty restless that night as the heat was unbearable. It’s been getting up to 38 around here most days and that’s a bit on the warm side for me so we tried to change rooms for the following night as the ground floor one’s seemed cooler for some reason. Paul and Fon were trying to do the same and after discovering that the staff who were worked there were the most unhelpful arrogant people we have come across so far we packed up and shifted to a better place in the next Soi down within a few minutes.
Map in hand we all headed out in search of the famous bridge built by the POW’s in WWII over the river Kwai. Maps are deceptive. Especially when you can’t see a scale on them…and they aren’t actually drawn to scale. What looked like a 10 minute walk down the road and round a corner turned into a 1 hour jaunt of 5 sweating idiots in the mid day sun. The bridge is only part of the story made famous by the film. The entire run from Bangkok to Rangoon in Burma (Myanmar) was constructed during the second world war by the Japanese using forced labour. They wanted an easy route into Burma and they used an expendable workforce of around 180,000 Asian civilians and 60,000 allied forces POW’s. Of those used around 90,000 Asians and 12,399 POW’s lost their life during the construction of the line. The conditions they were kept in were horrendous and although visiting the bridge and railway was interesting it still felt strange being stood on the bridge knowing so many people had unwillingly given their lives under the force of the Japanese Empire and the brutality they employed.
The bridge is surprisingly intact. There was an earlier bamboo bridge that was built in February 1943 that no longer exists and the current steel bridge that was finished in June 1943. Two sections have since been replaced and it was rebuilt in 1945 following an allied bombing raid that destroyed those sections along with many lives. The Japanese made the POW’s line up on the bridge as the plane neared hoping that it would deter them from carrying out their raid….it did not.
From the bridge we took a look around the JEATH war museum that is just round the corner. It’s a mish mash of displays by a private owner. Anything from old motorcycles used by the Japanese army during their occupation to an old rusting locomotive that was used on the line. The JEATH stands for Japanese, English, Australian, Thai and Holland. Most of the workforce was English, Australian and Dutch prisoners as well as a lot of local Thais. The museum although basic and dusty was interesting as it tells you a lot of facts about the railway that I did not know. The conditions, how the POW’s used to trade with the locals at the camp fences, various individual incidents of brutality. Very sobering but very interesting to learn the full history of what actually went on here.
As sunset neared we took a taxi back along as none of us really fancied another hours walk in the baking heat. The rest of that night is a wee bit of a blur. We headed out with Sharon. We had a couple in the Rasta bar and then we went to catch some live music by the most polished yet boring band ever, knocking out the usual rock covers. These guys must have played here every night for a lot of years. They perfectly made their way through every track while the drummer looked as though he was thinking about tomorrows shopping list and not to forget the washing up liquid. The bass guitarist was wondering how to fix his garden fence and the lead guitarist must have had some crazy kind of fetish about ceiling tiles as he looked up and studied them the entire gig. So we moved out onto the street instead and decided to hit a bottle of whiskey, and then another bottle, and then……
I was a bit rough the next morning to say the least. Sat wallowing under my sheet and not wanting to face the unbearable heat outside. Eventually though I surfaced and we grabbed a Tuk Tuk along to another War museum that showed the conditions the POW’s had to endure in much more detail than the JEATH museum. The display is housed in a recreation area from one of the camps which shows the small 2.5ft wide spaces the men had to sleep on next to each other. The various diseases that killed many of these men and the torture methods employed by the Japanese. It was very grim stuff indeed and it makes you appreciate the lucky life that you live not to have to endure what these people did. From that museum we headed to another about the railway itself only to find it had just shut so we took a wander around the War cemetery there to pay our respects to those who suffered and lost life.
That night again is a bit of a blur and also involved too much whiskey and beer. I headed out for a few hours with Paul while Dani, Fon and Sharon went to the local night market. That night was the Sunderland v West Brom survival match and every good intention that I had to watch it disappeared at about 1:30am when I crashed out just before kick off. At least the result was good, another season in the Premiership will do me.
The next morning we toyed with packing up and heading further up the line to Nam Tok and then onto towards Chiang Mai from there but we couldn’t really work out how to bridge that gap from where we were to Chiang Mai in the very North without heading back over to Bangkok. So we decided to stay one more night and do the rail journey up to Nam Tok and hellfire pass as a day trip. The rail journey up is beautiful. It takes around three hours and passes some beautiful scenery along the way. Huge valleys with rivers flowing through them. Massive limestone curved hills and huge Buddhas in the middle of forests hold your gaze out of the window. Once at Nam Tok we didn’t have the time nor the money to visit hellfire pass. The return train was in a few hours and the guys that were offering to drive you up to the pass then all the way back to Kanchanaburi wanted crazy money for their services so we checked out a local small waterfall that was nearby before heading back to the station for the last train back. We said our goodbyes to the Paul, Sharon and Fon as they headed off to find somewhere to stay in Nam Tok as they were continuing West to do a Visa run at the Myanmar border.
Once back we started to pack up and plan our move back to Bangkok then from there overnight to Chiang Mai. It would be close. A train in the morning to Bangkok catch an overnight train with an hours window to spare to Chiang Mai, it should be doable though.
We made it up in time the next day for our train to Bangkok only to find out it was delayed by an hour, the window we had for the Chang Mai connection just got a wee bit smaller but once on the train you could tell the driver was trying to make up for lost time, or more likely that his missus had his tea waiting for him as we clicked along at a fair pace to the point I was expecting a derailment. I understand the death railway story but leave me out of it please, there have been too many deaths on this line.
Before we knew it we were back in Bangkok Noi and scrambling to hop in a taxi to the main station on the other side of the river. As the taxi pulled in we had 10 minutes to spare to grab our tickets and some supplies for the night before boarding our overnight sleeper bound for the far North.
Next stop Chiang Mai.
