I had no idea that the Bridge over the River Kwai was in Thailand, I thought it was in Burma, and I certainly didn't realise that it was a minibus ride from Bangkok. Nonetheless, Google told me otherwise, so I set forth to admire the handiwork of the oft forgotten fallen.
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| The Bridge Over the River "Kwai" |
About an hour and a half away, Kanchanaburi is a reasonably sized town that is really only famous for Death Railway, also known as the Burma-Siam railway, built by the Japanese during the Second World War as a result of allied supremacy at sea that required the building of new trade links to sustain the war effort. The other draw for tourists is the "Tiger Temple" a Buddhist Temple full of doped up tigers on leashes with a few monks in orange robes kicking around, a dream for a tourists holiday snap collection, but Animal Rights campaigners see it a bit differently. And having seen the ticket prices, for the time ever I'll side with the PETA boycott and give it a miss.
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| Allied War Graves |
World War II seems so far removed from Asia, that it's hard to believe that it was fought here at all, but the immaculately kept cemetery in the heart of Kanchanaburi starkly remind you otherwise. Thousands of named and unnamed black on grey slabs litter the neatly cut grass, perfectly regimented into nationality and bordered by white walls and archways that are so remenicent of the war graves of Northern Europe. The war graves commission had all of the allied bodies exhumed from their makeshift jungle graveyards and reburied so that they could be more easily tended. It's an emotional final resting place for those Europeans who were enslaved and worked to death for fighting a war so far from home, a stark contrast though, to the tens of thousands of undocumented Asian slaves whose bodies were never reburied and have since been reclaimed by the jungle. We live in a strange world.
My next stop was the Burma-Siam Railway museum, a very well done and well rounded source of information on the construction of the railway and the plight of the workers. From the top floor, a café which overlooks the cemetery, I could see the tops of temples not far away, so before heading down to the iconic bridge, I thought I'd take my camera for some monk spotting. When I got to the temple complex, there was a monk chanting away doing some kind of service for some Japanese tourists which I watched for a little bit, it wasn't especially interesting, so I moved on and down an unassuming dirt path which proved to be more interesting.
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| Brightly decorated temple ceiling |
The first temple had a man driving a remote control car around, further down there was an enormous (what looked like) porcelain laughing Buddha that looked like a bad guy from a Japanese cartoon, there was a man sleeping in the next temple, in a hammock strung up between pillars, and next door a huge temple was under construction, still very much a building site, but with a single painted statue.
Having had my fill of religion for one day, I wandered towards the bridge and came across the Buddhist graveyard, a sorry affair, dilapidated, abused, partially a rubbish dump. It made me wonder why they are building new temples next to existing temples full of gold if they can't afford to keep a graveyard in good order....
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Poorly kept graveyard next door to
the immaculate temples and
Allied war graves. |
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Restaurant floated on a pontoon
photographed from the bridge |
I jumped on the back of a Taxi Bike to expedite my journey, and promptly got charged a ludicrous fee. Lesson learned, I found the Bridge heaving under the sheer weight of tourists that were scurrying across it. Rather than join the mêlée on an empty stomach, I had a nice meal at the Floating Restaurant that sits in the river beside the bridge, and contemplated how odd it was that people (like myself) would flock here. It's the site of an atrocious betrayal of human rights 70 years ago, the bridge itself isn't the one built by the POWs, the Japanese knocked the wooden one down and rebuilt it in metal, which was then bombed and subsequently fixed in a different style. I haven't even seen the film 'Bridge over the River Kwai'! (incidentally, the River was renamed to have the word "Kwai" after the film, it was originally something completely different)
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| Not the greatest advert for a Zoo |
Having joined the swarms for the obligatory photographs, I headed back to my hotel but was markedly stopped in my tracks by a leopard. Nope, not making it up. A leopard. It was heavily sedated and chained to a table on the pavement, but still. It was an advert for a zoo of some description. It's handler was in a heated debate with an irate German lady who was protesting the animals treatment, so I thought I should leave. Next door however was a museum I'd seen described by tourists online as "just strange" so I thought I'd have a look. It was. Section 1) Guns and Swords, no tags, just piled into a glass case in a room with weird looking statues of all of the major leaders of WWII, and 3 skeletons of people killed in the war. Section 2) Samples of different metals, rocks and cloth. Section 3) Drawings of all past Miss Thailand winners. Section 4) A car used by the Japanese and a Dentists chair... It was really odd.
Welcome to Thailand.
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| Temple Building in progress... |
