18 October 2016 Bangkok to Kanchanaburi, Thailand
After another huge breakfast, we caught a bus to Kanchanaburi – a two hour trip on an air conditioned coach which was very pleasant. The driver had a television constantly playing government approved, five minutes programmes, which showed photographs of the deceased king overlaid with emotional music, mostly school children singing. It was very interesting for the first hour, then I zoned out.
Kancanaburi is a very touristy town in the west side of Thailand and, on arrival at the bus station, we were bombarded with offers of tours and taxi rides to our hotel. Glenys soon negotiated a “songthaew" to take us up to Hell Fire Pass tomorrow and they dropped us off at the U Inchantree hotel, which is a lovely little “boutique” hotel on the side of the River Kwai.
After dumping our bags, we walked 5 minutes into the small village and had lunch at a very touristy restaurant over-looking the infamous Bridge Over The River Quai. A few days previously, we’d watched the 1950s film depicting the construction of the bridge, but that was total fiction.
The bridge is part of the notorious Thailand to Burma railway which was built in the Second World War using Allied Prisoners of War. However, the bridge was actually constructed from steel sections brought from Java and not made from wood as depicted in the film.
After lunch, we walked to the JEATH museum, which is a bizarre collection of artefacts, seemingly randomly put in place. Most of the exhibits are related to the Second World War and the forced labour camps that were run by the Japanese. There’s a wide range of objects from mess tins to a helicopter and an impressive array of old weapons. The museum is chaotic, but that’s it’s attraction, it’s fun to wander around and look at stuff rather than reading endless artistic signs spouting history.
We wandered into a side building, thinking that it contained a collection of photographs and were amazed to find that there were five floors jam-packed with objects from centuries of Thai Burmese wars. The walls are covered with beautifully detailed mural paintings . There’s a second building containing just as much stuff. It was well worth the £0.20 entrance fee.
Maxed out with viewing historical artefacts, we walked across the Bridge On The River Quay - whistling the tune from the film - “Hitler, has only got one ball, …” The railway is still in use, but the trains go very slowly and there are many places to duck out of the way when a train crosses. At the other side there’s a Chinese Buddhist Temple, which is a colourful and peaceful place to visit.
In the evening, we went out to one of the many restaurants around the bridge area, where I ordered a catfish yellow curry. It sounded interesting, but was inedible because the catfish was hacked into chunks with millions of bones and the curry was so hot that my throat went into anaphylactic shock. I’m going to stick to milder chicken green curry from now on.
19 October 2016 Kanchanaburi, Thailand
Our hired songthaew picked us up at 09:30 – it was a little extravagant at 1400 Bhat (£28), but we had it for the whole day and the driver would take us wherever we wanted. Bouncing about in the back of the truck, it was a long 1¼ hour drive to the Hell Fire Pass museum. The museum is excellent, giving details of the construction of the Thailand to Burma Railway. I gleaned these facts about the construction:
The Thailand to Burma Railway, also known as the Death Railway was a 415-kilometre railway built by the Empire of Japan in 1943 to support its forces in the Burma campaign of World War II. This railway completed the rail link between Bangkok, Thailand and Rangoon, Burma. The line was closed in 1947, but a section was reopened ten years later in 1957.
Forced labour was used in the construction of the railway and over 680 bridges. 200,000 Southeast Asian civilian labourers (“Romusha”) and 60,000 Allied prisoners of war (POWs) worked on the railway. During the 14 month long construction, 12,621 Allied POWs died of malnutrition, illness and torture. The Romusha fared even worse – without the military discipline of the POWs, their camps soon deteriorated, illness spread and 100,000 of the workers died.
After the end of World War II, 111 Japanese military officials were tried for war crimes because of their brutalization of POWs during the construction of the railway, with 32 of these sentenced to death. No compensation or reparations have been provided to Southeast Asian victims.
The museum has a number of copies of sketches and paintings by Murray Griffin, an Australian War Artist who was captured and forced to work on the railway. His paintings depict the daily life of the POWs in graphic and disturbing detail. Over 13,000 of the POWs who worked on the railway were Australian and the Australian government has a superb website about the railway - http://hellfire-pass.commemoration.gov.au.
We went for a walk along a 3 kilometre section of the railway route including passing through an infamous cutting called Hell Fire Pass, so called because the sight of emancipated prisoners working at night by lantern-light was said to look like a scene from hell. The five metre wide cutting goes for several hundred metres through a rock outcrop that is tens of metres high. The workers cut out this massive section of rock using hand drills to bore holes for dynamite and then carried out all the rubble by hand – all in terrible conditions. It’s a very moving place to visit.
After a quick Pad Thai for lunch, we wandered around the Sai Yok Noi waterfall and then caught the train along a section of the death railway back to Kanchanaburi. The train was rickety with slide-down windows and bench seats. It was an interesting, if uncomfortable 3 hour journey, with some nice views over the River Kwai. The railway crosses the 300 foot long Wang Po viaduct, which clings to a rock face high above the river and was constructed from wood in the Second World War.