Kanchanburi, is the home of the bridge made famous by the David Lean film Bridge over the River Kwai. The film is about the wooden 2nd bridge, but today the main railway bridge, made with stolen steel spans from Java, is a huge tourist attraction and was heaving with people when we rolled into town.
It’s now got a ‘Concentration Camp Market’ on the far shore located on the site of one of the POW camps and the other end is surrounded by stalls selling everything from food to Cheap Chinese crap.
The town has numerous museums, the best of which is next to the main Commonwealth War Graves maintained cemetery. It tells the harrowing story of the men involved many of whom died during the construction of the 420km long route to Burma.
Their treatment was nothing short of horrendous and you are left speechless at the end of the museum – except if you’re American, then apparently you can talk extremely loudly about all sorts of crap whilst wandering around reading about the soldiers terrible treatment.
The cemetery is immaculately maintained and is is one of the most visited CWGC cemeteries in the world. It’s a very moving place and the first few graves that I stood beside had members of the Suffolk Regiment commemorated on them.
Flowers dot the graves and coaches turn up all the time to discharge their passengers for a 15 minute visit.
We stayed just outside the town at a lovely hotel enjoying nice food and Aircon, what a world away from those poor people and it really makes you appreciate just how lucky we all are today.
The railway line continues past the town to Nam Tok where it ends. Most of it having either been dismantled or abandoned after the war. The British removed much of the line in Burma for some reason too.
You can take the train there and take your bike, but not a tandem! So we hopped into a taxi to go with Tilly instead.
From here you can visit Hellfire Pass. This is half way up the side of a mountain where the railway line clings to the side then plunges through cuttings all dug by hand.
The Australian govt maintains a visitor centre there and has preserved some of the cutting as many of the soldiers on this section were Aussies.
It’s extremely well done with an audio guide that you can listen to as you walk a short section through the cutting, listening to the soldiers themselves recall their days there.
To leave the cutting you go up many flights of stairs and it’s hot and takes some effort, but leaves you flabbergasted that men could walk up to 6km a day to get to the cuttings, work for 18 hours then walk back on a tiny bowl of rice without shade or medical care all the while facing abuse from their guards. Many, for months on end. We were left almost in tears at the end of the tour.
For our visit here we stayed at a great raft hotel for the 2 nights at Nam Tok, which dropped all it’s shower water direct into the river. We did think about going to complain but then thought well the English water companies pump millions of cubic metres of sewage direct into our rivers so they can pay dividends to shareholders rather than invest in infrastructure, so we’d be a bit pot calling the kettle black.
But the room was fab, with a whirlpool bath on the deck too, which was how we found it discharged into the river from the noise when we unplugged our bath.
We set off bright and early on the morning we left back towards the coast and had another lovely cycle to a famous section of the railway that clings to the side of a cliff and is still in use today.
It was built in just 17 days and is now a mega tourists spot with the obligatory market and food stalls but as we arrived at 8am we were alone and able to wander up and down the track trying to imagine how they built it.
It collapsed on first use apparently…
It’s all been replaced now with concrete sleepers and pillars though some wood is still used and a cave sits adjacent to the curving track with a gold Buddha peering out.
We stopped for a coffee before moving on and had to chase a cat off that decided our tyres were great scratching posts. Then some dogs decided to chew the pedals and our flag pole end. Weird animals around here. Or very hungry perhaps.
We pass all sorts of things everyday but one of the weirdest is the chilli face slap. We will be happily cycling along past some food stalls and if they’ve just added spice to their cooking it seems to hit you in the eyes and your eyes sting! Lovely smell though!
We also past an Elephant sanctuary. Recently a tourist was killed by an elephant at one here and having seen from the road the tiny pens the elephants are kept in overnight I can’t say I blame them. There’s a few hands off sanctuarys that care for rescued elephants and won’t let you touch, ride or feed them. But most the elephants are just there to make someone some money.
Our last stop of the day was at the Mueang Sing Historical Park, a former Khmer town with the walls still standing and the remains of a lovely temple in the middle which we had to ourselves as usual as we arrived before all the coaches. It was set amongst trees and so peaceful, we love that type of thing and it was really well kept.
Being on a bike we’d taken the shortest route to get there and had come in through the back of the town walls. The ticket gate was at the other end. Oops.
Now the Dark Lord is again ruling the States it seems his minions are not wanting to be associated with him. We met a Canadian lady there who travelled even more often than we did, all on her own, and she said that many Americans were describing themselves as Canadian to the locals to get treated better! Its relatively easy to distiguish between the two normally, ones often loud the others not and of course the Canadian says ‘aboot’. Never call a Canadian American!
One of the great puzzles here is the dogs. There seems to be more dogs than people and we get chased and barked at constantly. They don’t attack us and just run along side barking like mad with the locals yelling at them, presumably to stop, which they completely ignore. But, and heres the puzzle, we hardly ever see any dog poo here…Weird, but good.
We carried on back towards Kanchanburi and had a right mix of terrain. Lush banana plantations, Papayas, fields of Corn/maize then gave way to a bleak arid scrub land of sparse trees and no villages or shacks just after we visited the Giant Monkey Pod Tree, which was enormous!
We had a slight hill here and we wondered if this teeny tiny hill had enough height to make the ground less fertile. It certainly made it hotter and our Speedo crept up to 38C. The next couple of days are both getting to this and it really is intense heat when you’re not in a breeze or the shade.
Our last stop of the day was the Tiger Cave Temple, which has a huge golden Buddha in a man made shell / cave on top of a hill near the river. There’s loads of steps to get to the top, but also a furnicular railway for the elderly and lazy cyclists….
Our room that night had a great view of the temple complex. It was lovely and surrounded by paddy fields .. The curse of Thailand (for me) is the never ending thump thump thump of music being played somewhere on speakers that would look large at Glastonbury. People have these in their gardens, workshops and even on trucks. Being flat, the thump can be heard miles away. And of course we could hear this thump in our room, with our ear plugs in. Normal for Thailand…. However, one advantage of cycling is WW3 could start outside and we’d still be asleep in 2 minutes.
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