Pulling up at the bus station at the wrong end of town, we got a taxi to a cheap hotel on the river Kwai and arrived in time for a beautiful sunset. The rooms were small but comfortable and we looked out over the garden and onto the river, it was so serene and laid back after the hustle and bustle of Bangkok, the only sound of traffic was the odd modified scooter in the distance.
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| From Kanchanaburi, Thailand |
After taking plenty of photos of the sunset we headed into the hostel's restaurant for a beer and dinner. Munching our way through a selection of food we downed a few beers and chatted amongst ourselves before heading up to bed.
I woke up the next morning feeling more than a bit dodgy and spent the morning resting in-between trips to the loo. Djalma, a sweetheart, went out a brought me back a little packet of my old friend Immodium with a natural alternative of guava leaves. He made me chew the small oily bitter leaves for a good minute before letting me spit out the green goo, it tasted vile but it worked and a few hours later after lunch we headed out to see the infamous “Bridge over the River Kwai”. It was an easy walk straight down the road, even I could have found my way back!
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| From Kanchanaburi, Thailand |
We passed by shrines and food stalls and beautiful flowers and most unusually, a dog with eyebrows. We were rewarded by a fine sight and plenty of drink and food vendors after good half hour walk. The other side of the river was quite undeveloped and stretched out in a sea of green towards mountains in the background.
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| From Kanchanaburi, Thailand |
We wandered around before crossing the bridge, letting an incoming train come by first (parts of the track are still working but most of it has been de-commissioned I think). As dusk fell the bridge came to life with different colour lights illuminating the structure from the outside, it was tacky but pretty. On the other side we climbed down the steps and walked around a small manicured garden leading up to a rickety viewing platform.
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| From Kanchanaburi, Thailand |
After a few more pictures in the lessening light we headed back over the bridge and walked back to the hotel.
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| From Kanchanaburi, Thailand |
The next day we were up relatively early, for us anyway, and we took one of the modified open taxi's to Erawan Waterfalls. We reached there after an hour of driving through some beautiful greenery and past more distant mountains and arrived just in time to watch a group of scantily clad Russians troop up the first part of the trail. Taking our time we followed after them listening to familiar sounds of good old Ruski.
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| From Erawan, Thailand |
The Erawan Waterfalls are a series of seven waterfalls of varying size and characteristics that you follow up a trail which starts out with good steps and bridges and then trails off into not-a-fat-lot. The first was beautiful and not far up the trail, it was swamped with picnicking families and swimmers and full of fish.
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| From Erawan, Thailand |
The next one worthy of mention is the fifth fall, the water flowed over smoothed, rounded rocks and was shaded by tall green trees, I could imagine it empty – picture perfect.
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| From Erawan, Thailand |
Djalma and I hiked up to the remaining two waterfalls while Berna and Ned relaxed and went back down at their own pace. The trail ran out and we had to climb over tree roots to avoid big sludgy puddles and generally be a bit Indiana Jonesy. The last set of waterfalls was alright, Djalma played about in the water and despite warnings that it wasn't safe to do so, he followed the fall down on his bum while I took the path back to meet him at the end of waterfall six. The water was a powdery blue and really beautiful once the sediment on the bottom settled. On the way back down we stopped at number four which was the tallest and most impressive, I grumbled a wee bit having had enough of the waterfalls for one day but it was pretty and I didn't grumble for long.
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| From Erawan, Thailand |
We made it back down to the car park just in time to get the last four seats on the bus which took an hour and a half to get back and would have been painful if we'd had to stand the whole time after all the steps we climbed up and down. Back in town we stopped off at a Brit-Thai restaurant where Ned had eaten breakfast the same morning, we wolfed down a few beers which went straight to my tired legs and I demolished fish and chips, telling myself not to feel guilty because all I eat at home is good Thai food. The proprietor was a character and a half and more than a bit full of himself and his not-that-magnificent culinary prowess. To be fair the English stuff did taste very English, which as Djalma pointed out, wasn't necessarily a good thing. I didn't last long after that and was curled up and asleep before 10pm.
On our last day, Saturday we squeezed in the Death Railway Research Centre, an incredibly well put together and poignant display of artefacts, information and explanations. One thing that did strike me was the fact that although many POW were used to build the railway, far more Burmese, Tamils and Malaysians constituted the workforce and proportionally speaking they suffered far greater losses than the English, Dutch and Australians put together. I guess Westerners are really only interested in the fate of Westerners when it comes to situations like that. While we were in Nepal I read 'The Forgotten Highlander' an account of a Scottish POW who suffered horribly at the hands of the Japanese but I do not recall much mention of the Asian workforce who also suffered the same brutalities, working and living conditions.
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| From Kanchanaburi, Thailand |
After an iced coffee in the café above the Centre we walked across the road to have a look round the War Cemetery. The grounds were maintained by a foreign charitable company and well looked after with flowering plants surrounding each of the small headstones. While the other three sat in the shade of a large tree I walked round taking pictures and reading the quotes and epitaphs, I had to swallow back the tears, it was all emotionally draining stuff and I was glad to get out of there, flowers or no.
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| From Kanchanaburi, Thailand |
Walking back to our hotel we had breakfast and then got one of the moped taxis to the station where we returned to Bangkok the same way we came albeit with a slightly less kamikaze driver.
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