We left the hotel at 7am for a three hour drive to Kanchanaburi. It’s northwest of Bangkok, and is where the Kwae Noi and Khwae Yai rivers converge into the Mae Klong river. In 1942 Kanchanaburi was under Japanese control. It was here that Asian forced labourers and Allied POWs building the infamous Burma Railway (also known as the death Railway) constructed a bridge; an event immortalised in the film Bridge Over the River Kwai (1957), Almost half of the prisoners working on the project died from disease, maltreatment, or accidents.

We did four things in the area: Visited the Kanchanaburi Cemetery, went to the Museum, ate lunch at a restaurant overlooking the river, and took a train ride for an hour over the bridge. Our first stop was the Museum where we strolled around reading about how many POWs were used as slave labor to build the bridge through Thailand during WWII. During the construction, 12,000 POWs and tens of thousands of other laborers died.

The cemetery contained 6000 memorial markers for British, Dutch and Australian. There were not bodies buried there, but if a dog tag or shirt with a persons name was on it, a stone was places there. It was a moving and somber cemetery, tastefully constructed with a variety of flowers the markers.

We then got back in van, drove another hour to the train starting place. We turned onto some rural back roads and saw a sign for monkey feeding, but we didn’t stop. Not a normal sign in PA. Next thing I know we’re stopped because there were 8-10 monkeys in the road. I was quickly able to get off a few photos before we moved on. We saw some younger and older ones, and think they were long tailed macaques.

For lunch we had a buffet lunch overlooking the river. It was quite lovely and the food was fine, nothing spectacular. After lunch we walked to the railway. Some people walked on the tracks to see a cave with a Buddha in it, however after looking at the tracks and my fear of heights, I couldn’t do it. Erika and Matt went far into the cave and saw hundreds of bats, and a Buddha.

The train ride took about an hour, and the Thai countryside flanked by mountains was just beautiful. It was lush and green, and had a view into the back yards and locals lives. We saw banana, mango, papaya trees, and fields of sugar cane and tapioca and learned that tapioca is used to make msg. It was an old rustic train and a relaxing ride, the breeze was refreshing and if the seats were not hard wood I could have napped.

When we finally made it to the famous bridge we went over it very slowly. Now just so you’re clear, this is not the original bridge that was blown up by the Americans, but there was a memorial recognizing them.

We than drove to our hotel, checked in and most of us went right to the pool for a refreshing dip in a beautiful setting. Tomorrow we go to Erawan Falls and Ayutthaya, then back to Bangkok to catch a flight to Chiang Mai.