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We spent the first few days in Bangkok gathering information about potential next destinations, including trying to find out how to get visas for all the neighboring countries and how best to get there.

The bridge on the river Kwai, caving in Northern Thailand.

Odv
2006-04-13 20:08:24

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We spent the first few days in Bangkok gathering information about potential next destinations, including trying to find out how to get visas for all the neighboring countries and how best to get there.

My brother and his girlfriend were going to join us in the middle of December for a week or two. Although Bangkok is a good place from which to organize onward travel, it is by no means a city where we wanted to spend another week. So we chose to spend that week in nearby Kanchanaburi, a town that I absolutely wanted to visit anyway.

Bridge on the river Kwai
Kanchanaburi's claim to fame is that it is where the bridge on the river Kwai is said to be. This bridge was made famous by a movie in 1957 about the infamous Burma railway line, which was built in the Second World War during the Japanese occupation of Siam (now Thailand) and Burma (now Myanmar).

At completion it was 415 km long joining existing rail lines from Bampong in Siam to Thanbyuzayat in Burma. 130 km of the line is still in use today.

The Siamese section was built along the river Kwai (sometimes spelled Kwae), which is now known as the river Kwai Noi. When the movie "Bridge on the river Kwai" was made the bridge near Kanchanaburi was actually on the river Mae Khlong. In 1960 the Mae Khlong was apparently renamed to Kwai Yai. This cast some doubt on the claim that the Kanchanaburi bridge is the "real" bridge on the river Kwai! Of course the bridge really was part of the Burma railway line and played an important role in its history.

Forced laborers from South East Asian countries and Allied POWs were used to build the railway line. Of the more than 300,000 people made to work on the line over 60,000 were Allied POWs of which about 30,000 were British, 13,000 were Australian and 18,000 were Dutch.

Because of the terrible conditions under which they had to work and the brutal treatment they received from their Japanese captors, ...