Kanchanaburi is about three hours west of Bangkok by train. The train was to leave at 7:50. I and two friends, Katie and Kelsey, met in the lobby of our apartment bright and early at 6. Actually 6 o'clock doesn't feel that early anymore. That's the real world for you.
Anyway, there were only three of us. Everyone was invited to go, as we had been planning this trip for about three weeks now looking forward to the holiday. Some people had friends coming in for the weekend, and the others decided they wanted to take it easy around Bangkok for a few days. The week before the holiday, a few people changed their minds and wanted to come along, but at that point it was too late to make additional arrangements. You snooze you lose.
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| train rolling into Bangkok |
Sorry, that sounded mean. It actually would have been nice to travel with the whole group, but we had a good time on our own. Anyway, we got to the train station around 7 after taking a taxi through the city. A one-way ticket only cost B100 which is beyond cheap. We were early, and decided to walk through a nearby market to look for breakfast. That turned out to be a mistake. It was not touristy at all. Basically, there were just piles and piles of raw meat and weird intestines next to buckets of vegetables. We made a 180 and went to 7-11 for breakfast sandwiches instead.
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| A sign at the station: Before across please be ware. This is why my job is important. |
The train was fine. For such a short ride, you could only buy a third-class ticket. That meant we were sitting on hard wooden benches. Luckily it wasn't very crowded, and we got seats facing each other with room overhead for baggage. The windows were all opened, and I got a great look at the country as we rolled along. Besides Bangkok, most of the country is still pretty rural. We got into Kanchanaburi around 11. After waving off taxi drivers who were pestering us to give us a ride, we made the five minute walk from the train station to our guest house. The place where we stayed was located on the infamous River Kwai. There was an open air restaurant on a covered wooden deck, and we had lunch before setting out to see some sites.
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| the guesthouse on the River Kwai |
When she found out that we were going to be visiting Kanchanaburi on the holiday weekend, one of the Thai teachers at Prathom invited us to come stay with her and her family (Katie tutors English with her). That's why the others weren't able to come along after we had already made plans. They wanted to arrive on Sunday, but we had wanted to see as much as we could, and took the train a day early to maximize our time. After lunch we got the crazy idea to rent motor scooters. There's hardly any traffic in Kanchanaburi, it's a small little town. We decided scooters would be a fun and easy way to see as much as we could. I hadn't ever ridden a scooter before, but it was really fun!
I looked kind of like Speed Racer with my helmet and sunglasses on. It was pretty dorky, but safe! I think one of the girls may have taken a picture, but I don't have it. If it turns up I'll definitely post it on here.
Kanchanaburi is the site of a lot of World War II history. 100,000 Allied POW's died constructing the infamous Bridge on the River Kwai. Our first stop was the Kanchanaburi Allied War Cemetery where British, Australian, Dutch, and one Canadian solder are buried. It was constructed after the war by the Allies and is very well maintained.
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| unknown Allied soldier |
There's really not much to say here. If you know your history, then you'll understand the gravity of the site. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.
It actually turned out to be a fairly emotionally exhausting afternoon. Kelsey bought us ice cream bars at 7-11 and we scootered back to the guesthouse for dinner and bed.
I don't want to end on that note though. Dinner was really good (I had spaghetti).
And here's an interesting fact; even though it's spelled "Kwai", the name of the river is actually pronounced "Kwae" in Thai (rhymes with "way"). There's even a local movement to change the Romanized spelling of the word. It's funny, because the word "kwai" in Thai actually means "buffalo"!
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| River Kwai (Kwae) - that's the view from my room! |
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