Sharon and Andy's World Tour 2006

Week commencing Monday 21 February

Monday gave us our first taste of train travel in Thailand. Kanchanaburi is a three hour journey from Bangkok and, setting off early we were filled with excited anticipation.

The train was fairly ancient with wooden seats, and ceiling fans for 'air conditioning' but the windows wer huge and all opened fully allowing us to take in the changing landscape as we passed through villages, towns and countryside.

Our enthusiasm waned slightly after about two hours; sitting on a hard wooden seat really can take its toll!

Anyway, we were due to stay in Kanchanaburi for four nights, and on arrival we were whisked by tuk-tuk (indigenous Thai taxi, not unlike a cross between a rickshaw and a motorbike) to our guest house. We stayed at Sam's River Guest House, our digs being an air-conditioned bamboo hut (en-suite!) standing on the River Kwai.

Kanchanaburi is a small, friendly town famous for being the site of the Bridge on the River Kwai:

and the Death Railway, carved by PoWs and enforced labourers at the hands of the Japanese army through the rocks and jungle leading to Burma.

The moving history of Kanchanaburi's heritage is well documented via a number of war museums, but a visit to Hellfire Pass gives a more 'tangible' sensation of what the PoWs and labourers had to endure.

Originally called the Konyu Cutting, Hellfire Pass earned it's nickname from the flaming fires and torches by which the prisoners were forced to work by night. 110 meters long and 17 meters deep, the Pass was carved from solid granite using crude picks, dynamite and by hand.

Walking through the Pass today, some original sleepers and other artefacts remain, and in the 35' heat it is hard to imagine the suffering attributable to the construction of the Death Railway.

Hellfire Pass