We ended up staying nearly a week in Bangkok, and were finally able to drag ourselves away. It's really a great city. Just a good place to hang out for a few days or weeks. But, it was time to move on, so we decided to make our next destination Kanchanaburi, which is where the story of "The Bridge on the River Kwai" took place.

We took the train from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi the day before yesterday. After experiencing the terrors of Indian second-class cars, I was a little worried about trying Thai third-class (the only class available on this particular train). The train was not crowded at all, though. The seats are just uncushioned wood benches, but they're tolerable for a short trip.

Kanchanaburi is right on the River Kwai. Most of the budget guesthouses in town have floating rooms, right on the river. The river is pretty, and it's kind of relaxing to feel the rocking of the waves while sleeping. But the motorboat traffic gets a little bit loud sometimes.

The main attraction in the town are the various World War II sights. The Thailand-Burma railway (of which the River Kwai bridge is a part) was built by the Japanese in 1942 and 1943. The Allies had blocked the sea route between the Bay of Bengal and the Pacific, so the Japanese needed a land link to get supplies to and from Burma. Their engineers thought it would take about five years to build a rail line across the mountainous Burmese-Thai border, but the army ordered it completed in less than a year. In order to finish such a huge engineering feat in the required time, the Japanese shipped POWs from around Asia, and forced them, as well as conscripted Asian civilians, to build the rail line. The conditions in the POW camps were terrible and tens of thousands of western POWs and Asian conscripts died from disease and overwork.

In town there are a couple of interesting museums that tell the story of the "death railway". The Thailand-Burma Railway museum gives a great overview of the story of the railway, as well the bigger context. The JEATH (Japan, England, America/Australia, Thailand, Holland) Museum focuses mostly on photos of life in the POW camps, and on reminescences and art by former prisoners.

Today we're just taking it easy. We'll spend a couple more days here, as there are a number of other interesting historical and natural attractions in the immediate area.