Day 99 – River Kwai, Floating Lodge
I joined up with a minibus and headed about 1.5 hours north to Kanchanaburi. I am sure I learned something about Thailand’s past and this area in my 10th grade world history class but I had to admit ignorance since it was a whopping 17 years ago. Due to conflicts during WWII, Japan risked losing a main transport line so they essentially took over this area of Thailand and built what became known as the Death Railway. They used forced labour from Thailand, China, Burma, as well as the the Allied Prisioners of War that had been captured. The rail had to go through solid rock in many places and constructing the bridge over the River Kwai was a grueling task in the brutal humidity. The men were malnourished, and malaria, cholera and disease were rampant. Conservative estimates say that 30,000 Allied POWs and 100,000 labourers died during this construction. 38 POWS died for every kilometer of track completed and in the end, it was hardly ever used. The Allies knew the importance of the bridge to Japan so they set out to destroy it. When Japan realized there was a B24 heading to bomb and destroy the bridge, they marched the POWs out in an effort to dissuade the bombing perhaps, but the pilot had his orders. The bridge exploded and it is said the river ran red from blood and bodies. It was an incredibly emotional place standing up on a reconstruted bridge imagining what happened over that very water 50 years ago. The POW cemetary nearby is immaculately kept and the graves of known, and unknown soldiers, are a sobering and sad sight. This is the reality of war. The pain and loss is still palatable in the notes and wreaths laid by the graves of these soldiers who could not even have been brought home to be buried in their own land. I think everyone was a little pensive after that visit.
The place where we were staying was a floating lodge on the river. That meant the guesthouse our rooms, the eatery, the kitchen were suspended on a bunch of pontoons and barrels on the bank of some Thai river. It was best not to be holding a hot coffee if a speedboat rushed by because the ensuing bobbing was not going to produce a favorable outcome. It was pretty wild. Typical squatting toliet except when you poured the bucket of water down to “flush”, it sounded strangely like it was going straight into the river. Since I could see the rushing water through my floorboards, I confirmed lack of a piping system…we all ruled out swimming as an option!
We had a true United Nations group made up of slovenians, poles, german, english, welsh, belgium, dutch. It was crazy, at some point our Thai host family pulled out buckets, turned them upside down and started drumming and singing. It was better than most bands I have heard recently. Things were really hopping and a bottle, or two, of Thai whiskey eventually made an appearance. My second shot of that proved to be a major error in judgement (as if anything involving whiskey could turn out well…) as I was soon up singing Karoke with the Thai grandmother. Luckily, everyone else was as easily persuaded and we soon had tunes belting out in all sorts of foreign tongues. Good times were had by all.
Tags: Travel
dunlewey
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