The Death Railway

Ok, this post should bring me back in order. I know this sounds like it could be another of my Russian stories, but this one is based in Thailand. The morning Iain and Katrina left for the beaches, I headed 2 hours west to a place called Kanchanaburi. This town has some fantastic natural sights and beautiful waterfalls, but is most famed for being home to the bridge over the River Kwai, and I have come here to add to my list of memorable train rides. The Death Railway is a 415km stretch of PoW-built tracks under Japanese control during the early 1940’s to create a crucial link between Burma and Singapore. The terrain was unforgiving and conditions unlivable, and required over 260,000 men to work on it with little more than picks and shovels. Buy the time the job was complete, over 115,000 had lost their lives.

The afternoon before taking my seat aboard the train, I wondered along the river from the Jolly Frog Guest House, one of the nicer places I’ve had the pleasure of, to the Bridge Over the River Kwai. Many say they feel under whelmed by the construction when they first encounter it, but I enjoyed my visit. Maybe not knowing too much about it, or having seen the film (which was actually shot in Sri Lanka) helped me have no preconceived ideas or expectations. Whatever it was, I found it well worth the trip that wwas otherwise on the way to nowhere.

The bridge consists of train tracks, a solid sheet between them and plenty of places to fall through either side. The concrete pillars still hold scars of war whilst the iron bridge itself looks iconic enough. I spent some time trying to capture a good shot, then as got to the floor between the tracks (think I was experimenting with angles or something), I remembered that I believed this to be an operational line. There are no gates and people are roaming the bridge freely, so I except I was mistaken and decide I’ll find out the route of the train tomorrow when I’m actually on it. 20mins later a train does chug through afteral, but I’m not laying on the tracks anymore and all others that were about get themselves out of the way sharpish, so all's well that ends well.

The death railway was cool, but had a set of carriages that were entirely for tourists, which I’m not used to, all my other train rides have been fully operational local services. Anyway as a result, the atmosphere is different to what I’d prefer but it’s ok. The journey takes 2 hours, which to me felt like 10 minutes, does indeed thunder across the bridge, then squeeze through 90ft solid rock cuttings and cling to a cliff face on a 300 metre trestle bridge. The train only goes are far as Nam Tok where ideally I’d have taken a bus to Hellfire Pass for a 4km walk through one of seven further track rock cuttings that now exists as a memorial walk. Unfortuantly, like in the UK, the train was running 2 hours behind schedual only just allowing me time to make my return journey back to Kanchanaburi by bus in time for me to then get back to Bangkok to pick up a visa by the evening. I think the normal thing is to do is return back on the same train or have a transfer waiting for you at Nam Tok, as the quiet 20min walk through town in search of the bus stop seemed an unusual sight to the locals. Still, I’m proud of myself for managing to actually get off the beaten path, overcome the language barriers and join the confused Thais on the 90min ride back, which was also very late.