Bridge On the River Kwai

Three hours west of Bangkok, close to the border with Myanmar, is the Thailand-Burma railway built by the Japanese during their occupation of Thailand during the 1940s. Built to eliminate the need for resources to travel by ship from Burma to Thailand, the railway is better known as the Death Railway due to the vast numbers of Thai, British, Australian, Dutch and US prisoners of war who died building it.

The famous David Lean film (The Bridge on the River Kwai) depicts the horrors of building one of the bridges. Although it was bombed during the war, the bridge was rebuilt soon after and now is a major tourist attraction near the town of Kanchanaburi.

We spent a couple of days visiting the bridge - travelling for 2 hours along the only remaining part of the railway along with several hundred Thai school children. A good local museum filled in all the blanks and the war cemetary proved a fitting tribute to the thousands that died.

One night we ate on a floating restaurant and watched with both amusement and horror as other restaurants went by towed rather quickly by small boats. The restaurants are like small houses and the speed with which they whipped by us and turned corners was staggering.