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With only a few days before Dave and Pete left us to return to sunny England, we escaped the city madness of Bangkok and set off for Kanchanaburi (about 2 hours east of Bangkok) for one night.
When The Japanese invaded south east asia during the Second World War, one of their key objectives was to build a railway that connected Burma with Thailand, particularly from Bangkok to Rangoon to reinforce their their position in Burma and eventually attack India. The Japanese had a workforce of at 100,000 conscripted Asian Laborers and 60,000 Allied POWs captured in fighting such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. This workforce was herded up to Thailand in horrific conditions, made to work 16 hours a day without a break, lived in appalling conditions and were malnourished to the point of starvation. About 25% of the Allied POW workforce died, of that 6,318 were British, 2,815 Australians, 2,490 Dutch and the remainder were from the USA. There is no record kept of the asian deaths but it is widely considered that 100,000 to 170,000 people died in its construction.
We visited a number of places here the famous Bridge over the Kwai, which was bombed by the allies during the war and 2 museums, one by the river was absolutely rubbish, effectively a junk yard but the other the Thailand-Burma Railway Museum next to the Kanchanaburi war cemetery was a really informative place and well worth a visit. I had never read much about what had happened here until I read the guide book, but it's not until you visit the place that it really hits home how bad it was. The pictures of what went on and descriptions by one of the very few surviving POWs really moved us all and then a visit to the War Cemetery across the road is extremely saddening. Many of the people that died were in their 20s and walking around the thousands of graves, the messages left by families on headstones are pretty hard to take in. It was a really moving experience for all of us, but I think we all found it worthwhile.
In the afternoon we opted for something a little more light hearted and our driver for the day took us out to Tiger Temple, about 45mins North of Kanchanaburi. It's run by Buddhist Monks who started it after they were given tigers that had been rescued from poachers. From then on they have been given a few more tigers and have raised them in the sanctuary. Apart from going down to see the tigers and have your photos with them, there's not a great deal to do, but it's amazing to get that close up and actually touch them.
The following day we went out to Erewan National Park to walk up the 7 tier waterfall and swim in the pools. It's a beautiful place to go for the day and the water you can swim in is so clear. It was an extremely long and tiring walk up to the very top, but definitely worth doing - try and do it in something more substantial than flip-flops though! On the way back down we stopped at the waterfall with the smooth rock that you can slide down (check pics) and spent a good hour or so there - mostly waiting for me to stop going on it - before heading back to Bangkok.
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