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Today we got up very early. Joy also came in extra early to make sure we got a taxi to Thornburi Station. What a wonderful person she was.
She hailed a taxi for us at 6.40am and we put all our luggage in, said our goodbyes to Joy and drove to the train station. Our train to Kanchanaburi was 100 baht each (about £2) and was leaving at 7.50am. It pulled up on time but didn't leave until 8.10am and reading timetables on the internet were told the journey would take 2 hours. Yeah right!!
It took just under three hours. We were sat in third class but it had air conditioning - no doors and all the windows open!! It wasn't too bad to tell the truth and we watched the scenery go past from the window. Three or four times local sellers came up the train with drinks, fruits and nuts so we had our breakfast on the journey.
Not many tourists on the train which is a good thing in my opinion.
We arrived at the station at about 11am and then we got in a Songthaw to take us to the Royal Napat Hotel.
It was a very nice place (poshest so far!) with a swimming pool especially for Archie! Our rooms weren't ready so we sat at the open restaurant in the front and had a few cold drinks and had some lunch. At about 1pm we could go up to our rooms and I was so tired I thought I would have a nap. Claire and Archie went to the pool and we arranged to meet later to go to the Thailand-Burma Railway Museum at 4pm.
This we did but after a slow walk (the wrong way) and then back again we got there at 5pm and they were just closing the gates!!
So instead we wandered around the beautiful war cemetery opposite for an hour or so. It was very peaceful there.
The Kanchanaburi War Cemetery (known locally as the Don-Rak War Cemetery) is the main Prisoner of War (POW) cemetery associated with victims of the Burma-Thailand railway. There are 6,982 former POWs buried there, mostly Australian, British and Dutch. It contains the remains of prisoners buried beside the south section of the railway from Bangkok to Nieke apart from those identified as Americans, whose remains were repatriated.
There are 1,896 Dutch war graves, the rest being from Britain and the Commonwealth. Two graves contain the ashes of 300 men who were cremated. The Kanchanaburi Memorial gives the names of 11 from India who are buried in Muslim cemeteries.
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