Kanchanaburi: Birthdays, Waterfalls, and WWII History

By Matt (and Shelly too!):

Shelly and I took off a day from school to celebrate her birthday and to explore Kanchanaburi in more detail.  We spent a day in Kanchanaburi during our orientation week riding elephants and bamboo rafting, buuuut still felt there was plenty in the area to explore.

We checked into our river raft room on Friday night (imagine a large floating mobile home with 8-10 partitioned small rooms) and enjoyed a great sunset from our riverfront balcony.  The room was basic with a manual toilet (Matt gets to dump water in to flush) and springy beds.  But, the room also had A/C, a fan, small table, and best of all, the aforementioned balcony with two chairs.  All this for the low, low price of $13 USD a night.



View from the guesthouse restaurant



Deep in thought down by the river


We spent Saturday exploring the 7-tier Erawan waterfalls, about 65km outside of town.  There is a local bus that takes you to Erawan in about 90 minutes.  The hike can be done in less than an hour, but the real draw is to stop at each level and explore each tier of the waterfall.  You can see why right here:



Tier 0 (I confused this one as one of the seven tiers).  Pretty nonetheless.



Tier 0.5.  Awhoops.



OK.  Here we go.  Tier 1 at a distance.



Tier 2



And Tier 3.



Only shot we got at Tier 4.  Some Frenchie couldn't manage to snap a photo as we slid down the rock slide.



Nice group shot at Tier 5 (apologies for the gratuitous nudity)



Tier 6 (not all can be seen) was secluded and probably our favorite

Very end of the waterfall at Tier 7.  Again, not all of the waterfall pictured.

The full return hike took us about 5 hours, with plenty of time to stop and swim at a few tiers.  Most of the tiers have fish that ‘exfoliate’ your feet when you jump into the pool at the bottom of the fall.  Some of the fish are the size of tadpoles, others the size of a small trout.  How much they nibble on you depends on how gnarly your feet are.   People pay good money for that in Bangkok (like us). 

By the time we finished the hike, it had started to rain lightly and Shelly was minutes away from hypothermia in 75 degree weather.  She has acclimated real nicely here.  J  Once we got back to our room, we sat down on the balcony chairs and a wine bottle-shaped thing wrapped in cute wrapping paper was put into T minus 5 hour birthday girls’ lap.  Mmm, 2006 Australian Shiraz.  A FANTASTIC bottle of wine, sipped on a glorious evening watching the peaceful water (minus a few motorboats/jet skis) on the River Kwai in Kanchanaburi.  What a great way to deal with turning a year older!

On Sunday, world-wide holiday (AKA Shelly Day),we took an even longer one-way bus ride in the direction of Burma out to the Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum.  The Museum and walking trail are managed by the Australian Government to commemorate 100,000+ (estimated) WWII POWs that died constructing the death railway.  Japan was intent on constructing the railway to move supplies through Thailand and into Burma for an anticipated invasion of India.  Allied ships prevented the Japanese from moving supplies exclusively by boat, hence the railway.  American, Australian, and Dutch POWs were included in the labor force in addition to 250,000+ Asian contracted workers.  The Asians had a far higher death toll (estimated at 90,000) as they did not have basic medical care provided (Allied soldiers retained the chain of command and had army doctors) or strong leadership to argue against the Japanese soldier’s demands to work.  Men died from cholera, malaria, beatings, starvation, etc.  Not exactly the way Shell probably expected to spend her birthday (um, death on a day to celebrate life??! Wait a minute…), but a cool experience nonetheless. 

Hellfire Pass Museum is situated on one particularly well-known stretch of the railroad known as the Konyu Cutting.  The cutting was dug mostly by hand and primitive digging tools to construct the railway through the mountains of Western Thailand.  The Konyu Cutting is about 80km past the famous Bridge over the River Kwai, which is part of this same railroad.  The Bridge was bombed out by Allied planes but rebuilt several times during the war.

Of the original 415km of track laid from Thailand to Burma, only 130km are still in use.  The train track on the Bridge over the River Kwai is still in use and runs northwest towards the museum and southeast to Bangkok.  However, the track running northwest stops about 15km before the museum. 



Part of the railbed.  Interestingly, most of the railbed has been removed or is buried around the memorial museum.  never got an answer as to why.



There is a 4km walking path around the museum.  Part of it is seen here (again this is the railway path)



Beginning of the Konyu cutting referenced in the plaque above



This pic gives a good idea of the scale of the cutting.  Me thinks.

We felt it was appropriate to experience the train in action and took a 3 hour return journey to Kanchanaburi (where the Bridge over the River Kwai is located).  The trip was absolutely worth it and the pictures/video prove just that:

Seriously, not a bad way to start the young and spritely age of 18 (I guess this is when women start to lie about their age).  We traveled over the bridge that night for a good dinner on the water (actually, all our dinners were on the water!) and a “fruit cake” of mangosteens and rambutans with 3 candles in the center for the birthday girl.  YUM! 

Next up on the travel calendar:  Finally go to a white sand, blue water beach and relax for a couple days on Koh Chang.  Life in Thailand is hard.