Slept in later than we wanted as were serenaded by a Thai Elvis until 2am but you don’t take a room on Kao San Rd for a good nights kip so can’t really complain.

We left at 10am to reach the bus stand and just managed to get our tickets, stow our luggage and squeak onto the bus before it left at 11.00. In retrospect I think we probably missed a trick by relying on the trains in India rather than taking a few coaches and not just because of the reservation problems we had. There’s something nice about having a big window to watch the country go by through and while you don’t get as much actual space, your personal space is more, well, yours.

Kanchanaburi is luvverly, and on arrival the Thai equivalent of Kim and Aggie from How Clean is Your House rickshawed us to The Apple Guest House which is a collection of basic but comfy bamboo huts set around a beatiful green park shaded by mango trees:

We were about 4 km south of the Kwai Bridge and considering the effort it took to walk there I can definitely confirm that it is not bridge-building weather round here either.

On the way, we stopped to pay our respects at the two cemeteries gifted and maintained by the Thai people – one for the Chinese and one for the Allied soldiers who died and were originally buried in mass graves during the construction of the railroad.

Before hitting the main road towards the bridge itself, we also visited the Railroad Museum which chronicles very well all the grisly details of the railways history. The Japanese had plans to kill all POWs if the allies landed near a camp and, after the surrender (while most camps were liberated quickly) one containing 1000s of prisoners was evacuated and the men forced to march 300km having been told it was for relocation. Many died on the march – the rest were murdered on arrival except for just 3 who escaped and were sheltered by locals. Nasty stuff.

We arrived at the bridge just before sunset and grabbed some nice piccies although the bridge itself is a bit dark:

And you can even walk across it!:

After that it was a long trudge back to town where we got pissed at the No Name Bar and watched the United match:

And I nearly forgot the drunken ostrich feeding. If you can’t get wankered on cheap Thai lager and feed some ostriches, I don’t even know what we’re doing here.