History Lesson at Hellfire Pass

After a few relaxed days in Bangkok, we took a train Thursday morning to Kanchanaburi, home of the Bridge over the River Kwai which was made famous by the book and movie of the same name. We dropped our things off at Apple's Guesthouse, another laid back, friendly place, and set out on our rented bikes. We made it to the bridge and walked across it to find three elephants chained up in the small market area. There was a young one there that kept trying to get free, it was pretty sad.

We then got a map and biked to the other side of the river to try to find the Kao Poon caves that were written up in our guide book. Once we were about 3 kilometers out of town I jinxed myself by thinking what would happen if I got a flat tire out here. Sure enough, I felt the air start to steadlily leak out of my front tire, until I had to come to a stop. There was a little roadside, open air restaurant right there so we decided to get a drink while we figured out what to do. We showed the guy what had happened and his friend immediately offered to take us a little ways down the road to have it fixed (at least that's what we assumed he was saying, our Thai isn't quite fluent yet). Michael hopped on the back of his motorbike and the two of them set off, wheeling the bike beside them. I stayed behind and read my book, enjoying the fan and my cold Fanta. Michael was back in just 10 minutes, with the tire patched for only 10 Baht, about 25 cents. We were pleasantly surprised at how easy it turned out to be, and Michael took it as a good sign for his future plans (stay tuned...)

When we made it to the site of the supposed 'caves' we were a little skeptical, thinking it might just turn out to be a little hole in the rock with a buddha statue in it (Maybe we've become just a little bit jaded from the signs and adverstisements we see for touristy things, especially in China where they tended to make everything look deceptively magnificent on billboards and in brochures). But again we were pleasantly surprised--it was a whole labyrinth of caves filled with buddhas and statues of various Hindu Gods. It was cool to explore through it all, especially because we were the only ones there. The only downside was the stench from all the bat droppings.

The following day we took a bus to Hellfire Pass, so named because of the horrible conditions that mainly Australian, Dutch and British WWII POW's, along with conscripted Asian workers, had to endure while manually cutting through solid rock in order to build the Burma-Siam railway for the Japanese. They've done an amazing job with the museum and audio-guided tour along a 4 kilometer stretch of the old railway. The trail and surrounding hills were really beautiful, but also have a sad, eerie feeling to them because of the history-- over 90,000 men died from building the railway.

Unfortunately, this internet cafe is closing early so I'll have to continue later...