January 10, 2018

January 10, 2018

We woke to thunderstorms in Bangkok. Better today than yesterday, as we have several hours of bus time ahead. We drove west for two hours, albeit very slowly, because of an accident. Eventually we stopped along a waterway and divided up into several Long-Tail canal boats. These are long canoes powered by a large open automobile engine with a propeller mounted directly on the drive-shaft. They are steered by moving the engine side to side. I remember them from the James Bond movie, The Man with the Golden Gun.

Unfortunately it is still raining and we are riding low in the water, so I have to keep the camera tucked

away in a plastic bag. The canals are very narrow with many straightaways, so we zoomed speedily along most of the route. I thought it was a blast. The canals are lined with stilt houses. Apparently most are farmers, growing bananas, coconuts, and mangoes. Instead of a car, they all have Long-Tails on a boat-lift. Our ride ended at the Damnoen Saduak floating market where in olden days locals would gather on boats to barter their wares. Today it is a tourist attraction with vendors selling anything a tourist might buy.

It finally stopped raining when we got back on the bus. Ninety minutes later, we arrived at our next destination, Kanchanaburi, home of a notorious Kwai River Bridge.

The movie Bridge on the River Kwai was released sixty years ago. Apparently I liked to whistle its

theme song much to the dismay of my little sisters. So it seemed appropriate to come to Thailand and see the real McCoy. We stopped first at the Death Railway Museum to get the history. The movie took considerable artistic license. At the onset of WWII, the British were using Burma to supply China with arms in their battle with Japan. To cut this off, the Japanese Army needed a way to get to Burma. So they quickly built a rail line from Thailand through the jungle mountains. For manpower, they used most of the British and Australian POW’s they recently captured at Singapore along with tens of thousands of Malaysian and Burmese conscripts. Conditions were so brutal, that some 20% of the enslaved labor died during the construction, earning it the moniker, Death Railway. A British Commonwealth cemetery lies next-door to the museum.

We then drove down to the river to see the bridge and walk across it. Unlike the movie, the bridge is iron, not wooden. It is narrow with a solitary rail line down the center. To my dismay, the rain restarts in a fine mist.