The Bridge on the River Kwai

In preparing for a vacation, Sami will spend months pouring over guidebooks and scrolling through travel blogs searching for the most interesting activities and least expensive, quasi-bearable hotels. Sites of cultural and historical significance are high on her list as are multiple-reviewed eateries (her logic: if a restaurant is in a guidebook, it has a name, and if it has a name, it is not a dirty food stall, and hopefully even serves the old Western standbys because when you travel anywhere away from Korea, even to one of the top foodie havens of the world such as Bangkok, chicken strips must be found and devoured with ranch sauce). She creates up to the hour schedules that include travel time, addresses, phone numbers and directions. I fully admit that this is the smart way to go and she always sends the info to our family members to potentially shorten the amount of time our bodies would decompose should something happen to us. However, it does take some of the spontaneity out of travel.

After deciding that she had enough of playing the role of master scheduler, Sami put me in charge of creating the itinerary for our three days in Bangkok. I started my research by watching the Hollywood classic "The Bridge Over the River Kwai," and quickly decided that we would take a day trip to see the site of the famous bridge built by mainly English and Australian POWs during WWII. I enjoyed the movie so much that I decided to watch "Apocalypse Now," "The Quiet American," and "The Killing Fields" even though I knew I would have nothing to do with the itineraries for Vietnam and Cambodia.

We took a bus to Kanchanaburi, a small town in southwest Thailand that is the home of the bridge and Death Railway, numerous museums depicting POW life under Japanese rule, and the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery. The bus had no A/C, rattled uncontrollably, had narrow, worn out seats. There was the kind of bathroom in back where you ladle water down the hole and let the natural level dilute and carry the waste away in some act of primitive and mysterious physics common only outside of the first world. Sami took one look and decided to hold it.

I couldn't help but listen in to the conversation a young couple was having in the seats behind us. They were comparing the bus to others they had ridden on in India and to the Greyhound they took from Eugene to Reedsport. Yes, that Eugene and that Reedsport. I turned and enthusiastically notified them that we were from Oregon as well. Not only that, they were pregnant just like us, and the girl's brother had actually been one of Sami's students at Glencoe High School in Hillsboro. Small world right? I dozed for most of the rest of the ride while Sami compared pregnancy notes with our new friends, confident that she was pleasantly entertained by common talk of health and home. Turns out I made an unwise decision and was later scorned for leaving my wife to carry the conversation. Apparently I have a bad habit of starting conversations with strangers and then letting Sami do all of the talking. Not that she didn't want to talk to the young couple, just that she thought I was coming off as anti-social. My rebuttal is that most of the time I just wait a second longer than she does to fill in an empty space with words. I try not to interrupt. It's what I would like to think of as politeness. True, sleeping in that situation aint polite, but I was tired.

We decided to walk from the bus station in Kanchanaburi to the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre, which is the newest museum dedicated to the "Death Railway" and also the one the Lonely Planet recommended as the must see. First, we traipsed over to the tourism board to snag a map and soon after picked up a street snack from an independent vendor. I am planning to reserve a blog entry exclusively on the Bangkok street food I ate during our trip later on in the week so I will save my description until then. However, I must mention the Thai iced tea I fell for at a coffee shop later on this same walk.

Here is a Thai iced tea I had another time in Bangkok

Kanchanaburi sort of reminded us of Korea. The main thoroughfare we walked on was lined with uniformly boxed buildings similar in style and height to those in smaller Korean towns we've visited like Jeonju and Sokcho. The difference of course was that the weather was extremely hot in what was late January. We stopped off in a coffee shop we knew was air conditioned and that is where I ordered my Thai iced tea. If you've never had one, it is strong black tea severely sweetened and spiced with what I think is anise. Milk was added to it and it was the perfect drink for a hot day. Pretty sure I will order it every time I see it on a menu from now on and it will trump even my favorite alcoholic standbys.

On the street in Kanchanaburi. Much more modern than small towns in Cambodia and The Philippines. Kind of reminded us of places we've visited in Korea.

The Thai-Burma Railway Centre in Kanchanaburi. An absolute must see if you find yourself there.

The Thai-Burma Railway Centre is an extraordinary museum. The curator, Australian Rod Beattie, has dedicated his life to uncovering every possible piece of information that exists about this misunderstood piece of one of the darkest times in world history. It was here that the Japanese Imperial Army used Burmese "volunteers" and British and Australian POWs to construct a supply railway running from Burma to China. As you can imagine, the true story is nothing like the movie "Bridge on the River Kwai" where the English POWs are treated to a live show and celebration at the completion of the project. The Japanese guards (actually, it was interesting to hear that most of the guards in this area were Korean- Korea being part of the Japanese Empire 1910 until after the war) were extremely harsh on the prisoners- working them to death in many cases.

Kanchanaburi War Cemetery

In addition to extensive information and large scale models displaying the logistics and geography of the railway, Mr Beattie made frequent use of the journals of POWs to present an accurate and brutal account of life in the camps. Nearly 100,000 soldiers died of diseases such as dysentery and cholera and were fed no more than a few spoonfuls of rice a day. The most harrowing image inside the museum is a sculpture of a bony thin Allied soldier slumped and held up at the shoulders by two like-framed friends. His pants are at his ankles as he is being dragged along, undoubtedly dying from dysentery.

More scenes from the War Cemetery

After that sobering experience we rented bikes and peddled to the reconstructed Bridge over the River Kwai. Along the way there were dozens of little bars and discos and hotels. According to the Lonely Planet, this little section of town actually gets pretty jumping after dark.

The bridge itself was clean and surprisingly well maintained having been rebuilt only a few short years after the war. Being there had none of the mystique of the movie, which is just as well because I later learned that the film was shot in Sri Lanka (I was equally bummed to find out that "Apocalypse Now" was famously shot in The Philippines, but I guess I should have known that Vietnam was not the most US-friendly place circa 1978). It was such a nice late afternoon and there were so many smiling tourists around that all of the evil we learned of inside the museum minutes earlier was unfathomable.

Tourist pics

After taking enough pictures against the backdrop of the bridge, we rode past to a restaurant Sami found highly recommended. It was a large but empty establishment being that we walked in at an awkward hour between lunch and dinner. We were seated outside, overlooking the bridge. We ordered an appetizer of wontons stuffed with shrimp meat and later I had an incredible green curry. There was a Chinese party at a table near us smoking cigarettes and drinking from a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red. I was surprised when the left and took the bottle with them. Apparently, the Thai custom is to bring your own and only be charged a small corking fee. It is a great idea, but not as good as a Thai iced tea.

Green curry

Stuffed wontons