River Kwai and the floating market.

Having almost been brought up on the film "The Bridge on the River Kwai" it would have been silly to have missed the opportunity of visiting the area where the events of the second world war took place.

On the way we took in a visit to the floating market, a village of canals where many of the houses are built on stilts and where everyone goes about in boats. We disembarked our minibus at one of these canals and boarded a narrow boat with a very large outboard motor at the rear, connected to a long shaft containing the propeller. I think the water must be very shallow, as the propeller barely enters the water.

After a ride of a couple of kilometres, sometimes at quite high speed, we arrived at the market, where boats were drawn up allongside a jetty selling all kinds of wares, although I have to admit that most of them were aimed at the tourist. However there was fruit, and food which was actually being preapared in the boats, but really it was not quite what we expected as most of the wares were on display on dry land.

After another hour's travel we came to the War cemetary containing the gravstones of some of those who died building the Siam Burma railway in the second world war. Immaculately maintained by the UK War Graves Commission, the graves made very poignant reading as we walked through then.  About 100,000 prisoners died working on the railway, and almost 7000 are buried here, half of which were British. I came across one of a member of the Border Regiment from my own county, as well as a Bailey, and a Meggs, I have no idea if they are related but it brought home to me the losses that families had to bear because of the attrocities of the Japanese that took place close by.

A few kilometres on we came to the area where the bridge was built. The debarking area was in a large market, again selling mainly tourist tatt, and I felt it was rather the like the temple in Jerusalem where Jesus upset the stalls.

The current bridge is not the original, which was bombed by the Americans not long after it was built, and replaced by an Iron bridge brought up from a river further down the country. We were able to walk over that and get some idea of the task that the Allies had to perform at the time, the river is quite fast flowing and quite deep, about 100 metres wide at that point.

Nearby was the museum, a somewhat mixed up and badly translated couple of rooms containing many artifacts of the time. However, below the building, on the riverbank, were some of the  pilings of the original bridge, and gave some idea of how it was built. It was worth going just to see that, but there was also a diorama which attempted to show how the prisoners worked, and an original Japanese railway engine which served on the Death Railway.

It was a very long day, made worse by the atrocious driving of our two drivers, who had to overtake every other vehicle on the road  sitting within touching distance of the vehicle in front, and indeed seemed to be racing at times.

Anyway, tommorrow is the final Convention day, and we will be spending the day there, having lunch at the Past Officer's Dinner.

On Thursday we will be flying to Chang Mai, some 500 miles to the north of Bangkok, and hopefully a little more relaxed!.