Kanchanaburi, the bridge over the river Kwai

It was a crazy idea, going directly from the island of Koh Adang to the town of Kanchanaburi, the distance of more than 1300 km. The travel would involve a longtail boat. speedboat, minivan, night bus and probably another bus, and we estimated that it'd take us about 24 hours. Nobody in their right mind would do it but we are insane enough, so at 8am we started our journey towards the main land and up north. We should have imagined not everything would go as smoothly as we planned...

The small wooden boat was taking us to a speedboat boarding platform at Ko Lipe, and at first it looked like we weren't going to make it even there. The last couple of days the wind was blowing really hard and as a result the sea was rough making our little boat jump like on a trampoline. After I decided to pay the local boatman only half of the extortionate price he demanded, he cursed us over and over, so no wonder our trip didn't go as expected!

Speedboat ride wasn't much better, the constant crushing into the waves made some of the elderly passengers pray for their lives and after two hours of sea madness we were glad we could set our feet on a solid ground.

Life jackets on the speedboat did not inspire much trust

We managed to find a minivan that would take us to Hat Yai again, our third time making a transfer in this town. I should mention that travel there is not very recommended as it is situated in one of the Muslim provinces in Thailand where the separatist violence strikes every once in a while (in Hat Yai as recently as March 2012 there was a bombing that killed 11 people).

The minivan went smooth and we thought that our curse was over, but boy were we wrong. We asked to be dropped off at the bus station, only to find out there were no night buses available, most likely because of the celebrations of the Chinese New Year still going on. Our only chance was the train. We had heard only good things about the sleepers on Thai trains so that wouldn't have been so bad. But when we finally made it to the train station we were told that only 2nd class seats with fan were available,  no bed, no aircon, for the trip of 16 hours. And as we really are crazy, we bought the tickets and now it was our turn to start praying.

Lets ride

But I guess we could have done worse. The seats were leather so we spent all the journey stuck to them, but they were comfy, had plenty of leg space and the views were not too bad. In the end, crossing one entire half of Thailand and watching it from the window of a train does have a romantic feel to it.

Our fan compartment

Watching the tropical forest pass by

Of course we got no sleep. The lights were on and the food vendors, convinced that someone would actually be interested in fried chicken at 3am, walked around yelling the whole night. With the remarkable delay of only one hour we arrived to Nakhon Pathom the next morning, we snapped a shot of its famous golden stupa, the largest in the world, and hopped on another train, this time 3rd class with wooden benches. Two more hours and we finally arrived to Kanchanaburi!

Nakhon Pathom

Wooden benches could not prevent me from falling asleep

The journey of 28 hours, out which 19 were spent on the train(s), wore us out. We had got some good rest at Koh Adang but now we needed some more and so we took it very easy. The province of Kanchanaburi is renown for its natural beauty,  the mountains towards the Myanmar border, waterfalls and caves. The town itself however might be the ugliest and tackiest place we've seen in all Thailand, with dozens of neon bars filled with expats and their Thai 'girlfriends'.

This is ...

... what Kanchanaburi is all about

The hords of tourists that arrive here everyday don't come for the booze (not all of them anyway), they want to see the famous bridge over the river Kwai. The structure is more modest than the majority of them would think, but the history behind it is far from ordinary.

Trains still go over the Kwai river bridge

I admit we knew nothing about its history apart the little we remembered from the movie, so we decided to visit the Death Railway museum for some insight. We expected to be done with it in 20 minutes, but when we finally left after two hours, we were both very quiet and reflecting upon the fate of thousands of prisoners of war and civilians who died because of the infamous Death Railway built under the command of the Japanese occupants??. 15000 of POWs and almost 100000 (sic!) of Asian forced labourers are estimated to have lost their lives during the year and a half of constructing the railway through the impassable mountains and over the rivers between Burma and Thailand, most of them due malnutrition, sickness and apalling mistreatment. 

About 7000 prisoners of war from Commonwealth and the Netherlands, perished during the railway construction, are commemorated in the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery. The Asian victims have no such memorial.

We had expected to learn something in Kanchanaburi but it was very tough history lesson indeed, nonetheless very valuable one.

Our time in Thailand is almost up. Just a brief stop in Bangkok and we will be off for another adventure!