Kwai ( "kw-ai" or "kw-ay" as it sounds in Thai when we non-Thai pronounce it) can mean one of two thing -
1- water buffalo or 2 - mens testicles.
Kwae, (which sounds like "kwa-eh") as it should be spelt to reflect the the way the Thais say it, refers to the river we are going to see.
We got up at 5:00am to be ready at 6:00am which was the pick up time. The bed was rock hard which din't make for a good nights sleep anyway and getting up so early made it feel even more like the day was going to be a hard one. But, off we went, first in a small 12 seater bus and then onto a 40 seater.
The big bus was nowhere near full and all our fellow passengers were English speakers - A young
Scottish couple, a young English couple, a retired scaffolder from London and a young American girl that lived in Chennai and worked for the American military. All really nice folk.
This is the rough map of where we went but the pics that will follow tell the story much better.
It was about 380kms round trip with bus, boat, train and Grab.
All done in ~11 hours.
I read the article on the left as we waited for our first pickup in the morning.
If you click on the picture in this blog it should become larger and legible.
Tiz and I on the very roomy bus
First stop, about an hour north west of Bangkok
All the following were taken at the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery
Lots of Dutch soldiers as well as British and Australians.
So many young men, in their early 20's lost their lives.
The large blue dot shows where the following pictures were taken.
It's the Jeath War Museum.
This is actually the Buddhist Temple in Kanchanaburi
A map not to scale ,with information, of the railway that took so many lives to build
More information
Parts and displays of the museum, both inside and out.
Much of it was in "no picture" zones.
This was a temple nearby the museum
Tiz, with her Macey bag, in the grounds of the museum waiting to get on the boat
that would take us to the bridge.
This is a mid 60's Fiat 1500, which I spotted off in the distance.
It had the Deus logo on the guard, which me made laugh.
It's hard to see in this pic but it call well have been a bit of a "rat rod".
Regardless of what it was, it showed how up to speed the Thais are of contemporary fashions, be it in clothing or bikes or cars or anything and how they will appropriate it in an instant.
This is the engine of the boat we took to the bridge. It is significant because it is a small naturally aspirated four cylinder and almost everything we have seen on the water has had big turboed intercooled six cylinder motors. I guess we all want to go faster, just because.
That lil' 4 cylinder still poked along very smartly!
Oh yes, there's money, and a sense of humour, in Thailand.
Take a good look at the boats in this picture.
Off in the background there was a huge very noisy wedding party,
which could be both seen and heard from the bridge.
The locals know how to, and do, party hard, often,
Tiz, with Macey bag, wandering around the market waiting for the train.
Here comes the train
Tickets for the train
Handsome guy with Songkran face adornment, put on by a local policewoman
On the train with our snacks and certificate, which is better seen below.
Below are the crops we saw on our train journey
They included sugar cane, taro, corn, pineapple and other crops we couldn't figure out
Not an uncommon site, 75 years after it was left there
Wang Pho was the end of the train journey
There goes the very long train we were on, down to Satun, just before Malaysia
I've included this picture as one of the Senior Delinquents, a group of motorcyclist that come from Phillip Island, was a train driver and I'd say he would be interested in seeing this train.
The great little restaurant we stopped at for lunch
Buffet style
Fried chicken and rice noodles.
Some of the people in our tour group
Back on the bus, on the way back to Bangkok with our box of snacks
We had booked the night at a hotel called The Xtreme Hotel, on the outskirts of Bangkok, and after checking in and having a short break we headed out for dinner.
We wandered about for a while, even sitting down at one restaurant that sadly went out of their way to ignore us. We left and thankfully found the restaurant we originally set out to find. Score!
It was full of local families having fun and eating wonderful food.
Green papaya salad. A very spicy version.
I forgot to take the picture when they brought the dish to the table.
Al least I remembered before I ate all the prawns!
A delicious pork dish
Pork and wintergreens
I was trying to get the attention of the waitress as I needed another Chang
The entrance to the large spacious open eatery
..... with picture, big ones, out the front so you knew what to expect.
The long but enjoyable day was over and we went to bed on a mattress that was a real Goldilocks unit. Yippee!
Ciao ciao.
Ci sarà di più domani.
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