Hellfire Pass

20 minutes back into town got us to the bus station. We then sat on a local bus (probably for about 30 minutes) before it was full enough to leave. The hour journey took about 2 hours, in typical asian form (picking up passengers and boxes along the way, and dispatching them somewhere else on the journey).

We had reached the Hellfire Pass Museum, which was part of the death railway line (Thailand - Burma) instructed by the Japanese during World War 2. It took 18 months to be completed, and the workforce aas made up of 60,000 prisoners of war, and about 200,000 Asian workers who were tricked into thinking they would be getting a better life. Around 70,000 people died through disease and malnutrition.

The museum was funded by the Australian goverment, and they hold memorials each year there on Anzac day. The museum explains the conditions that the workforce battled through, working up to 18 hours a day and eating once or twice small soggy rice portitons ususally with maggot infested meat or fish. The railway line itself was over 400km in size, and required large parts of rock to be manually cut through (using hard labour and not many tools) to make way for the tracks. It was a tactical supply route for the Japanese into Burma, as sea transport was prone to enemy attack.

The hellfire pass is one of many large cuttings that were made, you can walk a 4km stretch of it however most of it was closed on the day we went, for repairs. We probably did a 1km loop that was still heavy going in the heat. It does give you a real perspective of how hard it must have been to move all the rock. The walk was narrated by an audio tour.

At least 40km of the track towards Burma was ripped up after the end of the war, but a section of the track remains and is still in use today. Many bridges were build, some just out bamboo. Some of these were made out of steel, and were rebuilt several times after Allied forces bombed them. One of the famous bridges is a steel one over the River Kwai, close to Kanchanaburi. We took the 15:30 train from Nam Toc station (20 minutes from the museum) that runs through the orginal location of the Death railway. Lots of tourists on board for part of the journey that took us through fields with rolling hills and then onto Wampo Viaduct, hard to get many pictures but Tash got a few by standing at one of the train doors. Over 2 hours later we crossed over the bridge on the Kwai, lots of people standing on it taking pictures of the train, you would certainly get a better picture that way than the ones I managed.

After leaving the station we looked at the memorial garden that has 7,000 headstones to mark the remains of some of the people who died during the railways construction. It also said there is a memorial in Hong Kong but I didn't know about this and hadn't seen it.

Dinner time was odd, we went down to the restaurant at 20:15 before last orders, but it was quiet and Dennis was knowehere to been seen. Some other guests said he had to go out and so the kitchen was closed. We didnt know if we could get back into town or if stuff would still be open so a pack of crisps and a Thai custard donut we brought earlier made for an unsatisfying dinner.

Hours travelled; 89