Travelling between Kanchanaburi and Nam Tok on the Death Railway takes almost exactly two hours, the train passing through some of the most dramatic scenery Thailand has to offer. Third class accommodation consists of basic upright seats with backs which look as though they might actually be comfortable until you sit down on one of them and discover that the padding has been carefully wrapped around something resembling a stack of breeze blocks - but it's no worse than some of the older rolling stock we have back home and the fare will only set you back a couple of quid so there certainly isn't anything to complain about. You'll almost certainly spend most of your time staring out of the window at the jaw-dropping views anyway, so if you're the sort of person who is likely to want a seat you can lie back and go to sleep in then I'd probably have to question what the hell you're doing on the Death Railway anyway.

The train itself isn't much more than a series of rickety old carriages that run along a single track between Kanchanaburi and Nam Tok, passing over the bridge on the River Kwai and the dreaded Wang Po viaduct. The windows are all rolled completely down, on the basis that being stuck inside a confined railway carriage with no air conditioning for two hours isn't high on many visitor's list of priorities. The temperature outside is hot enough to melt lead, but the speed of the train allows a cool breeze to blow throughout the journey. Passengers can stick their heads out of the window and enjoy the splendour of the Thai countryside, safe in the knowledge that no trains will be coming the other way and that the only danger to life and limb is the slight possibility of being unexpectedly decapitated by a passing telegraph pole. As the train shoots by, farmers look up from their fields as though they've never seen anything like it before, and groups of children crowd around to jump up and down and wave in excitement. As the train approaches, you sometimes see kids wandering about on the track up ahead or sitting cross-legged on the rails, and your heart momentarily jumps into your throat - but then, just as it seems they are about to vanish underneath the train, they casually get up and saunter out of the way. It really is a different world out here, a million miles away from the hustle and bustle of city life where grumpy old men like nothing more than to write to the council once a week to complain about the noise of passing trains. Here, a train going past seems to be the highlight of the day, and would probably be something to write home about if it weren't for the fact that many of the people who live here never venture beyond the local town until the day they die.

I sat for the whole journey with a big smile on my face and my head stuck out of the window, watching breathtakingly beautiful mountains and rivers shoot by. On the rare occasion that we stopped at a station, it reminded me of arriving at Fantasy Island, a little white sign on a green stretch of lawn being the only thing to differentiate the station platform from the surrounding forest. The only thing missing was Ricardo Montalban and Herve Villechaize shouting "Da train, boss, da train." Younger readers, I'll give you a moment to go off and look it up.

My companions on this trip included a young Australian couple from Adelaide, who had been married for all of three weeks and were on the last stage of their honeymoon before returning to wedded bliss in the land down under. Linda and James had spent the last two weeks on the Andaman Sea in Phuket, and upon discovering that I was going there myself couldn't wait to enthuse over it in that delightful over the top way in which Australians describe everything from a gondola ride with a loved one in Venice to breakfast at McDonalds. They promised me beautiful beaches, crystal clear waters, perfect sunsets - pretty much everything the brochure had promised me only in vocal form and with every sentence sounding like a question.

At what began to seem like ten or fifteen second intervals, I was snapped out of my admiring gaze through the window by a salesman trying to sell me fruit or beer - vendors wander up and down the length of the train, endlessly assuming that if they come back often enough you may finally cave in and buy something just to shut them up. Why, having passed by an uncountable number of stalls selling snacks, trinkets and tee-shirts with corny slogans at Kanchanaburi station, these guys would imagine that I would suddenly have a hankering for a banana on the train to Nam Tok is beyond me. It is entirely possible, if you're not careful as the train pulls out of Kanchanaburi station, to be so caught up in buying souvenirs from a guy with a suspiciously large money belt but apparently no change, that you shoot straight over the River Kwai bridge without noticing and miss the whole point of your trip in the first place. I am informed by an American tourist on the train that if you offer your hand to the salesman palm-upwards, he will look offended and leave, never to return. I can't find any reference to this gesture meaning anything in particular in Thailand, so he was probably just having a laugh at my expense, but it should be noted that familiar western gestures can have totally different meanings on the other side of the world. I couldn't help but smile the other day when I saw an article on the internet titled "Thai government gives thumbs up to golf events" - the thumbs up gesture may be familiar to westerners as indicating that everything is great, but in Thailand it is the equivalent of sticking your tongue out and going "Nerr nerr de nerr nerr" like a small child. The writer of this article might want to go back to Thailand and check whether the government really does want those golf contracts. Oh, and in case you're wondering, I just made do with a cheery "No thanks" when the salesman next came by - I didn't come here to offend anyone.

Towards the end of the journey to Nam Tok, we reached the reason why so many people take this trip - the nail biting crossing of the Wang Po viaduct. This really is quite an experience even for a well seasoned traveller - I don't care how many times you've bungy jumped out of an aeroplane or parachuted from a bridge over a river full of crocodiles, sitting on the side of the train adjacent to the gorge as you cross the Wang Po viaduct can still be described as something of a white knuckle experience. When I use the word viaduct, of course, you probably have in your mind the image of a nice sturdy bridge across a river held in place by massive stone columns. The Wang Po viaduct is about as far from this image as it is possible to get. In fact, it doesn't seem to cross the river at all, choosing instead to connect two sections of the same bank by negotiating the side of an otherwise impassable cliff face which separates them. The viaduct is constructed from nothing more than a series of wooden trestle supports held in place on a narrow crumbling ledge half way up the cliff by a combination of experimental engineering and magic. Originally built by Prisoners of War working on the Death Railway, and demonstrating quite impressively that the Imperial Japanese army did find time to come up with the odd engineering masterpiece when they weren't busy beating and starving everyone to death, the Wang Po viaduct appears almost to defy gravity. As the train slows to a crawl in order to avoid snapping any of the creaking wooden trestles which strain under its weight, passengers on one side find themselves staring at a sheer cliff face inches from the windows while those on the other can look straight down at the river and pray that the train will reach the other side without tumbling down the cliff onto any number of floating homes far below. Passengers race to the windows, hoping to snap that perfect shot as the train negotiates a turn and the carriages ahead can be seen teetering on the edge of infinity. Those locals with a head for heights and a wish to reach the afterlife as soon as possible open the doors, climb down onto the steps of the train and sit with their feet dangling into the abyss.

For me, the otherwise extraordinary journey was marred by the moment, upon arrival in Nam Tok, when I accidentally caught sight of myself in a large mirror at one end of the carriage. It turns out that the decision to stick my head out of the window and enjoy the cool breeze all the way from Kanchanaburi might have been something of a mistake. Every insect and bug this side of the international date line has hurled itself kamikaze-style into my face, and now my eyes have taken on the appearance of two large bloodshot golf balls swimming in a sea of jelly. I look like Gomez Adams. Over lunch in a local restaurant, in which I spent a great deal of time emptying copious amounts of mineral water onto my eyeballs on the basis that the local tap water would probably introduce more bugs than it washed away, James assured me that the same thing happened to him a few years ago and that a few hours rest is all it will take to return me to a state where people don't feel the need to run screaming in the opposite direction as soon as they see me approaching. I really do hope so, because if there is one thing I really don't need when trying to find a kind local to give me directions, it's having an uncanny resemblance to the creature from the black lagoon...

Next: Mae Hong Son, Northern Thailand

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.