Kanchanaburi, what a place, beautiful and yet so sad. So much to see and do and the best guest house we stayed at to date. We arrived at 'the jolly frog' at 7.30am after 15hours on busses! to be presented with a massive bed room which slept four and our very own seating area over the river with lush views of the sunset!

Once we slept off the bus journey and got our bearing we went for a walk to find the tourist information office and get a map of the area. Had a beer in the heat and then decided to get up the next day rent bikes and go exploring the next day.

Renting bikes is the best way to get around Kanchanaburi, the museums and sites are quite close but in the heat and to get around them all in one day you really need wheels. Im getting quite a taste for this bike riding stuff!! Always wanted my own bike and this is just making me worse. Ok so ive never seen the film 'the bridge over the river Kwai' but visiting the railway museum and going to the sites and other museums i know have a pretty good idea of what its all about and how horiffic it all was. It was so wierd being at the actual bridge and being surrounded by japanese tourists all screaming and shouting and being happy pulling 'peace' signs in their photos... i mean seriously would you catch germans doing it at any of the ww2 sites?!?!? I wouldnt have thought so. Yeah man look at me im so cool!?!?!

Anyway, rant over, on the 3rd day in Kanchanaburi the three of us decided to trade the bikes in for a jeep and drive ourselves out to hellfire pass.

Hellfire pass is the site where Groups of POWs 'worked around the clock for 16-18 hours to complete excavation of the 17 metre deep and 110-m long cutting through solid limestone and quartz rock in only 12 weeks. Forced to work at night, Konyu Cutting was nicknamed " Hellfire Pass " because of the mixture of hammering noise, lighting from fires, oil fired bamboo torches and carbide lamps that created an eerie illumination that looked like the "Fires from Hell". After the war in Oct 1945, the graves of 124 men were located in Kanyu No1 Cemetery, which is now occupied by grazing pasture'.

Workers on the Death Railway

Total Forced Labour Total Deaths Asian Laborers 200,000 +/- 80,000 British POW's 30,000 6,540 Dutch POW's 18,000 2,830 Australian POW's 13,000 2,710 American POW's 700 +/- 356 Korean & Japanese soldiers 15,000 1,000

On our visit to hellfire pass was we were accompanied by an audio tour, which detailed each part of the meseum and guided us through the actual cutting. I found the tour very moving and buy the end of the tour was nearly in tears. The audio included cuttings of interviews with surviving POWs, what they remembered and how they felt.

this peom says it all:

Mates By Duncan Butler, 2/12th Field Ambulance

I've travelled down some lonely roads

Both crooked tracks and straight

An' I've learned life's noblest creed

Summed up in one word "Mate"

I'm thinking back across the years,

(A thing I do of late)

An' this word sticks between my ears

You've got to have a mate

Someone who'll take you as you are.

Regardless of your state

An' stand as firm as Ayers Rock

Because "e" is your mate

Me mind goes back to 43,

To slavery an' ate,

When man's one chance to stay alive

Depended on 'is mate.

With bamboo for a billie-can

An' bamboo for a plate,

A bamboo paradise for bugs,

Was bed for me and me mate.

You'd slip and slither through the mud

An' curse your rotten fate:

But then you'd hear a quiet word:

"Don't drop your bundle mate.

An' though it's all so long ago

This truth I ave to state:

A man don't know what lonely means,

Til 'e as lost is mate

If there's a life that follers this,

If there's a "Golden Gate"

The welcome that I want to hear

Is just: "Good on y mate"

An so to all who ask us why

We keep these special Dates

Like Anzac day, I answer: "Why"

We're thinking of our mates"

An when I've left the drivers seat

An handed in my plates,

I'll tell old Peter at the door:

"Ive come to join me MATES"

We spent so long at hellfire pass, that we didnt actually get so see much of anything else the day we had the car we made it to the natural hot spring but were too late to see the tigers at the 'tiger temple'. Not that i think we missed much, people ive spoken to say that the tigers are drugged and chained up and one person we spoke to said 'the monks keep getting richer and the tigers still havnt had their new area built'?!

On the 31st i spent the day at the guest house whilst kat n coop went up to 'three pagodas pass' which is on the border of burmar. I really didnt fancy it and quite enjoyed lying in and then reading my book for most of the day. Got speaking to a few people by the end of the day and buy time kat n coop got back i was quite pissed and ready to go out drinking! Everyone we met were really cool, we had a wicked night, ended up drinking with a local biker gang and went to bed VERY drunk with plans to hear to Bangkok the next day with everyone from the jolly frog.

I really enjoyed Kanchanaburi, and even though ive never been one for history and all the ww2 info i found it really interesting and it deffinatly made an impact on me.