On Friday we set off to drive up to Kanchanaburi about 150km from Bangkok. Along the roads and highways everywhere are large pictures of the revered king and queen on billboards or large banners over the road. Outside many houses and other buildings, even gas stations are strikingly beautiful spirit houses which are decorated raised shrines to the spirit who lived on the land or to the spirits of deceased previous owners. Every morning offerings of food and flowers are left at the shrines to keep the spirits happy. We passed some buddhist monk pilgrims who may walk up to 6 months a year resting only at night under a mosquito net over a large umbrella and fed by local people (they hope).
Kanchanaburi is near the famous bridge on the River Kwai, which was misnamed in English as kwai just means river in Thai and is not the actual name of the river. The bridge was built as part of the 415km infamous Thai-Burma death railway by the Japanese using or abusing 60,000 POWS of whom 20-25% died and less well known 200,000 Asian slave workers of whom half died. The museums explaining the brutality, the POW cemetary and a visit to Hellfire Pass where a deep cutting took 3months to blast and dig by hand by skeletal prisoners on 18h shifts are extremely moving.
We stayed in a camp further up the river and our tent had a resident gecko in the bamboo walls of the partly open air bathroom section at the back. It seemed quite tame and i shall miss it even tho its loud call would wake me at night even with earplugs.The aircon was a respite from the mid 30s temperatures as was the lovely natural pool at the edge of the river. The beauty of the area is at great odds with the brutal history. We did our best to be sensible at the breakfast and dinner buffet but lunch each day was like a Chinese restaurant dinner for 4 served especially for the 2 of us and we didnt want to appear rude so.....
Yesterday we rode upriver on a longtail boat where the itinerary said we would swim under a waterfall, though we werent told we would have to jump out of the boat and swim 2 km downstream avoiding motor boats and large tourist rafts, haul ourselves up slippery rocks under the falls and jump off them back into the river and swim back to our boat. As the guide explained it to us Martin's face took on its familiar 'what have you got me into now' look but in the event the life jacket and the swift current did all the swimming for us, the guide hauled us up the rocks to maintain his record of not losing any tourists and it was all fantastic fun.