21 May

After sleeping on one of our top 10 mattresses of the past 45 days we start with some admin, we have washing to sort and hand in as well as cleaning our hiking shoes which we postponed for quite a while. After that we headed for the bridge of the river Kwai. This historic sight was where American and other foreign POW's were sent by the Japanese to work in labour camps mostly to construct the bridge over the river Kwai and the Hellfire pass which would later link Burma/Myanmar to Thailand. The bridge actually originated from Java and was dissembled after Java was occupied by Japanese soldiers and transported to Kanchanaburi.

The bridge appears smaller than one would expect but taking into account it was completed in a mere 3 months while Hellfire pass took 9 months to complete, still quite impressive. In that time 350 of the 700 mostly American POW's perished due to malnutrition, malaria, executions and being literally worked to death.

After walking across the bridge and through the market we returned to the other side for a cold Chang beer and coffee shake at a floating restaurant on the river. From here we ventured to the second world war museum which is maintained by monks. This museum, filled with artifacts, was able to visually depict the horrors of the POW camp and the perils of its inhabitants, while offering informative historic accounts of the events and what occurred during the constructions.

Now already 14h00 we headed back to our guest house for lunch, a 2 km walk back and it starts to rain, at least not heavily. After a nice pha thai meal we venture to our room to relax before returning for a relaxing movie being shown at the guest house restaurant and dinner.