Laurie's World

FIRSTLY–Happy Canada Day to my Friends and family to the North!! We are thinking about you today : )

So we are kinda used to the rain coming from where we come from (Seattle), and Russ having spent a winter on Vancouver Island–same same! But still wish it wouldn’t rain on my vacation…

We started off the day a little slow–did not set the alarm–just as i said we wouldn’t. Had a very nice breakfast at the hotel and were ready to head out to see what Kanchanaburi has to offer around 11:30 or so. Very civilized : )

We wandered down the street toward the Bridge at River Kwai. It is about 900 meters from our hotel…so took about 12 minutes or so to walk it. Explored the bridge for a while…BK, Troy and I were here 2 years ago when we came the first time with the whole family, but Russ had not seen it…there are always new things to see and do however–so we were all entertained…

Here is a picture of us on a Japanese train that the Japanese used to haul ammunition on supplies for their POW camps to build the 415 Km long Death Railway from Burma to Bangkok.

We walked across the bridge also…there are places to step off the rails if a train comes : )

We then hired a longtail boat to give us a ride down the river. It cost 700 baht/$22 USD for a two hour/3 stop tour. It was worth it for the breeze alone!! The stops and scenery were just value add. I was very hot and humid here this morning and early afternoon (more on the weather later).

Personal favorite–Russ enjoying the breeze!!

The first of the three stops on our longtail tour was the Koapoon Cave Temple…On the walk from the boat launch to the caves there were some nice vantage points of the River.

It was really neat, hot and humid and a lot of bats–I have some fabulous video…so no pictures after I went in…

Second stop was the War Cemetary…This is where the skies opened up! So we got very wet!! But it brought the temperature down a little and cooled us off…There are about 1,500 of the over 115,000 who died as part of the building of the Burma to Bangkok Rail during the Japanese occupation of Thailand during WWII. The heavy rain stopped just as we were finishing up here…OK–we were pretty happy about this.

The third stop was the JEATH (Japanese, England, America, Thailand, Holland) War museum. They use this acronym because they feel death “sounds too horrific”. It was built in 1977 to pay hommage to the more than 16,000 POWs and 100,000 forced labourers who died of diseases due to starvation, and lack of medical equipment. There were photos and memorabelia on display. It is unfortunate that the preservation of the artifacts is very poor and likely will not allow them to stay readable for much longer. They do not allow pictures, so i have no photos of this place at all.

So after the tour, we stopped at market area for a mid afternoon snack, pomello, banana chips, chicken on a stick–YUM YUM. then the skies opened up again–but we had to walk to 900 meters (1/2 mile) back to our hotel. So we got soaked…Thus my title today–thanks for listening.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 1st, 2011 at 1:43 am and is filed under Thailand 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.