Kanchanaburi, Thailand

Sunday, April 27, 08
Taking an early stroll to the Kwae Bridge, before the torrent of tourists arrives, I walk the bridge, stopping on the turnout as the train lumbers past. Returning to the East side, I buy breakfast, some papaya and an iced coffee. This is the warmest day I've had in Thailand.
I return to the guest house for a cool down and catch a taxi to Wat Tham Khao Poon, a limestone cave temple several km from town. I pay him 200 Baht ($6), probably overpaid, to take, wait 1 hour, and return me.
This is a quiet cave temple filled with shrines of the Buddha, Hindu deities, and Thai kings. The cave complex was used by the Japanese, during WWII, to store weapons and equipment, and some smaller chambers are said to have been used to imprison and torture POWs. Bats fly around as I duck and twist through the narrow walkways which connect chambers. I really hope the electricity stays on. Back outside, I sit and write and am driven off by mosquitoes. Retreating to the sunshine, I walk among the complexes housing young Buddhist monks. On to view the river from a vista, we return back to Kanchanaburi through Chung Kai, where I pay my respects at another war cemetery. POW camps dotted the entire railway as 2 "crews" worked from both Burma and Siam. The railway, 415 km, through rugged terrain, was intended to secure a reliable supply route for the Japanese conquest of India. With the Japanese naval defeat at Coral Sea their transports and supply ships were open to continual attack through the Melaka Straits. This made the railway even more important to their design. Pushed beyond their limit, the POWs completed the 1 m-gauge railway in only 16 months. But, the cost was 16,000 Westerner POWs, mostly from Britain and Holland, and 90,000-100,000 conscripted labourers from the Japanese conquests in SE Asia who died in the area. The bridge over the River Kwae was bombed repeated by allied aircraft - mostly ineffectively.
Sitting at a small, curb-side restaurant, I decide I need more food than I've been eating and order a shrimp noodle dish - very tasty. Also, it's time I learn how to use chopsticks, especially since that's what came as utensils. Drink is pineapple juice.
I thought Indonesian and Malaysian food prices were cheap. These prices are even cheaper.
Kanchanaburi pictures: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/musungi/KanchanaburiThailand