We got up early and caught the tour bus out to Erawan Falls, a national park about 60 km outside of Kanchanaburi.
The national park features a seven-tiered waterfall that you can swim around, jump off of or just lounge around in, plus the hiking trail used to access the different tiers:
That photo is from the second tier, and the pool in front of the water fall is a great place to swim in, or you can climb up like our life-jacket-wearing Japanese friends are doing here.
So, of course, we had to show ‘em how we roll:
From there we just wandered up to the different tiers.
The fourth:
The fifth tier was the highest we made it to, because the last two were several hundred meters up the moutain and we didn’t have enough time unfortunately, but the fifth tier was pretty great as a place to sit in a small pool or dangle your feet into a pool with the little fish that eat the dead skin off your feet…
Unfortunately, we only had about two and a half hours there, so we had to hit the road, and after a decent meal at a nearby restaurant, we went elephant trekking… which was neat… but it was pretty obvious this trek was basically around someone’s back yard, and you could see all the ruts created from the paths these elephants must walk several times every day.
From there it was on to the Death Railway and then the Bridge over the River Kwae.
According to an article from the Singapore Ministry of Defense, the 415-kilometer Burma/Thai Railway, known as the Death Railway, was built by the Japanese in 1942, by more than 60,000 allied prisoners of war and 270,000 asian laborers from Japanese-occupied territory.
The construction became a paramount project after the Japanese Naval defeat at Midway, and while the allied victory at Midway was a crucial turning point during the war for the allies, the construction of the railway contribted to the deaths of nearly 13,000 POWs and approximately 70,000 to 90,000 asian laborers. Many were buried along the track where they fell.
Today, it’s a peaceful and beautiful route that meanders along the Kwae Noi (small Kwae). The poignancy of the railway’s tragic history was not lost on me, however, and the short trip we took along the track provided a nice chance for reflection.
Perhaps she was having a moment of reflection as well:
From there, we went to a small boat ramp and had a nice drift down the river on large bamboo rafts:
A few days before I left for Kanchanaburi, I finished Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and along this stretch of the river, I couldn’t help fantasize about taking one of these rafts for a month’s long journey down the river…
Our last stop on the tour was the Bridge over the River Kwae, about five kilometers north of Kanchanaburi.
According to an article from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission:
“The notorious Burma-Siam railway, built by Commonwealth, Dutch and American prisoners of war, was a Japanese project driven by the need for improved communications to support the large Japanese army in Burma. During its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the railway. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians also died in the course of the project, chiefly forced labour brought from Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, or conscripted in Siam (Thailand) and Burma (Myanmar). Two labour forces, one based in Siam and the other in Burma worked from opposite ends of the line towards the centre.”
After the tour, we spent the rest of the afternoon on the porch at our raft house, soaking in once more the beautiful scenery and serenity of the river…
1 Comment
July 19, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Beautiful except for the fish eating the dead skin. Ugh!!