Kanchanaburi is a real nice quiet & small town, perfect for cycling. In the case of one of us, learning how to cycle.
You wouldn’t even suspect one of World War II’s little big epics is set here.
Have you ever read the novel, or seen the film “The Bridge on the River Kwai”? Here’s news for you, the plot is entirely fictitious.
The actual bridge over River Kwai however, is very real – as well as the deaths of forced slave labour used to build it, estimated to be 13,000 prisoners-of-war and 80,000 to 100,000 civilians from Malaya, Dutch East Indies, Siam and Burma.
WWII aficionados will appreciate that it is an integral part of the infamous Burma Death Railway and all the concrete and steel parts are intact since the war ended, a definite must-see site.
What I find more amusing is that the river was not originally called River Kwai. Before 1960, that is before the release of the novel and movie, it was called Mae Klong.
Typical of Hollywood foul ups, the novelist who inspired the movie never visited the bridge and assumed that, since the Burma Railway ran along most of the nearby River Kwai, the bridge must have crossed it.
A flood of misguided tourists showed up only to find there was no such bridge over River Kwai, and the authorities in Thailand subsequently renamed the river Kwai Yai (trans: แควใหญ่, thai for Big Tributary).
And bravo, history is changed to the delight and convenience of tourists. You won’t find this fact in travel brochures and sorts.
There’s a strange transition of scale between the end and mid-sections. The rounded arches appear larger than life, and the angular sections (the bit that got bombed by Allied forces, and thereafter rebuilt by the Japanese as “payment for their war crimes”) are much larger than expected.
For a bridge that’s declared “actively used today”, there’s really nothing on the other side. The one-carriage “train” that crosses holds about 10-12 passengers only, for a pathetic shuttle back and forth the river banks.
It puts pedestrians (like us) in a rather precarious position. If we can’t make it to the next platform in time, we have to sidestep and balance ourselves on a narrow 30 cm piece of something (eg. steel beam or timber board) about 4 metres above the swirling river.
Happened to me twice, must say it was utterly hair raising.
