Through the Hellfire

Last week, while awaiting my Myanmar visa, I took a three day trip to Kanchanaburi Province, a two hour ride west of Bangkok. It is a beautiful area, with many tropical forests and amazing National Parks. Also, it is the origin of the infamous "Death Railway". For a year and a half in WWII, Japanese forced POWs captured from Malaysia and Singapore to construct a railway from Thailand to Burma (Myanmar) amid unfathomable conditions. The dense jungle harbored all manners of dangers and hazards, including but not limited to Malaria, lack of food and water, deadly heat and lethal monsoon rains, allied air attacks, not to mention the treatment from Japanese and Korean captors.

I fist visited the War Cemetary, where the remains of thousands of victims are buried. All of the victims buring here are English, Australian or Dutch (the few American victims' remains were sent back to America). I stayed in a riverside guesthouse just a few hundred yards from the "Bridge Over the Kwai", made famous in the movie. On the second day, we had a chance to visit the museum at Hellfire Pass. At this remote site, the POWs were forced to make a massive cutting into sheer rock using no more than primitve picks and metal tools. Many died from exhaustion, sickness and malnutrition. The nearby museum was created by the Australian Veterans' Association. There was an amazing audio tour that you could listen to as you walked along the former railway, through the massive rock cutting created so horrifically. It was done as tastefully as any other memorial I have been to.

On the final day, our small group visited Erawan National Park and the breathtaking seven step waterfall. For those of you familiar with Kumamoto, imagine Kikuchi gorge stretched over 2km, with towering waterfall at almost each step only these falls cascade over limestone, which has been smoothed over a lot more easily than the jagged volcanic rocks. We went swimming at every step and located a possible jumping point from a 12m fall. There were two Dutch gentlemen who were strongly opposed to a jump, but a Brit John and I would not be denied. We tested the depth and finding a deep pool, we plunged from the top and were delighted.

Another interesting expeience happened on my first night in Kanchanaburi. I was put in a room with an Irish guy Damien, and his two Irish friends Jim and Sinead. I have traveled in New Zealand and Australia and have been around English speakers from nearly every English-speaking country, but never have I been more dumbfounded by someone's language. As I shared a beer with the three on the banks of the Kwai River, I just listened. The three went on talking for five minutes, and honestly, I could not tell you one thing they were talking about. They were from Belfast and Dublin, but talked so fast in with such different inflection and vocabulary, I just sat back and smiled. It was quite a humbling experience for an amateur linguist such as myself.

With the end of my three days in Kanchanaburi, I (and luckily my visa) was ready to go to Myanmar.