October 20th, Monday Bridge on the River Kwai and Elephants

 

 

After a delicious buffet breakfast we met our tour guide Pu and driver Tony.  Pu is a delightful guide who was very gracious.   We rode in a mini van that had captains chairs and a setup for showing videos.  It was wonderful.

After a two and a half hours we arrived at the war museum which told the story of the death railway.   During world war II the Japanese needed a railway to transport raw material, including oil from Burma.   They used about 200,000 slave laborers, including some British, Australian and a few American POWs as part of the workforce, although most of the forced laborers were from Burma and other Asian countries.   As many as half died during the work due to inadequate food, cholera, dysentery, etc.  While the vast majority of the deaths were the Asian workers, only three graves were found for them.   They allowed graves and better record keeping for the POWs.  This is one of the cemeteries for the POWs and it contains 6,982 graves, mainly British and Australian.  There is a movie called the Railway Man, which is pretty accurate compared to the movie Bridge over the River Kwai, which is mainly fiction.  In the Railway Man, a key plot line is the use of a homemade radio, which did occur among the prisoners.    The issue was that the penalty for being caught with one of these radios was death.

After the cemetery we went to the Bridge on the River Kwai.    This was the main bridge, and there was a neighboring wooden bridge (that did not look like the one in the movie).   The bridge was damaged by allied bombing, but the movie is fictional in terms of any plot to destroy the bridge.  We walked on the bridge.

After our walk, we caught the train that went over the bridge and then on for about an hour and a half, going past fields of rice, sugar cane, and tapioca plants.

We had a nice lunch at a local restaurant and then rejoined our driver for the next leg of the adventure.  At one place we stopped for a group of 40-40 monkeys,   They brought corn to feed them, so they were running all over at our feet.   One jumped up on the car roof, he seemed to be the Alpha male.  He later was joined by a female, and …. let’s just say the drive in had nothing on these two…..

We then drove to the elephant camp, where Nancy and I had a half hour ride on a 25 year old, 3 month pregnant elephant.   She was very nice.   When you give the driver tip, you give it to the elephant, who takes it in her trunk and hands it to the driver….   Very cute.

 

We had about a three hour drive back to the hotel, getting in about 6:30pm.   We had a nice dinner in one of the hotels restaurants, and then went to our room for the evening.  At about 9:30pm, we could hear fire works, and we went out onto our balcony for a perfect view of a 10 minute fireworks display over the river.  The perfect end to a perfect day.