There’s this opening scene in David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai , where a single hawk is seen flying free. The camera pans to reveal a thick, green, tropical jungle and then descends to a row of crude graveyards next to train tracks, marked with makeshift wooden crosses. A train with prisoners-of-war, a machine-gunner on top, whistles as it roars past the graves. This is the infamous Bangkok-Rangoon ‘death railway’.
It’s been nearly an hour since we got stuck in a cab on the clogged roads of Bangkok. “We start early, traffic very bad,” the guide had warned us the previous evening. And here we are at six in the morning, on the teeming roads headed to Kanchanaburi, a three-hour drive from Bangkok.
Things get better once you wriggle out of the central part of the city. The roads open out and the car flies. The drive takes us through little villages with lush green paddy fields, past small townships where the lamp posts are festooned with posters of the king and queen. The car speeds along, swerves from Highway 346 and stops at a dusty parking space. The Thai guide taps my arm and in his sing-song English says, “Sir, leave bags inside, we have one hour at Floating Market. Hot outside; take your sunglasses.”
Through a narrow passage past souvenir shops, we enter Damnoen Saduak Floating Market, a regular stop-over on the way to Kanchanaburi. This market has a long history. King Rama IV ordered the digging of a canal at Damnoen Saduak, a district in Ratchaburi province, in 1866. This canal linked the Mae Klong and the Tacheen Rivers. Today, you get to see the traditional way of buying and selling of fruits, vegetables and other merchandise out of small boats.
The best way to explore this market is by hopping onto a boat. The trip takes you along the canal, close to the Thai houses on the banks, the fertile fields where fruits and vegetables grow in abundance. As the boat glides through the muddy water, you get a glimpse of the life of these villagers.
On raised platforms, hemming the canal on two sides, are rows of shops that sell a horde of things from souvenirs, clothes, to genuine Thai food. The boats stop close to these platforms. Thai canoes criss-cross the canal laden with colourful fruits, women selling hot tea and snacks, flowers, vegetables… there’s so much noise, it’s full of life.
After a quick bite at a ‘floating restaurant’, we are headed to Kanchanaburi, which originally was established by King Rama I as a first line of defence against the Burmese. Located at the confluence of the Kwai Noi and Kwai Yai Rivers, Kanchanaburi lies at the source of the Mae Klong. And today, this town is best known for the famous Bridge on the River Kwai, the graveyards and museums associated with the Death Railway. Then there are tours to the countryside, waterfalls, forests, adventure sports, elephant rides and more, to draw in tourists.
In 1942, British, Australian, American, Danish and Dutch POWs and labourers from India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma and Thailand were put to work by the Japanese Imperial Army to build two bridges across the River Kwai in Burma to help move Japanese supplies and troops from Bangkok to Rangoon. A temporary wooden bridge was first built, and a permanent one a few months later. These bridges actually spanned the Mae Klong, not the Kwai. They were destroyed by Allied bombing two years after they were built. The rebuilt bridge stands today at Kanchanaburi and is used for passenger trains that still ply. The river was renamed Kwae Yai (Big Kwai) to facilitate tourists that come in search of the bridge immortalised in history and in the film.
The difficult terrain, endemic diseases, searing heat, and heavy monsoonal rainfall made work on the bridges extremely difficult. Toiling in these extreme conditions, these prisoners and labourers were subjected to systematic torture. The conditions of living and work were unimaginably harsh. And by the end of the construction, more than 100,000 had died, never to ride the railway they helped build.
The car halts at the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre or the Death Railway Museum and Research Centre located in the heart of Kanchanaburi. The museum gives an insight into the terrible conditions in the rough terrain and the dangerous tropical diseases that the POWs had to experience in the camps. There are artefacts excavated from the camps, a three-dimensional representation of the full length of the railway, with camp sites identified by lights, a graphic POW hospital, and a statue of Australian POW Ray Parkin’s famous sketch of two malaria victims supporting a man dying of cholera. The research centre is dedicated to researching the history of the railway and individual prisoners of war. It provides information and personal tours for family members seeking answers about their relatives.
Across the street from the museum is the immaculately-preserved war cemetery, where a large number of those who died building the bridges have been laid to rest. Each of the grave markers, all uniform in size, precisely spaced, has its own beautiful flowering plant. The markers have different epitaphs inscribed on them, immortalising the specific soldier.
The car weaves its way through narrow streets and stops at the sturdy iron bridge on the River Kwai. The famous 300-metre railway bridge still retains its power and symbolism. Its centre was destroyed by bombs in 1945, so only the outer curved spans are original. Nothing remains of the wooden bridge built downstream. You can roam over the bridge, walk as far as you like. There are safety points along it where you can stand if a train appears. You can opt to take the coloured train across the bridge and back or simply walk.
The walk along the rusty rail track with the green mountains serving as a backdrop and the brown river below, amidst a strange silence only interrupted by the giggles and squeals of tourists posing for photographs on the bridge, is quite an experience. The bridge, the railway track, the cemetery, the deaths, the harrowing realities of the atrocities, the typically lush South-Asian scenery, is a concoction of sights, enriching, informative and haunting.
