hellfire and happenstance

20:44 10 October, Blue Star Guest House

This morning, I stopped by a 7-Eleven to pick up a large bottle of water, as well as some snack food: peanuts, dried papaya, and jam cookies. Having secured the snacks in my satchel pack, I hailed a motorbike for the short drive to the bus station. Getting on the local bus I was hit by a smell that harked back to the school buses of my childhood: that sticky vinyl smell that comes from whatever indestructible covering they put on the seats. Enjoying the nostalgia, I sat there until the driver felt that enough people had boarded the bus to justify disembarking, and we were off for the two hour journey to Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum.

Designated by the Japanese engineers who oversaw the construction of the Burma-Thailand railway as the "Konyu Cutting", the portion was referred to by the Prisoners of War who worked and died there as "Hellfire Pass." The name was inspired by the night shifts, illuminated by the fires of oil lamps which cast the shadows of the Japanese task masters and the emaciated prisoners against the jagged cut rock. Hellfire Pass was the largest and most difficult cutting on the Burma-Thailand railway, and today visitors can walk through the 125 meter long, 18 meter high valley cut through solid rock by beleaguered P.O.W.s with nothing but the most rudimentary hand tools.

When it came time for me to exit the bus, I positioned myself next to the opened front door and the driver slowed the bus to a walking pass. I then hopped out, allowing my forward momentum to carry me for a bit, and the bus sped off down the highway. Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum consists of a rather impressive museum constructed by the Australian Government's Department of Veteran's Affairs, as well as a well-maintained walking path that takes visitors along a section of the site of the Burma-Thailand Railway. I decided to follow the walking path before visiting the museum, and so I began a climb that took me along the pathway traversed daily by the P.O.W.s on their way to work. The path terminated above Hellfire Pass, and provided a vintage point from which to take in the entire cutting. It was here, in an attempt to take a picture, that I realized that I had left my memory card behind.

This is the picture I would have taken, courtesy of the internet.

Cursing myself for not checking before I left, I retraced the path back to the museum in the hopes that it might have a gift shop that sold memory cards. It didn't, but I'm very glad that I chose to go back to the museum, because the information inside provided an invaluable context to the site. Nothing was more useful to me than the free audio guide, which provided a well-narrated explanation of the various sites I came across when I returned to the walking path. Interspersed with the stories of the prisoners of war who survived the ordeal, told by the men who lived through it, the audio guide painted a profoundly moving immage of the horrors involved the construction of the railway, as well as an incredible kinship grafted amidst a sea of inhumanity. The importance of this kinship, usually referred to by the Australian parlance "mateship", was a recurrent theme in survivor accounts of their time on the railway. Underfed, exposed to the sweltering heat and driving monsoon rains, suffering from every conceivable tropical disease, worked for up to 18 hours a day, savagely beaten, sadistically tortured, and working with only hand tools, these men carved a level path through 415 kilometers of mountainous jungle so inhospitably primeval I can't even imagine. Needless to say, I found the whole experience to be the most overwhelmingly moving of my trip.

A marker at the end of Hellfire Pass, again courtesy of the internet.

After making a donation and leaving the Museum, I had to wait by the highway for a bus to take me back to Kanchanaburi. Hailing one as it approached, I climbed aboard when the driver slowed the bus just enough to facilitate the boarding. I had the driver drop me off at the train station, so that I could check the timetables to plan my day tomorrow. As it stands I hope to visit one of the main attractions in Kanchanaburi: a seven-tiered waterfall that I have yet to see. If all goes well, I'll be waking up early tomorrow, getting to Erawan National Park, site of the falls, by 8:00, and leaving by 12:00 in order to catch a 14:30 train back to Bangkok. With any luck, this update with be posted from Bangkok tomorrow night.

8:55 11 October, State Railway of Thailand: Nong Pladuk Junction

The fact that I am on a train this early is telling of my failure to accomplish my plan to visit Erawan National Park. I woke up at least half a dozen times last night as a storm raged outside. The wind and the rain bellowed like a freight train as it pounded on the tin roofs of the bungalows at my guesthouse. The walls shielding me from the elements are, in places, paper thin, and the entire building rocked unsettlingly in the wind. By 3:00, the storm had lost some of its intensity, and by 4:00 its fury was spent.

A cold shower, hopefully my last for some time, helped me to rise and face the sunless morning, and by 5:30 I was out the door. This was all a part of my plan to make it to the bus station by 6:00, in order to catch the earliest possible bus to Erawan National Park, and it worked flawlessly through my purchase of snacks, my motor-taxi ride to the station, and my arrival at 5:50. The wrench the foiled my plan was that a bus would not be leaving until 8:00 that day. Figuring a two hour bus ride both ways, coupled with the uncertainty of the time I could catch the return bus and my need to make a 14:30 train, I decided that the the 90 minutes I could budget to spend at Erawan didn't justify the expense or the hassle.

So instead I made my way to train station, passing early morning food vendors and men selling gasoline by the bottle on my 2 kilometer walk. The sale of gasoline is so totally monopolized by gas stations in the U.S., that its strange to think that this commodity could be purchased in any other way. But here in Thailand, its sale ranges from these roadside vendors, peddling old Coke bottles of gas for 60 baht, to storefront, coin-operated micro-stations, to the more conventional Western-style gas stations (all full service, of course)

I made a stop by the P.O.W. cemetery that I had visited two days earlier, and benefiting from yesterday's trip to Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum, I found the site more poignant. Most of the guys in these graves were my age, maybe younger, and I couldn't help but wonder how I would have faired in the ordeal that cost them that last full measure of devotion. There are no U.S. servicemen in the cemetery, their bodies were exhumed and delivered to the Administration, but at the base of each of the graves of the British, Dutch, and Australian servicemen there is a small space where the families of the dead have chosen an inscription. These brief, personal remarks help to remind visitors that there was a unique life attached to each of these small black stones. It was an appropriate last stop in Kanchanaburi.

One of the inscriptions that really hit me.

After leaving the cemetery, I walked across the street to the train station, where I consulted the schedule. Comprised of only seven daily stops and one tourist train on the weekend, schedule gave me few options, but fortunately there was a train scheduled to arrive at 7:19. I paid 100 baht for a general ticket (this is the foreigner rate, locals pay between 10 and 30 baht) and sat down to wait for the train. Across from me, I noticed a signboard posting the scheduled arrival time of the next rain, and its estimated delay. They hadn't updated it for today's arrival, but I was a bit disconcerted to see that the last entry from yesterday showed a delay of an hour and a half. I was, therefore, pleased when my train rolled into the station only 20 minutes late, and I quickly got on board.

Everything in my car was painted in a lovely shade of yellow-ocher puke.

Made up of four carriages of general seating, the train was not terribly fancy. It was reasonably clean though, and I made my way through the carriages until I came to an empty seat. Having traversed the entire length of the train in my quest for an empty seat, I can empirically say that I am the only Western on the train. There is one car for passengers carrying a lot of luggage/shipments with them, and it affords them more space by simply placing wooden benches along the sides of the car, leaving clear a wide isle. The other three cars provide facing pairs of wooden seats on either side of a traditional aisle, and though the hard wooden surface doesn't take long to become uncomfortable, on the whole it's not that bad. The train is beginning to fill up as we approach Bangkok, and I probably have the abnormality of my blue eyes to account for the fact that I'm enjoying one of the few unshared seats (the netbook I'm typing away on probably scares people off as well). If we were running on schedule, we should be pulling into Thonburi - a Bangkok to Cambridge's Boston - in about 20 minutes. As it stands, I'm hoping to arrive sometime in the next hour, though we are still unmistakably in the countryside.

The Thai countryside, whizzing by.

Though it is taking longer, and costing more than the bus, I am still glad that I took the train. To me, train travel is just much more appealing: you see the country, you're not sucking down exhaust fumes, and it's possible for me to read and write as well as walk around if the mood strikes me. There is also some historical significance to this journey, as large stretches of the rain line were laid as a part of the Burma-Thailand Railway I've been learning so much about. All in all, I'm glad I took the train, and I'm going to enjoy the last stretch of the journey watching the Thai landscape sail by.

19:53 11 October, Niras Bancok Boutique Hotel

I'll admit that stepping off the train earlier today, I had no idea where I was going. I knew I needed to get to the river, and somewhere along that river I needed to find a water taxi to take me to the other side. And so, I set off in what seemed to be a promising direction, stumbling through a marketplace and a massive hospital complex, all while proving my manliness by not asking anyone for directions. My macho was rewarded by a nearly flawless amble that plunked me down exactly in front of a water taxi station and paying the whopping 3 baht fare (I love it when I get local rates) I soon found myself on the other side of the river. From there I was able to easily navigate my way across the Old City, and before long I had returned to Niras Bancok Boutique Hotel.

Through the rest of my day, I've happily enjoyed a similar sting of good luck, and I'm happy to report my success in running errands, showering in hot water, investigating a political rally, finding a post office, exploring a temple, mooching food off a film crew, praying with monks, and seeing the sites. It seems the fates have repaid me for robbing me of Erawan National Park, and I'll close this post with a series of photos from this afternoon's explorations.

Back in Bangkok, glad to see the Giant Swing's still standing tall.

Also glad to see that the street food is as plentiful as ever.

There was this big political demonstration going on. After talking to some of the people involved, I was able to figure out that they were demanding that the former Prime Minister (who fled with his wife to London when confronted with charges of tax evasion) return to Thailand. But I couldn't figure out if they wanted him back to arrest him, or if they wanted him back to reinstate him.

The political activists were very well organized: themed hats, t-shirts, bottles of water...

...even themed rice cookers. Sometimes I wish Americans cared about politics this much (other times I'm glad they don't).

Wat Po, the largest wat in Bangkok (city of a thousand wats), and home to the famous Reclining Buddha.

The Reclining Buddha... I'm going to say this ties the other massive Buddha I saw in Kanchanaburi for awe inspiring size.

Check out the detail on this Buddha's toes: inlaid mother-of-pearl. Oh, and I forgot to mention, the Buddha is otherwise entirely covered in gold.

Though nowadays it's most famous for the Reclining Buddha, Wat Po's original claim to fame was its role as the first university in Bangkok. A medical university, inscriptions of pain alleviation techniques and herbal remedies are still on many of the walls.

There was a fair amount of construction going on at Wat Po, and it looks like someone made sure this guy stayed safe.

Before leaving Wat Po, I happened upon a evening service in progress, and was invited in to sit and listen as the monks chanted through their prayers.

Wat Arun (Temple of the Rising Sun) is, surprisingly enough, most beautiful after the sun has set.

That's all I have for now. I'm spending another day in Bangkok, and tomorrow I plan on returning to my habit of visiting art museums (it's been more than a month and a half since Cairo's Egypt Historical Museum). For now I'll have to see if I'm up to a night out, or if the prospect of another hot shower and a comfortable night's sleep in an air conditioned room wins me over.