Saphan Kwae Yai

In all honesty, I knew very little about the significance of the bridge on the River Kwai and having never seen the movie I wasnt sure what to expect.

The bridge is a couple of hours outside of Bangkok so it was a very early start with a 6:30am pickup from our hotel. In true Thai style our driver was late and then we proceeded to spend the next hour driving around the city collecting the rest of our tour group. We eventually arrived at Khao San Road (which is completely baron during the day) where we were ushered off, given a combination of stickers which were stuck to our tops and directed to another mini bus. This mini bus was quite a sight, with mirrors on the ceiling, lights, huge speakers and so much gold!! We lucked out again on our driver who managed to get pulled over by the police on route to the bridge which is pretty impressive as anything seems to go in Thailand!

Eventually we arrived in a town called Kanchanaburi where we were given time to mooch around a museum and wander over the bridge. To give you a brief history lesson, the Death Railway as it is otherwise known due to the sheer number of lives lost during its construction, was built by the Japanese during the Second World War using the forced labour of prisoners of war, the majority of which were from the Commonwealth countries.

After a very brief visit to the museum and a quick stroll over the bridge we hopped on the train for around a one and a half hour journey along some of the railway line. The views from the train were pretty amazing and some parts of the railway line were held up by very rickety looking wooden stilts! It was then time for lunch which was served on a floating bungalow (it sounds far more twee than it actually was).

Our afternoon activity involved an hours pit stop at Sai Yok Noi Waterfall followed by a trip to the Kanchanaburi War Cemetary before heading back to Bangkok. The cemetary is located near the site of the former Kanburi prisoner of war base camp through which most prisoners passed on their way to other camps. The cemetary was created after the war by the Army Graves Service who transferred graves into it from camp burial grounds and solitary sites all along the southern half of the railway and from other sites in Thailand.

It was a long day, not getting back to Bangkok until gone 7pm so we jumped in the shower and headed out to a nearby Italian restaurant (Simon is craving pizza already 🤣) for dinner.Lue lisää