Thailand Day 4 River Kwai and Tiger Temple

Monday May 9^th

I was up early again to catch another mini bus for a trip out of Bangkok. We drove for two hours before reaching the area of the River Kwai. For those of you who remember the movie The Bridge Over The River Kwai, you might be interested in this trip. During the Second World War the Japanese were fighting through Asia and needed to build a railway to carry munitions and troops from Siam (present day Thailand) to Burma (present day Maynamar). The decided to use allied prisoners of war as slave labour to build this railway and the bridge over the river. Hundreds of allied prisoners died or malaria, malnutrition and mistreatment while building it. Needless to say this goes against Geneva Convention Agreement for the treatment of prisoners of war. If you remember the movie the men who were building the bridge decided to blow it up to hamper the Japanese war effort and help the allies who were trying to defeat the Japanese. That's the Hollywood version, but apparently they changed it a bit (unless of course I have forgotten the way the movie ended). According the museum here, the Japanese heard the allied airplanes coming and forced all the prisoners on the bridge to have them wave at the planes in the hope that the allies would not bomb their own men and might think there were no Japanese there. But, the allies did bomb, blow up and kill a lot of their own men because they needed to destroy the rail link the Japanese relied on. Oh the joys of war.

We visited the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery where a lot of the prisoners of war who died here, are buried. We also got to walk across the bridge, that was reconstructed in 1945 because the rail link was needed. And we rode on a train for an hour that retraced part of that rail line and travelled on the tracks, and across a wooden tressle bridge that the prisoners constructed all those years ago.

Then we went for lunch on a floating restaurant on the river. Lunch was good, but I'm sorry to say that the lo emptied right into the river. You could see through the floorboards in the washroom.

In the afternoon we drove another half hour to the Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno Forest Monastery, otherwise known as the Tiger Temple. The temple is run by monks who seem to have an affection for animals. They have a large number of water buffalo, deer, wild boar and peacocks running loose on the grounds. They claim all of the animals were mistreated elsewhere and brought here for refuge. They also have an ostrich and a sloth bear (which is in a cage and is much larger than I thought they were). According to the brochure that they gave us, the tigers that are here are orphans whose parents have fallen victim to poachers and the monks are providing them space and care. They have probably about 20 to 25 tigers here. We saw them feeding some cubs, and then went to Tiger Canyon to walk about and pat a number of them. It is very closely supervised and we were guided one by one by a volunteer who led us by the hand to a tiger and another volunteer took photos using our own camera. I have about twenty shots with ten tigers. Then we walked back up to the cubs and they put us in an enclosed area, while some other people walked up the road with a large tiger and his handlers. I wasn't too impressed with the way it was handled. It wanted to go a different way, and it cowered when they pulled on its ropes. Later they had it tied to a tree and it lunged at one of the monks and the rope came undone! Three monks ran really fast to catch the rope as the tiger was running away! Glad we were behind a retaining wall and he wasn't run toward us!

All that was left was a long two and a hour hour drive back and Bangkok traffic. When I arrived at the hotel, it was dark and I went up to the pool and had a swim under the stars with the city scape all around. Very beautiful. Then the usual, typing, blogging and reading before bed.