The bridge over the river Kwai

It took us two days of 95 k each to get from the old historic Ayutthaya to Kanchanaburi. No one will know this city, still it's the seat of one of the most famous tourist attractions of Thailand. It's here that the so called “Death Railway Line” crosses the Kwai river and of this fact we are all very much aware after the movie with Alec Guinness.

This railway line was constructed during WW II under the Japanese occupation of Thailand in 1942-43. It was meant to dramatically shorten the supply route from Japan to the west-Asian countries like India, Iran etc. Unimaginable to what extent the Japanese expansion must have reached in the minds of the Japanese politicians and military.

This railway connection, crossing the Thai peninsula and making it uneccessary to use the straits of Singapore with all its perils, was considered before by the British and rejected as being impossible. Rugged terrain, harsh climate. Still the Japanese army, with their skilled railway engineers, realised to build the app. 500 k line in 20 months. A fantastic achievemant, were it not that it cost the lives of an estimated 100.000 people. To do the work prisoners of war and forced labour of Asian people were used. Most POW's were British, many Australian and also a great number of them were Dutch military of the KNIL (Royal Dutch Indies Army). The latter had been captured after the capitulation of the Dutch East Indies. Thousands of them perished because od tropical diseases, malnutrition and maltreatment by their guards. In Kanchanaburi there is a war cemetery with almost 6000 graves, 1800 of them Dutch. There are no graves though of the multitude of Asians forced labourers, They were buried unidentified in mass graves that cannot be found anymore.

The bridge that is the tourist attraction now is not the one we know from the movie. There were two bridges built, first a wooden one (movie) and immediately after that a concrete and steel one. Both were bombed by allied forces in june 1945 and reconstructed later. The wooden one has dissappeared completely now, the steel one is still in use, though mostly by tourist walking to and fro. Like we did ourselves.

There are two war musea. One is next to the bridge and is a bit of a freak show of all kinds of parafrenalia that have to do with this war and other ones. A really good museum, that tells the story of the railway line and the war in this part of the world in general, is the “Thailand-Burma Railway Centre”, adjacent to the war cemetry.

It took us hours and hours to see all this and to try and grasp the impact of war on peoples' lives and the world's history. Time to process all this on the verandah of our bungalow, that is standing on stilts on the muddy banks of the Kwai river and that offers all the facilities that are necessary to do so.

Meditative cycling

The Santos Travelmaster has especially been designed for the long distance cyclist. As such it has proven itself to us during thousands of kilometers on several continents. As cycle tourers it is our reliable and comfortable companion.

Traveling on a bike gets you in touch with the real life of “the man in the street”, with all the cheers, the little talks, the noises and fragrances belonging to it. Quite different from the regular tourist. He just misses this contact and only starts relating to the people at the moment he leaves his secluded means of transport, at the place where we as cycle tourers stop, take a break and relax.

Long distance cycling can also be a meditative activity. During the ride, on the endless rithm of the continious pedal strokes, you perceive the landscape while your mind goes its own way. Your thoughts travel through the entire universe and enter deep into the inner self of the cyclist. It so happens that, meditating like that, you suddenly realize that you again have covered so many kilometers. And sometimes the Santos brings you to the Buddha himself.

Snake!

We've seen some. In a few occasions we saw one hurrying across the road and disappear in the grass of the road side before we were there, but most of them sadly as dead creatures on the road surface. Mostly app.1 meter long and not much thicker than a man's thumb. Twice we saw two very big ones, roadkills as well. Over two meters long and as thick as a man's leg.

Yesterday we saw another big, and this time, life one. It was sitting in the grass next to the road and it had its head lifted. Impressive big head, much bigger than my hand. I stopped at the same time that Eveline yelled at me to look. Unfortunately, before I had my camera out, a noisy car passed and it suddenly slid away, leaving a deep and rather wide trace of flattened grass behind it. Amazed how exited we were, such a big creature.

Today we are sitting on the veranda of our guesthouse in the busy city of Ayutthaya. We are overlooking a big river, the Chao Praya. Lots of boats passing, including tugs with sometimes 3 huge barges behind them. Slow and sometimes noisy. Not a really quiet river . But nice to sit and look at it. Then suddenly somebody yells: “Snake!” And indeed, another huge one is swimming across the river, head up, just before a tug is passing by. For a moment it gives the impression of a crocodile. We looked it up in the Lonely Planet, it may have been a two-banded monitor. Though the enormous Cobra also occurs here....

Sometimes good, sometimes less....

In Old Sukhothai we stayed in Old City Guesthouse, a nice place with well equiped restaurants just next door and the entrance of the historical park on the other side of the street.

In Kamphaeng Phet we stayed in Three J Guesthouse, an even nicer and quieter place. Our room was in a very intimate tropical garden where we sat, relaxed and had our drinks. We had an extensive breakfast in the morning and got a present from the owner when we left.

Then we stayed in a bungalow on the bank of the river Ping near Khanu Woralaksaburi. In a park, free coffee and a restaurant 200 meters to the left. A minor thing was that no-one in the restaurant spoke another language than Thai, so only with the help of another guest we managed to order our food. We got our vegetables, shrimps and pork, but everything was diep-fried. Not our preference, but it was not really bad.

Today we arrived in Nakhon Sawan, a bigger town. We had to get into the busy centre to find a hotel which first impression was that of a prison. A total absence of any atmosphere. Room OK, not expensive too (cf. €7,50), but we prefer it otherwise.

The good experience was our dinner. We had our meals in a crowded place where again with the help of someone we ordered and this time got the usual delicious Thai food and cold beers. It seemed as if one half of the population of this town was having dinner at the same time with us and that the other half was working there to make it all happen. It was a crowd of waiters and kitchen staff mingling between the eaters and it all ran like a perfect and merry machine. We enjoyed it tremendously and had a real good time. Desert: ice coffee from 7-eleven nextdoor of the hotel. We'll have our breakfast from there as well.

Old Sukhothai

6 days and a good 300 k's riding brought us in the historical place called Old Sukhothai.

In order to achieve this we had to get over some minor passes (625 and 465 alt.) to leave the highland and reach the lower part of the country. Despite it's the cool season now we're pretty hot here and already quite tanned.

Old Sukhothai once was the centre of the kingdom (13^th century) and at the height of its power it was wealthy enough to realize a beautiful walled city with lots of temples. An area of several square kilometers is now what might be the most important historical park of this country, including an historical museum showing and explaining hundreds of artefacts that have been excavated here. The whole park is all well kept and lovely and we spent a very agreeable and instructive day. It is very interesting to notice that the buddhist culture was originally influenced by hinduïsm, coming from India. This influence reached as far as the Vietnamese coasts and we remember having seen the same symbols used in the old Cham culture in Vietnam and in the Khmer culture in Cambodia. In our garden in Breda we have a linga and joni from Vietnam and we were not surprised to see some quite big specimen of them here.

After Loi Kraetong

Together with our Breda friends we revelled in the festival. We went to see some famous wats (monastries) that were beautifully lit to the occasion and as our private climax we had a big paper lantern lift up in the nightly sky, where it joined the stream of hundreds more. A lovely sight and we tried to give it the intention that the ceremony should have according to the local Buddhist tradition (as far as we understood, that is), show gratitude and respect for the world and all its beings.

The next morning we packed our bikes, said goodbye to our friends, and left for Lamphun. Not far enough, we reached it at lunchtime and under an overcast sky we decided to head for the next provincial town, Ban Hong. Quiet roads, mostly flat, rice fields not green any more since the harvest was done or still going on.

Along the road we met a French couple, Theirry and Michèle. They are travelling on a tandem-bike. They started in Bruxelles, rode to Istanbul, took a plane there to Bangkok and are now heading for Chiang Mai and furhter north and east into Laos. They were happy to get our tips, as we have done the last part of their intended trip ourselves in 2006. A nice encounter it was.

The second day we reached Li and after that Thoen, We had to cross a (mountain)pass for that, Li's altitude is app. 475, the pas is 625. Now we are in Thoen, alt.200. Lower and hotter. Not much to do or to be seen, so a cool beer in the garden, some reading and blogging, and tomorrow off for the next stage.

Chiang Mai revisited

We're travelling again!

After a journey that altogether took almost 24 hours we arrived in Chiang Mai. Surprised again by the heat and troubled with the small and usual jetlag problems. After a slow first day and a long night sleep things are back as they should again. Bikes survived the planes alright too.

The first time here was Jan 2^nd 2006. We started a 2-month bike tour from here, which took us through northern Thailand to the Golden Triangle and then the north half of Laos and back to Chiang Mai.

Now we're in the same hotel, which hasn't changed. It's still a nice place to be. But everything seems to be busier. The hotel, the city, there's more traffic and more people it seems. Times have been changing everywhere of course.

The city has a 600 year-old centre surrounded by a square moat of 1,5 kms each side. Four main gates remain and parts of the city wall. In this enclosed city there are busy roads but also surprisingly quiet lanes with houses and gardens, not to mention the monastries (wats). There are over 50 inside its walls. Many of them are stunningly beautiful, representing architecture dating from the Lanna dynasty, that we also saw in the south of China and Laos. On the day of our arrival we strolled through the premises of some famous monastries, had a lengthy conversation with a 21-year old monk and had ourselves covered in the culture as much as we could. We're lucky, it's the Kraetong festival these days. People are enjoying themselves in festivities including letting paper balloons go up in the sky with fireworks hanging underneath, long street markets everywhere, there is a parade in the evening and hundreds of floating candles and flowers are put on the river. Gratitude and respect, that's what it all seems to be about. We are happy to believe it and enjoying it with them. Great to be back.

Now we are relaxing of a short trial bike ride around the city. Not too nice, too many unavoidable city roads. But waiting for the special occasion tomorrow morning: René and Marijke, good friends and former neighbours of ours, will meet us here! It's a small world after all, isn't it?