Thailand and the River Kwai

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We have crossed into Thailand, which looks pretty much the same except that road signs are no longer in English as well as the local language.  Most of them we see now are in the lovely, looping script of Thai only.

Lovely shower, clean blow dried hair, and now I'm ready for dinner even though it is hours off at 8:30.  Some karst hills in the distance.  I'm glad the scenery is becoming more interesting.  Up until an hour or so ago, the trees grew so close to the track that it was hard to see much else except tin roofed shacks and a surprising number of houses that had been knocked into rubble but not cleared away.

I'm not sure if this was in Thailand or Malasia, but I love the karst hills, which we saw for the first time on our trip to China in 2003.

Note the hilltop building.  Not bad!

 We traveled through lush rice paddies with the usual banana and palm trees, as well as bougainvillea and some royal poincianas in bloom.

This IS bad, and is depressingly typical of what we saw from the train.

This trash can was just a few feet from ...

...this sort of thing--trash of all kinds in the yard.

This was probably a little nicer than most of the dwellings we saw as we neared Bangkok.  Most looked more precarious.  But the dishes were pretty ubiquitous.

Our stop at the River Kwai was interesting.  At the site of the bridge, we boarded a very large raft and were towed down the river under it to a landing point where we boarded buses back to a museum commemorating the history of the second world war here.  An older Englishman gave a brief talk about the particulars of Japan's invasion of many countries in Asia, including the history of the long rail line they forced POWs and local laborers to build under terrible conditions, resulting in the loss of at least 130,000 lives--all for a rail supply line they never had time to use before the Allies bombed it and the Japanese surrendered. 

The famous Bridge over the River Kwai with our train on it

This is the bridge without the train.  I can almost hear whistling--that famous movie song...  But this restored version is considerably more serene than it was during WWII. 

I don't know what this building is, but it's pretty.

The River Kwai has become a lively tourist center, and this floating restaurant is right in the thick of it.  There are several resorts nearby, and the whole area is lovely.

This is the War Museum.  It is fairly new, and very nicely done, telling its sad story in a way that brings those terrible days to life so the sacrifices of the prisoners and their courageous contribution to the war effort won't be forgotten.

Pastoral scene on the river with karst hills rising in the background.  

These are newer buildings.

All over this region, you see saffron-robed monks of all ages.

It was noon before we arrived at this stop, making lunch back on the train very late at three in the afternoon.  We finally arrived in Bangkok nearly five hours behind schedule, at 7PM.  The cause seems to have been that they are building new high speed track in Malasia.  We were using very rough single track and once you get behind, you are at the mercy of other scheduled trains, growing later and later as you go along.  Then we had problems with an engine that eventually had to be replaced.  Nevertheless, this was a very nice train experience in every way, despite the engine and track problems that delayed us.