Exploring Kanchanaburi’s messy international ties

The relatively unknown town of Kanchanaburi, west of Bangkok, Thailand, has a violent history and is chock full of reminders of the town’s role in some terrible events of World War II.

Being a small Thai town, it’s also managed to come to grips with its history very nicely and is simultaneously a chilled, pleasant place to spend some time.

On Day 3 of my own solo trip to Thailand I left Bangkok and headed to Kanchanaburi (กาญจนบุรี) on a slow third-class train. I found a cheap and awesome room in a guesthouse floating on the Khwae Yai River, and stayed for four days, riding a bicycle around town and visiting cemeteries and of course the famous “Bridge on the River Kwai”.

Thai train towards Myanmar

The train to Kanchanaburi left not from Bangkok’s main station, but from tiny and inconvenient Thonburi Station, a short boat ride across the Chao Phraya River. (My Lonely Planet refers to this station as “Bangkok Noi”, but that seemed to be a figment of their imagination for nothing said that in the actual station. It took a while to make sure it was the correct station.)

I love third-class Thai trains. They move slow; people nap and eat strange-looking food sold by hot-looking vendors that walk up and down the cars; trees smack the open windows and get leaves in the train; and there is an unhurried, live and let live feeling to every journey.

My train stopped at a station called Tharua Noi for an hour, waiting for another train to pass from the other direction. I watched people in a nearby parking lot setting up a little market. The train finally started moving again, and we were an hour late getting to Kanchanaburi.

As it should be.

I found a room at VN Guesthouse on a narrow back alley near the center of Kanchanaburi. For 280 baht (about $9) a night I got a room on a floating platform on the river, with hot water in the shower and nice big bed. They had a restaurant serving basic Thai traveler food where I often ate.

VN Guesthouse was a great base to explore the town. “Karaoke boats” would float by every so often in the evenings, with garish lights strung around them and with travelers warbling melodramatic pop tunes, but they weren’t too distracting.

The Bridge on the River Kwai

The 1957 movie Bridge On the River Kwai (transliterating Thai into English yields different spellings, depending on how you do it) is a fictionalized account of the Japanese army forcing POWs to build a bridge in the unforgiving jungle in harsh conditions during World War II. The actual bridge that the movie is based on is a few miles from Kanchanaburi (and the movie was shot in Sri Lanka) but the tourist bridge is right in town.

Two rivers meet in the town – the Khwae Yai and the Khwae Noi – and form the larger Mae Klong River (which empties into the Gulf of Thailand) just south of my guesthouse. The modern train line crosses the Khwae Yai in the north part of town, and the bridge on which it does so is now the accepted tourist destination.

I rode my guesthouse’s bicycle up there on Day 5. It was a very hot day, and I was sweating buckets. And I wasn’t the only person there, either: other tourists, plus a group of Thai schoolkids, were also touring the bridge.

Visitors can walk all over the bridge, but have to scoot out of the way when a train comes. (Cutouts in the bridge allow for this.) On the western bank, a Thai man was playing a violin for some of the schoolkids – part of his repertoire, in fact, was the famous theme song that was whistled in the movie Bridge On the River Kwai.

Elsewhere on the bridge, some university students asked, in halting but comfortable English, if they could interview me. They were on the bridge asking foreign visitors about their time in Thailand, where they were from, et cetera. My interlocutors were very friendly and pretended to be very glad that I was so positive about their country.

Chinese cemetery

In the middle of town is a large, well-kept cemetery with Western POWs buried in it, but next to it is a less well-kept but more visually striking Chinese Cemetery. Large white gravestones and Thai chedis with Chinese inscriptions are jumbled into a large area. Walking among this arresting but quiet collection of monuments to lost lives is quite a trip.

Kanchanaburi: Worth visiting

It’s extremely pleasing to see a new part of a country you thought you knew well. I’ve spent several months of my life in Thailand, overall, but had never been here, west of Bangkok nearer the Burmese border.

The green scenery, and the easy hospitality of the Thai people, are in abundance here as they are most everywhere in this country. Kanchanaburi has a lot for visitors; its monuments and memorials are stark but charming. Arriving by local train was a nice way to start my time here, too.

Bumming around Thailand is almost endlessly rewarding. It’s highly recommended. Find a month or two and get over there; you can’t go wrong with anywhere in the Land of Smiles!

What interesting historical monuments or unique cemeteries have you visited on your own travels?

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