OUT AND ABOUT AROUND KANCHANABURI

 7th Jan 2022

Hellfire Pass

A day out in the local area started with a trip to the infamous Hellfire Pass. I had booked a driver courtesy of the excellent Siam Guest House who, as it turned out, was a good driver (ex-fireman he told me, I think) and, I was later informed by my mentor Palle at the Sawistree bar, good value for money. The fact that he spoke little English was no great problem although I was left uncertain of where we were at various points.

Hellfire Pass is 50 miles north-west of Kanchanaburi and is a cutting for the original railway about 200yds long and 70ft deep dug through solid rock. It took 12 weeks to build by POWs, mostly Australian from what I gathered, working under brutal duress throughout day and night. It was called 'Hellfire' due to the flaming torches which lit up the pass at night. POWs were forced to work despite many being very sick and starving and many deaths ensued. 

Left: The Pass, looking down from above.

All the tools used were manual (picks, drill and tap, shovels etc.) together with explosives. It was an 18 hour working day with 10 mins break every hour. Phew!

The visit started at a museum which, at the entry, I was asked to produce an effing Covid vaccination certificate. WTF! These people are paranoid about this bug. I didn't have it but managed to blag my way in anyway. The museum was 'quite' interesting and well laid out with many wall mounted information displays but nothing that I hadn't been aware of previously. Free audio guides were provided, even if difficult to get to work properly. Then down a long outdoor staircase to the trail that follows the original, now disused, rail bed. The audio guide 'posts' were numerous and featured, when I could get the damned thing to work, various anecdotes from (mainly Australian) survivors. 

Right: Along the pass were pinned several national flags and little notes written by visitors. 

The rail bed goes on for about 3 miles, if you wanted to walk that far, via various other smaller cuttings and points of interest, but I didn't.

Left: An original (manual) drill bit left in the wall. No powered tools were used.

Right: A memorial at the Pass to Colonel Sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop. He was an Australian doctor who is much revered for the medical service leadership he provided to POW camps during this period.

Left: The Hellfire Pass section ends at a memorial with flags of the POW nations involved. The black memorial plaque paid respect to those who died here between 1942-45. The track went on. I walked back from here.

This mountainous and hilly area contains many caves and waterfalls which are popular with tourists. The next stop on our agenda was the Saiyok Noi waterfall (right), about 10 miles south of Hellfire.

It was hardly on the scale of the Iguazu Falls in Argentina, but quite attractive I suppose.

There were a couple of restaurants and cafés, but none served beer which is what I wanted by now. It is a popular picnic spot for the locals (left) and some quite elaborate picnics were being enjoyed. 

Right: I did manage to get my feet wet. This was the first time my bare knees had been shown in public so far (in Thailand). 

Left: There were several of these signs dotted about the place. I'm not sure what you are meant to do. Do you keep looking up? In which case you are likely to fall off the narrow pathway. If the rocks suddenly decide to fall there is probably not much you can do about it. Maybe it is part of an insurance 'get out' clause in case a tourist is smitten. "You were warned" they would cry.

There is a small railway platform here called Nam Tok Sai Yok Noi. It is the terminus for a single track line which, I believe, still carries a train from somewhere in Bangkok to the falls on Saturdays and Sundays. The line beyond, the one built by the Japs (or rather POWs), is now dismantled. There is another decommissioned wartime Japanese train parked here (right).

Left: Oh woe! Another masked 'violinist'. If I described the one I suffered at The Bridge as bad, this one made him sound a positive virtuoso. What a horrible tuneless screeching noise he made. Again, I gave him 10 Baht to cushion, if not hasten, his retirement. I wonder where they come from? Maybe some falling rocks will get him. Presumably he 'plays' here because he has been banished from playing in populated areas. The masks in these cases serve a useful purpose in allowing them to remain incognito.

On next to a lunchtime stop in a market village somewhere near the river and operational railway. I never did discover where it was, but there were a couple of decent restaurants overlooking the river. A very scenic location (right)  and I enjoyed a beer (at last) and a rather spicy Thai meal. 

I managed to snatch a quick, but poor, long distance photo of a train which passed by. This shows the railway has some very hairy looking elevated stretches running alongside the cliffs. I hope they have good engineers and railway inspectors.

The final stop was at an elephant 'farm', or whatever they called it (right). There were glossy brochures which showed happy tourists washing elephants, cavorting in the river with them and riding them in convoys on treks across the river and beyond. 

The reality was rather different. The lady at  reception explained, when I asked how many elephants they had on station, that they had only one! All the others, and they did have 20, had been sent away on extended leave to somewhere 'up north'. Probably due to lack of tourists, or some covid related precaution I presumed. 

Anyway, instead of riding an elephant which I have done before, in Laos and India, and didn't want to anyway (it is a most uncomfortable experience), I was persuaded to buy a bucketful of about 50 bananas. Her assistant, and I think there were only the two of them there, then wheeled out the sole pachyderm, a rather moth-eaten female elephant called, I think, Plonka, or something similar. I then had to endure feeding it, via its trunk, with banana after banana. It had a rather 'runny' trunk and I ended up getting covered in elephant snot. Perhaps it should have been tested for the virus?

I was told later that most of these elephant 'farms' had gone tits-up because of pressure from the powerful Animal Rights lobby. They regard the use of elephants to amuse tourists as cruel. In fact the elephants in these establishments are looked after and protected rather well in my experience. An unhappy elephant can be seriously dangerous. Left in the wild they can cause serious damage to agricultural land and often get persecuted by irate farmers and locals. Another fact that the Animal Rights mob curiously overlook.

That was it for the day, an amusing outing and quite some mileage covered. Back to Kanchantaburi in time for supper; steak and kidney pie at the Sawistree.