The fountains mingle with the river, And the rivers with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix forever, With a sweet emotion. - Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Bridge on the River Kwai

We couldn't visit Bangkok and not pay a visit to the Burma Death Railway and the notorious Bridge over the River Kwai.

Once more in our limousine - this time headed for Kanchanaburi

Fascinating, nostalgic and memorable sums up our visit to Kanchanaburi, approximately 130 kilometres west of Bangkok. The province itself is an agricultural area with sugar cane, rice paddies and pineapple plantations all forming significant portions of the stunning Thai rural landscape.

It's a long trip from Bangkok

Following the fall of Singapore in 1942, 60,000 POWs were marched north to the River Kwai. The Japanese wanted to build a railway to reach Burma. Their experts told them it would take 3 years, but the Japanese were going to use slave labour and do it in 16 months. Over 100,000 POW's died of malnutrition, disease and sadistic abuse in the most terrible conditions.

The infamous bridge and the beginning of the 'Death Railway', which lies 5 kilometres outside the town of Kanchanaburi, is a poignant reminder of the thousands of POW's and forced laborers who lost their lives in the building of the bridge.

The sign to the cemetery is almost lost in a cacophony of visual pollution

Thousands of POW's and laborers died in the process. We visited the Allied War Grave cemetery at Chungkai and spent some time walking through the rows of graves of young Australian and Dutch servicemen who had perished at the hands of their brutal Japanese captors. The town contains two cemeteries to the dead, which number over 100,000.

Chungkai was created by the Army Graves Service who transferred to it all graves along the southern section of railway, from Bangkok to Nieke. Some 300 men who died during an epidemic at Nieke camp were cremated and their ashes now lie in two graves in the cemetery. The names of these men are inscribed on panels in the shelter pavilion. There are now 5,084 Commonwealth casualties of the Second World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. There are also 1,896 Dutch war graves.


The entrance to the cemetery contains many plaques and dedications to the fallen servicemen who were so callously and brutally slaughtered by the Japanese military.



Kanchanaburi War Cemetery is only a short distance from the site of the former 'Kanburi', the prisoner of war base camp through which most of the prisoners passed on their way to other camps.

Some signs are in Thai, English and Dutch

The Kanchanaburi war cemetery is the original burial ground started by the prisoners themselves, and the burials are mostly of men who died at the hospital.

It was a poignant touch that several small Australian flags adorned some of the graves

A walk through any war cemetery is an emotional experience and one can often be moved close to tears. While walking through the cemetery, Lidy came across a grave bearing a family name. Although not sure if there is a connection, she will take it up with family members on our return to Australia.

Lidy found the grave of a Dutch soldier who may be a distant relative

Before leaving Katchanaburi, we had to visit the JEATH war museum, which houses pictures, memorabilia and paintings from this period. JEATH stands for Japan, England, Australia, Thailand and Holland - the five nations whose servicemen lived and died on the 'Death Railway'.

The museum itself is on the banks of the river Kwai, consisting of a war memorial based around a bodhi tree and a replica of one of the huts. Inside are photos harking back to that era. It really brought the horrors home to us. There were pictures of Japanese soldiers standing beside the bridge, newspaper cuttings of those who were liberated, and a map showing the forty or more camps that were strung along the River Kwai.

More harrowing were the portraits: the British prisoner, Jack Walker, managed to make etchings on pieces of smuggled paper of what he had witnessed. These were elaborated when he was released and now hang in the museum. They are not for the faint of heart. There are pictures of cadaverous men with skin afflictions and diseases being herded through the thick jungle, hollow eyed prisoners being beaten, and those in the cholera tent being laid out to die. But the worse were the tortures inflicted by the Japanese guards including crucifixions with barbed wire. This was shocking stuff and we emerged from the museum quite moved and looking at Katchanaburi in a different light.

The JEATH war museum

From the JEATH war museum it is only a short 5 kilometre drive to the Bridge on the River Kwai.

I saw the rails first, then I was struck by the thought that these rails had actually carried so many thousands of allied servicemen to their deaths. I couldn't help but make the comparison with the pictures I had seen of the rails leading into the Auschwitz Death Camp.

Rails leading to The Bridge on the River Kwai

And there it was. There were originally two bridges, both built by prisoners of war - A wooden bridge was completed in February 1943, superseded a few months later by the steel bridge which you see today. The steel bridge spans were brought from Java by the Japanese, and are all original apart from the two straight-sided spans which were installed after the war to replace spans destroyed by allied bombing in 1945.

The Bridge on the River Kwai

The bridge itself is a major tourist attraction for the area and a whole township has sprung up to service the thousands of tourists who visit it each day. The RSL has built a resort hotel nearby to cater for Australian tourists and there are many other hotels, including a floating hotel built of rafts which is permanently moored nearby.

Tourists take over The Bridge on the River Kwai

The metal spans whose construction cost so dearly in lives

Today, a peaceful river flows beneath the bridge. Highly appropriate

There is a small technical problem with The Bridge on the River Kwai: It doesn't actually cross the River Kwai..! Pierre Boulle, who wrote the original book, had never been there. He knew that the 'Death Railway' ran parallel to the River Kwae for many miles, and assumed that it was the Kwae which it crossed just North of Kanchanaburi. He was wrong - It actually crosses the Mae Khlung.

When David Lean's blockbuster movie was released, the Thais faced something of a problem. Thousands of tourists came flocking to see the bridge over the River Kwae, and they hadn't actually got one... All they had was a bridge over the Mae Khlung. So, with admirable lateral Thai thinking, they renamed the river. The Mae Khlung is now the Kwae Yai ('Big Kwae') for several miles north of the confluence with the Kwae Noi ('Little Kwae'), including the bit under the bridge.

FOOTNOTE: We were told by our guide that "Kwai" is a misnomer. In Thai, "kwae" translates as "river", therefore the river Kwai actually translates as "river River".