A tale of two rivers

Thursday February 14th

Today was another early start, for the trip to Kanchanburi, the site of the famous bridge over the river Kwai. As usual the trip begins in chaos, but by now I'm used to it, and I'm actually beginning to understand the method behind their madness. Its all got to do with options, they actually give so many options that even they don't know how many people are doing which bits of the tour. So they stick different colored stickers on you to show which bits you are doing (they also have different shapes, but I'm not sure if the shapes play a part). The analyst side of me kept thinking a simple spreadsheet might help sort things out but they seem to cope.

Whats really funny is watching the attitude of the various toursts waiting amidst the chaos. A German man went a bit nuts expecting some sort of efficient operation, the French wander up late (maybe they had experienced this before and knew about the delays, but of course they did end up making it worse) and the English are polite to the face of the Thais, but the minute the Thai person turns away they start slagging them in a mildly offensive fashion. The Japanese on the other hand seem to be fine with this, its probably just more familiar to them.

I know these are stereotypes but they are exactly reactions I saw while waiting. Myself and another Irish chap, who was actually doing a different tour, had a bit of a laugh at it all.

Anyway I now know my place as a lone traveller, I get to be last in to fill up whatever van still has a space. Its nice to be useful. As before this meant squashing into the front seat, however not with such good results as last time. This time I was sitting beside a French bloke who looked like a prop forward. It was a bit more of a squeeze.

Once we got going we sped along, trying to make up for lost time. This was a bit more nerve wracking and I was defintiely more aware of not having a seatbelt, but actually what was more worrying was the noise coming from the wheel arch when we sped over bridges. Each time I thought it was going to blow a tyre. Also the driver seemed not to like using his horn, so the way wasn't always clear for us.

It turns out the need for speed is of course to meet the train at the right time later, and so all the drivers were at it. In fact from talking to a few others, our journey may have been relatively safe. One van broke lights and nearly got smacked.

Anyway we got to Kanchanburi and it is actually a much bigger town than the Rough Guide had lead me to believe. They made it sound like there were only a few places to stay, a few restaurants etc. There are hundreds. Its probably about the size of Belfast.

Anyway our first stop was the war cemetary (well actually our second stop - after a quick service station toilet break). The cemetary was very nicely laid out, and I went looking for any Irish, but couldn't find any. Most of the British were from English regiments, I guess the Irish Guards didn't make it out this way. Didn't see any Irish in the large Dutch section either. The Aussie section did have quite a few Irish names.

We didn't actually have much time here, and I almost got dragged out by the driver. I didn't really appreciate the tut-tuts from the French as they were the ones who took 12 minutes at a 5 minute toilet break. I sometimes wonder do these people actually care what they are seeing on the trips, or are they just on a day out to fill some time.

After that we went to a war museum. It was rubbish, very tacky and not really that much there. I discovered after its not the main war museum in the town, but a private one, so I wonder if there is a little cut for the tour operator, because the one thing in the museum that was impressive was the shop.

At this point however you do get to see the bridge, and even walk over it. It was more impressive than I thought, the river is certainly quite wide and fast flowing (more so than the one they used in the film) so I can see it would have been a struggle to build. For me this was the highlight of the day, but some people didn't walk across it. I'm not sure what the point of coming all this way is if you don't do that.

Anyway after that it was another speeding convoy, again to beat the train to the 'Death Railway' section. This is actually where most prisoners died. It is a deep gorge where the rail hugs the side of the cliff. The train was very bumpy though so most pictures I took turned out to be useless. We were on the train for an hour, I actually spent most of the time talking to a nice older couple from New Zealand who gave me a few tips on my upcoming visit to their homeland.

The rest of the trip involved lunch on a raft on the river, which is very fast flowing, and then a trip to a waterfall cave system. It was nice enough, but from photos I've seen there are other more spectacular ones around, not very far away. Still I wasn't on the waterfall tour (which I guess there is). Most people just sat at the base looking at the waterfall, I climbed up to the top. Again I'm not really sure why some people go on these trips.

And once again the long journey back to Bangkok seemed to have a deliberate, unannounced pitstop once it looked like we might be early. I guess if people really are using these trips to fill their days then maybe the tour company are giving the customer what they want.

As it was my last night on Khao San I decided to go out for a few drinks. Met a Dutch guy, Peter, who agreed with a lot of my views on our fellow backpackers, what are they actually here for. If it is just for the parties, then why don't they just do Ibiza like they used to. And his biggest complaint, which I had to say I had noticed, where do the western girls go at night. All the bars are full of all the male backpackers, and some have Thai customers, but compared to how many there are around during the day, there aren't many out at night.

Rather than do a pub crawl we did a crawl around the one pub. We actually sat at 4 different tables over the course of the night. We started off on the street as usual, but the cops forced the bar to move back onto the path (interestingly since I came back I've noticed the cops are a much heavier presence on KSR that before - I wonder if something happened while I was away). Then later the pub itself was moving indoors so we had to move off the path to just inside.

At this point the observant amongst you will note that is only three tables, and are also probably wondering where is the second river from the title. Well here it is. At about 1 am the heavens opened and a deluge began. I would say within 5 minutes there was a river flowing through the pub, and under our seats. So we had to move again. It was so heavy that there was no way you could go out in it, and all the taxis and tuk-tuks disappeared to start picking up fares. So we had no choice except to wait it out. But it never stopped. Eventually at 3.30 myself and Peter gave up and made a run for it. At this stage it turned out the river in our pub was only one of dozens of tributaries to the new Khao San River. The whole road was under 4-6 inches of water. Every pub was pumping out water. The place was quite a disaster area. Even running from shelter to shelter it soon became apparent that there was no way home without a tuk-tuk, who charged a rip off price but its better than a cold.