We drove from Hua Hin to Kanchanaburi yesterday. You may have heard of the Burma Railway from World War Two. If you have, you will probably also have heard about the Bridge on the River Kwai: most famously as a film starring Alec Guinness as the ever so right and proper British Army Officer, Colonel Nicholson.
By the way, in English English, at least, we pronounce Kwai as Kweye. In Thai, Kwai is pronounced as Kwhere!
We arrived at around 6 pm so these images are all I have at this stage. We are staying close to the River Kwai and we will go there this morning. I have been here before, when I went on an excellent tour of the military cemetery, the modern bridge over the River Kwai and our train took us through the camp itself.
The following images were taken at the restaurant we ate at last night, images 1 and 3 and the view from our hotel window this morning: notice, we are coming to the end of the dry season in Thailand but there is a lot of surface water in this district, as you can see!
Beyond the trees in image 1 there is an oil well that has been extracting oil for some years. I took a short video of the nodding donkey from the same vantage point as you see here but it was dark and I had to zoom in a lot and so my video was blurry and grainy so I have not included it here.
Thai drivers: on the drive up here, this happened twice: I was in the middle of three lanes on a big and busy road. A car in the left hand lane cut in front of me, without warning and without signalling. Without evasive action, car 1 would have hit us, his judgement was so bad. The second car was actually filtering into the road from the Frontage Road but he didn't understand that filtering means that he has to give way if he cannot safely enter the main highway. I had more warning of him but. still, it could have been worse.
DW
15th March 2024
