The River Kwai

At Ruamrudee International School, High School begins in Year 9 and, following the American lingo, the students are known as 'freshmen'. The "class of 2013" spent this past weekend away on camp and I was one of the staff members accompanying 140 over-excited kids.



The camp was located on the famous River Kwai, found about 200km north-west of Bangkok, in the district of Kanchanaburi, not far from the mountainous border with Burma.


The hotel was right on the bank of the river, the view from my room shown below. Not a bad way to wake up in the morning! The photo shows a couple of mobile river rooms being towed along by the long boats.

We took a fun boat ride up the river in one of these boats, the motors struggling against the current. With the river cutting through the steep sides of the valley, it was a spectacular journey.

Our destination up river was the Lava Caves. The limestone stalagtites and stalacmites were pretty impressive and well worth a visit, although the hundreds of bats perched on the roof of the caves were a little disconcerting.

The highlight of the trip for me was having the very good fortune of going to Hellfire Pass, a place of great significance in the history of Australia. The view that greeted us there was spectacular.

Hellfire Pass is a particular section of the Thailand to Burma "Death" Railway. The railway was built by prisoners of war, a large contigent from Australia. About 2500 diggers died in this location, either from the dangerous work involved in building the railway, or from the cruelty of their Japanese captors. A moving memorial to the Australians who lost their lives form 1942-45 is shown below.

The Aussies named this section Hellfire Pass because of how hard it was to carve the railway through the rock in this area. The cutting that their back breaking work produced is shown below.

The Allied POW's could not build the track fast enough for the liking of the Japanese, so hundreds of thousands of Asian workers were also brought in to keep the work going. They make up the majority of the lives lost on this infamous railway.

We also visited the museum, which is kept open thanks to money provided by Australia. The students seemed genuinely moved as they read about the history of the Burma Railway and saw pictures and artifacts that brought home the horror that was faced by the prisoners. I feel like I have visited a very special place for an Australian - who would have thought that it would be found here in Thailand.