Thailand, Part 4

Surviving railway sleepers.

Last full day out in the Thai countryside, and I have a bit of walking to do, hopefully this time I won't get stopped at a checkpoint.  From the hotel, a few miles of footpath and minor road through the jungle should take me back to the railway, but obviously beyond the last station at Nam Tok.  Rather, there is a section of line a few miles long where the Office of Australian War Graves has cut back the jungle so that you can walk along, the route passes through various cuttings including the infamous Hellfire Pass - so named because as the POWs worked into the night digging into the landscape, the scene, lit by bamboo and diesel torches, resembled something from Dante's Inferno.

Hellfire Pass.

I've planned the route out in advance on my GPS device, so I know when I need to turn left onto the line - except when I get there it is blocked with barbed wire.  Still, I can see it is right and has been walked on so whatever.  I follow the route for a couple of miles passing a few signs providing information about the building of the line and so forth, then as planned turn around and head back.  Emerging from the barbed wire again I notice a sign saying 'reserved for the Royal Thai Army' - oops.  Got away with it anyway.  Carrying on things are better maintained, the route passes through a series of cuttings, embankments, and sections where I need to scramble down and up, back in the day wooden viaducts would have spanned these but are long since gone.

It is hot but bearable here in April, though of course I am just walking.  It is hard to imagine what it was like for the men seventy years before, hauling rocks and digging holes for explosives in the heat of a Thai summer.  The death toll from this railway, around one hundred thousand from disease, starvation, accident or the brutal treatment from the guards, is staggering.  Well, they are not forgotten - in fact, I have come at the right time for this, it is nearly ANZAC day and there is a large party of Australians at my hotel, including, I'm pretty sure, at least one veteran of the railway.  There's also a Japanese TV crew there to interview him.

Peace Vessel at the Hellfire Pass Museum.

Must confess that I don't bother taking the train back to Bangkok as planned - by the sounds of it the journey would take around eight hours.  Instead I find an air-conditioned bus for just 140 Baht, it gets me there in just a few hours, in time for a relaxing evening.  Well, this was all fun I must say - almost proper backpacking, four star hotels notwithstanding.  One of these days I will come back and do the real thing... looking at the map, it is entirely possible to get buses or trains to Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.  Might take a little bit longer than a few days mind.

Back in Bangkok - at the North Bus Terminal.

Photos to go with this post can be found here.