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Day 13
I slept reasonably well despite there being essentially no difference between the mattress and the floor. We left at 08:30 for Hellfire Pass, which is a cutting through a rocky outcrop that was dug by POWs. The work continued night and day, and during the night flaming torches were used to illuminate the area, casting flickering shadows of malnourished prisoners on the grey rock. This led to the nickname ‘hellfire’. The museum on the site was excellent, with many well written and presented exhibits, a model of the railway, and a short video. It concentrated mostly on the Australian POWs, since the museum is financed by the Australian government. The pass itself is now devoid of any railway, and in fact has a big tree growing up from the floor of the cutting. Two kilometers from the hellfire pass, we reached the riverbank and launched the kayaks that we had brought with us. Initially I had a single one, until I realised that my arms obviously weren’t cut out for this sort of thing. I switched with Charlotte and got a spot in one of the doubles. The other occupant of my kayak was a guide who was really starting to get on my nerves by calling my name all the time for no apparent reason, and Lorna’s even more often.
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Day 12
We took a local bus for the journey back to Kanchanaburi, which seemed to take a lot longer than the minibus had in the opposite direction. The bus was full, and even had a chicken on board. Accomodation in Kanchanaburi was huts built on stilts in the River Kwai – though they were not really in the river as such, since the water was not flowing past the huts, and a lot of algae and lilypads covered the water’s surface for the most part. Facilities had become one step more basic, with no hot water this time, and no toilet paper either! There was a waste pipe attached to the sink though. Lorna and I got separate rooms this time.