A serendipitous coincidental encounter with living history in Thailand.
A serendipitous coincidental encounter with living history in Thailand.
Hey everybody and welcome back for the third episode of my podcast, “Goin’ down the road with Randy.” Tonight’s episode is going to be shorter and sweeter but will still tell a tale of truly historic proportions if I do say so myself. But, I’ll let you be the judge of that.
We begin in Bangkok, Thailand, last day of January, 1992. We have been in Thailand since December 11th and our 60 day visa is running out. We have time for one more short side trip out of Bangkok before we must leave Thailand. We have already bought tickets to Viet Nam on Thai Airways on the 8th of February.
Thailand is, interestingly, the only country in southeast Asia to escape European colonization and the reason is that it was located between the French colonies of Indochina, now Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia and the British colonies of Malaysia and Singapore. Thailand was a neutral buffer zone between the colonial powers.
There are many reasons why Thailand is a perennial favorite destination of budget travelers – it is cheap, has arguably the best food in southeast Asia and has an extensive and efficient public transportation system that is both comfortable and reliable. Boasting tropical beaches, islands and fantastic limestone karst typography in the south and remote mountain hill tribes in the north Thailand offers a little bit of everything. It is full of history with fantastic ruins of ancient cities and by sheer coincidence happens to have some of the best and most widely available weed in southeast Asia.
In fact, as I read through my journal I find the phrase “we smoke a doob” or something to that effect quite often. To avoid repetition and in deference to sensitive sensibilities I will substitute a horn sound for that phrase when it comes around. HONK When you hear that sound that’s what we were doing.
The elephant is the national animal of Thailand and some say the country is shaped like an elephants’ head with the elephants’ trunk dangling down to Malaysia in the south and the forehead butting up against Burma and Laos in the infamous Golden Triangle to the north. The the teeming metropolis of Bangkok is situated where the elephants’ mouth would be and is home to roughly the same population as New York City. It straddles the Chao Phraya River and water taxis are a popular form of transport here as they allow a traveler to avoid the congested roads.
Khao San Road sits right in the middle of Bangkok less than a mile from the Grand Palace. We have heard stories about this place from all the way back in New Zealand. It may be the most famous backpacker ghetto or travelers’ paradise in the world. One Thai writer has described Khao San Road as "...a short road that has the longest dream in the world".
Whatever it is Khao San road is less than a half mile long but is packed with everything the weary budget traveler needs. Cheap hotels, restaurants and bars and access to transportation networks. It is famous for the partying that occurs there. You can sit on Khao San Road for an afternoon and probably see nearly every nationality in the world go by. It is a great place to run into people that you had crossed paths with before but had not made plans to meet up later. There are Brits, Canadians and Americans on a gap year from school. Young and fit Israelis just out of their stint in the army. Affluent Japanese, Chinese and Korean tourists. Indians, African, it all crosses here sooner or later. It doesn’t matter when you visit because there is always something going on. Side note: I am told that Khao San Road has recently undergone a major remodel and it is now closed to vehicular traffic during the day. Hopefully, it retained its grungy charm.
In any case this is probably our third trip back here. When traveling in Thailand it is hard to break free from the gravitational pull that is Bangkok for long – it seems to always bring you back in. My journal entry for
Friday January 31st, reads:
We sleep late because we are going to Kanchanaburi today. After breakfast we catch a very crowded river taxi over to Thonburi station and catch the 1:50 train to Kanchanaburi - a bargain for 25 Thai baht and there are 25 Thai baht to the dollar, so a buck. The seats are wooden and hard, there is no air conditioning and the 3 hour journey seems longer, but it is good to be out of Bangkok again! A 20 baht becak ride takes us from the train station in Kanchanaburi to P.S. guest house where we got a great bungalow on the banks of the wide and tranquil Kwai River for 100 baht, 4 bucks. We're only 2 km from the infamous bridge and very close to the cemetery. It is very peaceful here on the river and it seems a good place to while away a few days. We don’t plan to do much tonight except hang out reading, writing and relaxing. Where is the ganja around here anyway?
The next morning we sleep late – almost until noon and then go out to rent bikes. While eating breakfast we meet this very talkative New Zealander, he's quite the maniac. He’s smoking a joint and very loquacious. He's been living in India for the past 16 years working as an engineer for British Aerospace, he smokes tons of hash and speaks 7 languages, all of them Indian.
We pedal along the tranquil streets of Kanchanaburi and find our way to the JEATH War Museum which is built the side of the former of p.o.w. camp and has old photos and a model of the bamboo huts that the prisoners lived in. (JEATH looks like death with a j and stands for the six countries involved in the conflict here, J Japan, E, England, A, Australia and America, T Thailand and H for Holland.)
The story begins on February 15th 1942 when Singapore falls to the Japanese. The British and the Dutch p.o.w.s from there and Indonesia (remember, Indonesia was a Dutch colony) along with some Americans and Australians were all sent to Thailand. The Japanese Army wanted to build a railway linking the end of the line in Thailand with the end of the line of Burma so they could resupply the large Japanese army contingent in Burma without going down and around Peninsular Malaysia and getting bombed and torpedoed along the way.
Japanese engineers had surveyed the 415km proposed route and calculated that the project would require five years to complete. When they were told that forced labor would be used they recalculated to 18 months. The railway was actually completed in just over 14 months. It went from Kanchanaburi, Thailand to Thanbyuzayat in Burma. The joining of the lines was accomplished on October 17th 1943 at Konkuita. The Allied p.o.w.s were paid $0.10 a day for their labor and lived on a starvation diet of rice with a little salt twice a day, no meat. However their casualties were proportionately lower than the Asians who were paid more and treated less harshly because the p.o.w.s had their medical officers and the Asians had little medical care.
The legendary Australian doctor Sir Edward “Weary” Dunlop treated the mens diseases. Dysentery and cholera were rampant, along with typhus and malaria and beriberi, which causes swollen, hippopotamus-like limbs and soccer ball-sized testicles. The merest scratch soon became a festering tropical ulcer that covered large patches on arms and legs and exposed tendon and bone causing gangrene and amputations. One remedy was to send the man to sit in the River Kwai and have the fish eat off all the old dead black skin.
As if this wasn't enough the men still had their captors to deal with. They were constantly beaten and abused for not working hard enough. If someone was caught stealing food the punishment was to beat the offender's hands to a pulp with a hammer. Prisoners were forced to stand in the sun holding a heavy rock over their heads. They would be bound arms behind backs and forced to kneel with a length of bamboo behind the knees. They were suspended by the thumbs and tied to trees with razor-sharp barbed wire. They were forced into tiny, oven-like sweat boxes.
The famous bridge over the River Kwai is real and still stands today although it was bombed on February 13th 1945 by B-24 liberators based in Pandeweswar, India. It was rebuilt after the war and it is still used today by the state railway authority of Thailand. If you have never seen the movie you should watch it.
So, after this informative couple of hours we pedal to the ferry crossing and cross the River Kwai. We notice large barges with big houses on them that float parties, quite literally, up and down the river. On the other side we stopped at the Chung Kai war cemetery and the Kheo Poon cave with its buddha-filled niches and garish fluorescent lights. We followed the road around, took a few wrong turns but finally found the bridge from the opposite side. It was covered with tourists. We walked the bikes over on the somewhat rickety structure and thread our way past the souvenir hawkers on the other side and return to the guesthouse for soup and a beer. We met Kevin Reid, the New Zealander, again - he's been drinking all day. I’m thinking this must be what happens to a man after years in Asia. We He turns us all onto a joint (You all remember what that sound means, right?) and some Mekong whiskey and then we gotta shower and pedal down to the string of restaurants by the river near the ferry crossing for dinner watching the majestic river go by. Afterwards we just come back and relax by the riverside. A good day.
A word about Mekong whiskey. Produced only in Thailand, they call it whiskey but it is really more of a rum, made from sugar cane and rice. It is about 70 proof and you can order it in a bar or restaurant, and they bring out a bottle with a small tin bucket of ice, some glasses and a bottle of coke. It tastes quite fine this way and is the drink of choice while in Thailand mostly because of the ice, so it is always ice cold.
Sunday February 2nd
We get up late and go to the Kanchanburi War Cemetery after breakfast, lunch whatever. It is, as expected, a beautiful and immaculately maintained, yet very sad place. Unbelievably, there are Asian tourists - a Thai or Japanese I don't know, but they're posing for pictures while lying in the grass there amongst the graves. Seems so very odd.
We look around town deciding where to rent motorbikes for our planned trip up to Three Pagodas Pass on the Burmese border. When we get back to the guesthouse AJ and Chris are checking in. They took the bus up rather than wait for the train. So, we go looking for the cars or bikes and finally decide to go for it on the little mopeds. I go for a run, up and across the river on the first bridge then back down to “the bridge” and back across on it. I meet Chris who has walked up to see the bridge and I walk back with him hiding leg cramps all the way. If I'm going to do this running thing I must get more serious about it. We spend the rest of the evening, talking and playing Yahtzee (I win twice), drinking Mekong and smoking a joint.
Our destination, Three Pagodas Pass, is really kind of a “made up” destination as it is just three rather small stupas marking a jungle pass though which the death railway was routed in World War 2, but it defines the Thailand-Burmese border and tourists are sorta-kinda allowed to cross into Burma there. We haven’t decided if we will even enter Burma – it depends on if they charge us the fee (that they only accept in US dollars and it is one way the repressive government gains foreign currency and we are not keen to give the repressive government foreign currency, so...) Remember this is way back then in the time of the embargo and Aung San Suu Kyi – my how times have changed in that regard, eh?
Monday February 3rd
We are in no danger of sleeping late as the firecrackers which signal the start of Chinese New Year pop off before dawn. We reluctantly get up. Greta feels bad and her eyes are all puffy, greasy and red. Should we go? AJ and I go into town see if the bank is open because if it is closed we can't go anywhere anyway. It's open. I get money and AJ gets shoes. We come back and eat and then pick up the bikes for 400 baht for 3 days. We zoom out of Kanchanaburi just before noon.
We cruise down the road. It's hot and the wind feels like a blow dryer. There is a lot of motorcycle traffic on the road. We realize that we made a wrong turn when we arrive at Erawan Falls and we are forced to backtrack about 40 kilometers to get going right again, route 323 to Hellfire pass.
We stop for gas and cold drinks and we reach Hellfire pass at about 3:30 or 4. There's a large white concrete block monument there and the plaque on it says something like, “In this block a time capsule was sealed on February 4th 1992 to be reopened on February 4th 2042.” And we're looking at it and then looking at each other and thinking, “Hey, wait a minute - that's tomorrow!” when huffing and puffing up the steps come two barrel-chested Australian fellas, John from Rangoon and John from Bangkok. These are the two who are coordinating the ceremony tomorrow. They cordially invite us to attend and we learned that the infamous Sir Edward “Weary” Dunlap will be there along with such luminaries as the US ambassador and the British charge d’affairs. Well, hoi paloi, “What did we just step in?” Do I even have a clean t-shirt right now? On the spot we cancel the previously-planned adventure to Three Pagodas Pass and the Burmese border to spend time with the actual living history which has just fallen into our laps.
We can't stay at the River Kwai Village Hotel where these guys are staying because the rooms are over a thousand baht a night and far beyond our budget. But, we find a place in the little town of Sai Yuk at Sai Yuk Bungalows for 120 baht.
We go have a good walk and look around the Konyou cutting, also known as Hellfire Pass. It earned its name by the scene out of Dante that it created by emaciated laborers working night and day in the torchlight. Men built this, by manpower. Starving, diseased and beaten men. Roughly one man died per meter of track laid in this section. The track is laid in a cut, actually, 2 separate cuts through solid rock - probably 30 – 50 feet tall and several hundred meters long. 700 men died here. It would have been a prime candidate for a tunnel. But the Japanese reckoned that a tunnel could only be dug from the front and the back but if they cut through the whole thing they could work everywhere simultaneously. Only, of course, the Japanese were not the ones doing the actual work. While walking the cutting, which doesn’t have tracks anymore, we disturb a cobra sunning itself on the path.
We go find a room and kick back and have a shower of sorts and then have an interesting ordeal getting dinner in this one-horse, non-english-speaking town on the Burmese frontier. Obviously, not many tourists stop here overnight unless you are at the resort. We finally found some lovely pork fried rice served by an overly friendly (to Greta) Thai woman and then hop on the bikes to go to the River Kwai Village hotel for some beers with the old geezers.
The hotel is impressive. It looks so and expensive and intimidating that we almost don't go inside. Like, we’re looking at each other and thinking without saying anything, “Well, we have to buy at least a few beers. How much do beers cost in this fancy joint? But this is different. This is an out of the budget moment.” AJ, of all people, breaks the ice for us and we plunge in. It's a good thing damn thing that we do too! John sees us and buys us some beers. We're sitting just across the table from Sir “Weary” Dunlap. John buys us another round and, as alcohol does it’s job as the universal social lubricant, we start chatting with Rocky Horne was here with the 2/29 battalion of the 8th Australia division. AJ meanwhile is reading Weary’s book, “The war diaries of Weary Dunlop.”
Rocky regales us with many of his war stories, always punctuated with, “But that's life you know?” I wish I had a dollar for every time someone said that this evening. He was captured north of Singapore in 1942. He was 19 and weighed 13 and a half stone - a solid 189 pounds. When he was liberated in 1945 he was 22 and weighed less than seven stone – a measly 94 pounds. He basically lost half of himself! Rocky had beri-beri and told us, “My little pills down there swelled up so bad I couldn’t fit them in a milk bucket!”
We also talked to Gary Hooper of the 2/2 Pioneers. They all had a story. I spent some time talking to Gary's wife, Helen. Both of these guys are back here for the first time and there are obviously some very deep emotions bubbling just under the surface. They watched helplessly as so many of their mates waste away in front of their eyes while they too are wasting away. Which is worse I wonder? Watching someone be vaporized in front of you, or having the life ebb slowly and painfully away over a matter of months?
Helen tells me that Gary has never told these stories to her. She said he never talks about what happened in the war while he was prisoner. I am sure that we are barely scratching the surface of what these guys have seen and I’m not sure I would want to know some of the stories that they may be keeping back.
We buy the guys beers and talk until 11 or so and then wobble precariously back to our “rather dingy in comparison” hotel on our mopeds.
No one can sleep though and so we get some more beers and play some hangman and smoke a joint till about 1 am.
Tuesday February 4th
We got up late and we don't go anywhere that morning but AJ and Chris want to get full use of their bikes so they head off to the waterfalls. We hang out in the bungalow until about 1:30 waiting to go to the ceremony. I guess we'll meet those guys there.
On the way to the ceremony we are passed by the Australian Embassy car. We go down the steps - the ceremony is down in the cutting. No sign of AJ or Chris yet.
A typically bland, boring and (I think) overly religious ceremony down in the cutting is followed by a short sweet one up at the time capsule. We all sign the official program and were admonished to be present on the 4th of February 2042 when the capsule would be re-opened. If I make it, I will be 81, almost 82. After the sealing of the capsule we learn that a woman has collapsed down at the cutting. We run down the steps to the trail in Hellfire Pass. Someone has gone for a stretcher but no stretcher comes. I slice a good cut in my hand trying to break a piece of bamboo to make an improvised stretcher. (Typical tourist mistake – bamboo does not “break” silly.) Then I remember that I've got a Swiss Army knife! The saw blade works wonders on the bamboo, but by the time we have two good pieces someone brings a chair and uses the blankets I was going to make the stretcher out of for a cushion.
Anyway, no worries, Hellfire Pass was not going to claim another victim this day. Slowly and carefully we carry the woman out of the cutting with two teams of four on the chair, switching out teams at the switchbacks. It was quite hard and hot going but we loaded her up into a songthau (a sort of motorcycle powered, very small, pickup-type vehicle) and they took off to the nearest hospital.
We were invited to the reception which followed. We had some beers, talked to the p.o.w.s and got a few to sign my program. They tried to bandage my hand and we got some lunch. One more ceremony and then we left. They invited us to more beers at their hotel but we know when to leave. (Truth be told we really could not afford it.) One guy came by and gave me an ANZAC pin (ANZAC is Australia and New Zealand Army Corps)- it was his wife that we had carried out of Hellfire Pass that morning. These guys are awesome!
We go back to the bungalow and play some hacky sack. A pickup truck full of young Thais drives in and a few of the guys play with us. As usual they're quite good! One guy looks like a kickboxer. Anyway, we relax and smoke a doob and then we have a shower and go to dinner here at the guesthouse, nothing special. We go to town on the bike and bring back a round of ice creams for everybody. This has been a really good day once again. The weird thing is, we probably couldn’t have done this any better if we had known it was going to happen and planned it out meticulously. It was just another one of those serendipitous coincidences that happen when you least expect it and I love the magic when they do. These old guys deserve all the recognition they get and more.
Wednesday February 5th
We get up early so we might visit the famous Erawan Falls on the way back. Before we leave Sai Yuk however we take a little walk up to the Buddha perched in the cave. It makes me wonder, not for the first time, what it is that compels these monks to be attracted to caves for their shrines and temples. We get on the bikes and cruise to the falls about 45 minutes away. A cop stops us for going the wrong way down a one-way street. Whoops. The falls are packed with Thais on holiday – it is still New Year's. New Year's apparently lasts for over a week. We walk up the trail. The falls are very beautiful limestone tiers, one spilling into the other creating a natural fountain. We go all the way up to the seventh level and then clamber up a little higher. It is very nice but it's getting late and we're getting hungry so we go down to the parking lot to get some barbecue chicken. We still want to go to the Muang Singh Historical Park before dark and we do. It is not as impressive as the Sukhothai ruins but the restoration work is very good and crawling around the ruins is quite fun. Perhaps the best thing was going to see the pre-historic skeletons that were unearthed on the banks of the Kwai Noi River. Very eerie, but we're soon on an eerie race of our own against the setting sun and these are the kinds of races which we always lose and this time is no different. We battle our way back to Kanchanaburi with dim headlights to find that they've given away our rooms at the guest house. They offer to let us sleep on the raft on the river for free and we say okay to that! Can we do this every night? AJ and I go in drop the bikes off and pick up a bottle of Mekong on the way back. It is Chris’ one year anniversary of leaving the States, so lacking any better reason and not really needing one anyway, we celebrate. The three of us finish the Mekong while playing Yahtzee and Cosmic Wimpout and Chris gets in a funk because we don’t let him win. We all pass out at 2 a.m. HONK
We take the train back to Bangkok early the next morning and every jolt on the track send sparks of pain through my head and eyeballs. But we have to get back to Bangkok to sort out loose ends before we fly to Viet Nam in less than 3 days.
I’ll tell you more about that later.
Anyway, that’s it for this one, thanks for listening, and I’ll see you down the road!
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