Kanchanaburi - Renting a Car to Visit Hellfire Pass

At 2pm we picked up the car and headed further West. 75km to the Hellfire Pass Interpretative Centre which is free to enter with donations appreciated. The woman on reception was recording which country visitors were from, she amazingly studied at Otago University when she was younger. The centre was built in 1985 with funding support from the Australian government. The centre has a number of information boards and a small thetre playing recordings mainly from Australian POWs who survived Hellfire Pass. The images and stories of how people were treated were quite sickening. The loss of lives of both the POWs because of malnutrition and disease was awful and the local Malay and Thai people the Japanese enslaved suffered even greater losses. 16,000 POWs and over 100,000 local labourers died in the construction of the railway. 

We then descended a lot of steps outside to get down to the now disused railway track bed and walked through one of the cuttings that were part of the Hellfire Pass. To say it was hot would be an understatement. On the side of the hill with the sun beating down onto the track it had to be around 38 degrees at best guess. The walk was only 600m but that was far enough. The cutting is 25m deep through solid rock and 75m long. We opted not to do the additional 2km circuit that was possible. I doubt many people did that today. Because it was late in the day there were very few people about. The last train back and any tour groups would have already left. By the time we got back up to the top of the steps we had had enough for today but knew it was nothing compared to those poor men who were here during the war.

We drove back to Kanchanaburi with a short detour to see where the current train line ended. We went via the small village streets but soon got a bit lost so turned back out to the main highway and headed back. A good afternoon excursion in the car. Interestingly enough Sarah asked the car rental man if it was a hot day when we picked up the car and he said it was very hot even for him. 

Dinner tonight is back at the close to hotel restaurant as we were hungry and have had enough walking today. That said we will walk to the 7 Eleven after dinner for more water ready for tomorrow's walk. The food tonight was Green curry with chicken and a Penang curry with chicken. Plus a bottle of Singha beer for me and a pineapple smoothie for Sarah. Total cost 550 Bhat about 29 NZD. On the expensive end of things because it's a nice restaurant I think. The curries were quite spicy but delicious. I'm glad we asked for them "just a little bit spicy" else they would blow your head off. Half way to the 7 Eleven we turned back as couldn't be bothered. We will grab water in the morning using the car as we are too full for an ice cream tonight anyway.