Kanchanaburi - Walk to Visit a War Cemetery

We had the French Toast breakfast option. The other options appeared to be Thai or Japanese. Breakfast was fine but nothing awesome. The coffee was not really coffee, even at the second request, I think they still brought me hot chocolate.

After breakfast we went towards the bridge and booked a 24 hour rental car for pickup at 2pm. 1,000 Bhat seemed a pretty good deal, $52 NZD and a Honda Jazz will be safer than a scooter. Oh I forgot to mention yesterday the weird name of our hotel - Inchantreedopool. We have no idea what it means. There are trees and a pool here so maybe "enchanted trees and pool"?

Our next morning activity is a walk to the War Cemetery which is around 2.5km away. The route takes us along a busy main industrial road, not so flash. The cemetery is for some of the allied prisoners of war who died here while held captive by the Japanese. They were enslaved to build the Siam to Burma or as it is known now The Death Railway. Such a waste of lives and a horrible way to treat people. I'm so glad the current and last couple of generations have not had to contend with major world wars. We wandered around the graves to see if we could find any New Zealanders and eventually Sarah found one. Photo attached. The cemetery is immaculately maintained and each grave has a small rose or shrub beside it. A very sad place to visit particularly when you see the gravestones of Unknown Soldiers. We find a much less busy road for the return walk to our hotel. Total distance was just over 6km so a good workout in these temperatures.

The bridge that I mentioned yesterday is the Bridge Over the River Kwai or Kwae as it's more correctly spelt. This was the subject of an old war film that I watched many years ago but will rewatch it sometime soon. It tells the story of the prisoners building this bridge. This afternoon we are going to visit Nam Tok station at the end of the railway which now no longer goes to Burma (Myanmar). We had never actually heard of Kanchanaburi until we researched this trip but came across it and the reference to the bridge. There's the history and some other things to do here so we included it in our itinerary. 

After our very hot walk we headed up to the pool for a swim which is refreshing, hilarious, and then almost tragic. First the swim, it's a very nice infinity style pool but there is no ladder to get out. I can scramble out but Sarah's upper body strength leaves her stranded in the pool. So I have to get back in and as she tries to use her arms to get up I'm lifting her and pushing her bum from underneath. It's successful and she is finally out splayed on the deck. With two people who just arrived watching and wondering why we are laughing so hard. Then with wet feet and no sandles on Sarah goes looking for a pool ladder. She immediately slips over on the smooth concrete steps, that are everywhere here, and gashs her big toe open. Feck sake Sarah! There's a big pool of blood which I mop up with tissues and Sarah holds tissues to her cut. Hopefully she hasn't damaged anything else. I head off to get more tissues and we patch her up with a plaster. It has stopped bleeding and we will need to assess the damage further later. Fingers crossed she doesn't need any stitches.