Thailand – week 7

Kanchanaburi

Kanchanaburi is a town about 130 km west of Bangkok. Several Maryknoll Missioners and three students made the trek in a hired van with a driver. The town is mostly known for the Bridge on the River Kwai, waterfalls and Tiger Temple.

The Bridge on the River Kwai

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The bridge we visited on the River Kwai looked so placid, so beautiful against a backdrop of a tall majestic Japanese statue and ornate temple. It was hard for me to learn that this bridge was part of the ‘Death Railway’ built by prisoners of the occupying Japanese forces in World War II. In June 1942, 61,000 British, Australian, American, New Zealand, Danish and Dutch POWs as well as an estimated 200,000 laborer’s from India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma and Thailand were put to work by the Japanese Imperial Army to construct a railway line 415km long to link Kanchanaburi, Thailand to the Japanese Base Camp in Thanbyuazyat in Burma.

The working and living conditions were wretched, comparable to a genocide. Some 16,000 Allied POWs and up to 100,000 Asian slave laborers died during the construction of the railway. I need to watch the 1957 film Bridge on the River Kwai, directed by David Lean and starring Alec Guinness now that I’ve been there.

“When you go home, tell them of us and say we gave our tomorrow for your today.”

Excerpt of a talk by Fred Seiker to the Kwai Railway Memorial at their October 1997 Annual General Meeting

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It is said that one prisoner died for every sleeper laid . . .

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I have not always been as supportive of the military as I should be. I just always believed (or wanted to believe) that there should be another way to solve our differences than killing one another. Regardless, I want to say here and now, THANK YOU to all of the brave men and women for risking your lives to protect our dignity and freedom. Please indulge me while I give a special shout-out to my Dad, who was a Staff Sergeant in the Army in WWII, my good friends and former neighbors, Jeremy and Kim Howard, who served in the US Airforce and their son, Seth, who is currently serving in the US Marine Corps. Most especially, I am so proud of my son, Captain Marcus Walker, who is currently serving as a JAG in the US Airforce.

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Tiger Temple

We stopped at a wonderful restaurant on the Kwai river for lunch and visited the Tiger Temple. There are actually several temple’s that are built high up on a mountain top that can be reached by climbing the steep colored staircase or you can choose to ride the funicular. Once I climbed to the top of the stairs, several of us climbed nine floors to the top of a beautiful pyramid shaped Temple. The winding staircases led us to unique art pieces, Buddha statues and mural paintings on the walls depicting Thailand history on each floor. The Duomo shaped ceiling at the top enclosed what looked like a golden ornate alter. One of the students on the trip indicated that there were actual Buddha relics inside. The views of the rice paddy fields below were spectacular.

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The Big Tree

We did not go to the waterfalls since we were told that they would be dried up at this time of year. Alternately, we went to see another masterpiece of nature, a giant Monkey Pod tree. The pictures don’t do justice to show the size of this massive specimen of a chamchuri (rain tree) that is over 100 years old. On the way out of the park we ran in to some unexpected traffic on the road . . .

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