Textick

Tuesday, 17th January, Little Creek Hideaway Resort, Kanchanaburi, 9:50pm

There is something crick-crick-cricking outside our bungalow window, and we have no idea what it is, but it sounds like it’s getting closer. This is Bug Paradise. I’ve already flicked a grasshopper and a beetle off our bed, and am looking forward to the safety of our mosquito net. This is our brief escape from Bangkok, a two night stay in Kanchanaburi, two hours out of Bangkok, better know as the place with the bridge over the River Kwai .
Thankfully the bus trip here was devoid of all stinky babies, although we did have to sit in separate seats for an hour of it (but then the guy next to me got off, so James scrambled next to me and we were reunited). The place we decided to stay looked way nicer on the brochure than it actually is (an old story, I know), but it’s still really cool, mainly because it’s so weird. It’s in the middle of nowhere, and it’s really new and flat. All the trees are fledglings, so once they’re up and big it’ll be much better here, but now it’s like virgin African scrub. The paths are pebbles and the grass is dry and crackles beneath my feet. Our bungalow roof is made of grass, and the best feature? The outdoors bathroom! It’s…fairly private (a tall man could look over and see all our jiggly bits easily, so let’s hope those around are either short or not perverts), but the shower is a funky waterfall-type affair, and the floor is large pebbles and stepping stones, and it’s all orange and cool, although it does feel like we’re on Big Brother. The bungalows are really nice, bugs and all. It makes a nice change from Bangkok. Plus there’s a great swimming pool, with lounge chairs we can actually get to (no Europeans reserving them at 6am!).
Since we got in early, we decided to see the bridge and a war cemetery in the late afternoon. First we visited the cemetery, and read about the deaths building the Thailand-Burma railway. 15,000 POWs died, and 100,000 civilians, from exhaustion, overworking, dehydration, starvation and disease. The graves were simple, grey plaques in low white headstones, with names, regiments, dates of death, age, and sometimes a brief message from home. It was silent there, even though we were metres from a busy road. It’s strange how cemeteries seem so still, or maybe it’s us that chose to stop moving, to stop noticing the world around us. When we walked back out, the noise hit me again, and it seemed unnatural that it could have been going on that whole time. One of the gravestones that moved me the most was a personal message saying something like “Taken from us doing his duty to the country, I will try to understand. Mother.” Seeing all the unnamed soldiers (“known unto God”) was really moving as well. We moved among the graves of the Australian soldiers.
Across the road was a museum with a gaudy banner boasting “NEW! Thai-Burma Railwat Centre.” Then, in a splash of marketing disgrace, another banner declared “Models! Photos! Exhibits!” etc. We avoided this museum at all costs. We began the walk to the bridge, which was longer than we thought it would be. We started getting exhausted, sweating, boiling hot, and we realised we couldn’t possibly even begin to relate to the conditions the men building the bridge had gone through. We were struggling with a thirty minute walk in the setting sun. Imagine midday, with no water, no food, no rest, no shoes, no shirts, no energy.
So we were in a sombre, reflective mood by the time we reached the bridge. The bridge. Jesus. We just stared, slack-jawed, totally and utterly…offended. It was a circus. A complete goddamn circus of people scrambling around. Market stalls were set up right to the edge of the bridge, and tacky Thai pop blared out of a speaker set up right next to the railway. There were dozens of package tour groups, mostly Japanese, taking photos of everything and anything. James and I really wanted to be able to take a moment, get some silence to try to remember the soldiers and think about all they’d gone through. It wasn’t possible with tourists shoving past us on the bridge, taking fifty photos of them standing in the middle, none of them even seeming in the slightest bit concerned or interested in the history of the bridge. We saw about four other Western couples, and they looked as put out and baffled as we did by the tourism chaos that was going on. Now, I’m not saying for a second that tourists coming to see a sight isn’t good. But when the history of that thing is being completely forgotten for the sake of an ice-cream and a fake jade necklace, I get pretty shitty. Then, to make matters worse, as James and I are still muttering about how this is the most offensive and tacky and awful tourist destruction we’d seen since Cu Chi Tunnels, a hideous yellow locomotive bursts into life and chugs across the bridge as the sun sets behind some mountains. Tourists snap photos of themselves crossing the bridge (which, btw, is extremely easy to walk across, so taking a train is really unnecessary). Needless to say, we walked the length of the bridge then left as soon as possible (although we seriously contemplated “tripping” over the power cord that was linked to the speakers that were playing carnival, playful, horrendously inappropriate Thai pop songs, but decided our statement would be lost on nearly everyone). We didn’t talk for about fifteen minutes of our walk home, too stunned by shock and disgust at the display we’d just seen. That, along with Cu Chi Tunnels firing range, is war tourism at its absolute worst. Go see the bridge, people, but know that the atmosphere it deserves and the respect it needs is non-existent.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2006 at 10:33 pm and is filed under Travel, Thailand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.