Floating market and River Kwai

Day 5  Wednesday, April 4, 2018   Damnoen Saduak and Kamchanaburi

We enjoyed the floating market, where we did all our souvenir shopping -- for us and our family/friends back home. We then traveled to the site of the horrible Death Railway memories during the Japanese occupation.

We departed Bangkok after breakfast, and headed SW toward the floating market. Interestingly, we passed salt ponds,whereby they let ocean water flow into the land, and then the water evaporates and they harvest the salt. We also pulled to the side of the road at this coconut "factory". We got to see all the uses they achieve from coconuts, such as carved wood items (we purchased a serving spoon/fork), sweetener, food, and water. In this photo, Nu is showing us how they trim the coconut palm leaves.

We all got to sample the cooked coconut meat that was only slightly sweetened. There were numerous items for sale, all linked to coconut in some way. Very prominent when we first entered the tent was a huge carved phallus! They didn't appear to care that children were there too.

Nu is showing us, and offering us to sample, the fresh coconut meat he just scraped using a blade affixed to the saddle he's sitting on.

We then drove to the town of Damnoen Saduak and its floating market. This market is considered the best near to Bangkok, and therefore the most touristy. Lots of tour buses were there! Not only were vendors on the canals, but on either side there were 100 times more vendors on the land.

This view is at the end of the market portion of the canal, but the canal network was vast. It is linked to the Gulf of Thailand by a river, and tourists could take much longer canal tours than just the market area.

The vendor boats were on the sides, and the tourist boats traveled down the center. We chose to walk along the sides to observe all the activity. The vendors sold to both the tourist boats and to us on the sides. Janet and I bought lots of souvenirs here. The method of haggling prices was for the vendor to type in her amount on a small calculator and hand it to you. You then erased the amount and entered your counter offer. This kept going back and forth until you agreed on a sale. Fun.

I decided to sample what the woman there was cooking on her mini-BBQ - chicken or pork strips on a stick. I asked for only one, 10 Bhat, but usually a person would order a complete meal with numerous meat strips, rice, a vegetable, and a sweet.

Yum, eating my single strip of pork.

The snake guy wasn't getting any takers (let the snake wrap around you for a photo). I forget whether they were pythons or boa constrictors.

This was on the bridge over the canal as you drove toward the parking lot, showing that you had arrived at the floating market.

It says "Welcome to Floating Market" in English, below the Thai-language version. This was on the more major canal artery at the end of the smaller market canal.

This photo is in the opposite direction from the photo before. You can see it is a busy canal system. This direction led to the main river that flowed into the Gulf of Thailand. On the left, you can see the backs of tour boats turning into the primary market canal.

As we were walking back to our bus, we passed another stall using the stacked cans of Carnation Sweetened Condensed Milk to advertise that they sold Thailand Iced Tea.

We departed by bus at about noon, and headed northwest toward Kamchanaburi. Along the way in a small city, we stopped at a Tesco supermarket for lunch at their food court. Lots to choose from. We both chose something "authentic Thai" according the posted photos of them, and they cooked them up in woks in front of us. Mine was fine, but Janet's was too spicy, so I ate most of hers too. Janet decided instead to have an ice cream sundae type of thing, using shaved ice cream to make it light and airy (and less caloric!).

After we finished eating, there was time to go shopping if you wished to buy anything, such as personal snacks. Nu said we'd have refrigerators in our rooms if we wanted to take along our own drinks of any sort. So we did. We bought a few bags of "different" savory snacks, and a six-pack of Leo Beer.

Soon we arrived in Kamchanaburi, where the Bridge on the River Kwai is located, as well as this museum we visited to describe the horrors for those building the railway in 1943.

First, I must tell how I somehow got the song "Guantanamera" in my mind to be able to pronounce Kamchanaburi, and I would continue to sing "Kan-chan-a-buri, Juanita, Kan-chan-a-buri..." every time I wanted to mention the city name. Janet soon thought I was nuts, but it DID help me to remember how to pronounce it!

Anyway, this museum is owned by the Australian government since most of the POWs who built the railway were Aussies. The whole thing was just so terrible - man's inhumanity to man. Japanese engineers said the 240-mile railway linking near-Bangkok to Burma would take five years to build, but the Japanese decided they wanted it built in 16 months. The result was horror and death. 16,000 POWs died in the project, and another 74,000 Asian conscripts died who were brought in from the occupied countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia. The museum illustrated the horrific conditions and treatment the workers were subjected to, as well as explaining the railway details themselves.

The railway was finished in the 16 months, and carried war-related train traffic for 20 months until it was damaged from Allied bombing in the spring of 1945.

Across from the museum was this cemetery with many of those who died building the railway. It was certainly a well-kept plot, with fresh flowers at every grave stone.

Despite the day's heat and humidity, I walked a little bit among the grave stones.

We then drove a short distance to the famous bridge, over the River Kwai (Nu said they pronounce it "Kway", because "kwai" means "water buffalo". LOL)

It was hugely commercial there due to the 1955 Academy Award-winning movie, which is, in a way, funny since the events in the movie did not really happen. In the movie, the POWs blew up their newly completed wooden-trestle bridge just as the first train, full of Japanese soldiers, was crossing. In reality, they built the steel bridge you see here, and it was completed and used for 20 months before Allied bombing damaged it. Shortly after the war, they fixed the damage and have continued to use the bridge for daily train traffic (which now ends about 20 miles north, almost to the Hellfire Pass area we visited the next day).

And, the first train over the finished bridge in 1943 was actually a "brothel train" carrying the so-called comfort nurses for the Japanese soldiers.

Since the last train of the day had passed over, they allowed the tourists to walk across. The inner tracks are the original, while the wider tracks were added later for the modern trains.

 The view upriver from the bridge, illustrating the commercial nature of this bridge even though the story in the movie didn't happen! Note: Only seven POWs died constructing the bridge, which is remarkable when compared to what happened at Hellfire Pass, which we visited the next day.

And the same caption for looking downriver.

Adjacent to the bridge on the far side of the river was this impressive-looking temple.

This was on the other side of the river. As you can see, all the tourists had turned around by this time.

We then traveled about 13 miles north along the river to our resort hotel "in the middle of nowhere", as Nu said. It was relatively new, spacious, and well groomed. We were definitely in the country, and NOT a city. The pool was inviting, and we used it later to relax.

This is the view out our room window, looking down on the River Kwai. Since our room refrigerator had not been turned on earlier, the beers in it, and certainly the beers we brought, were not ready for drinking. We were definitely ready for some cold refreshment, but we'd need to seek it out or wait. I decided to wander the beautiful grounds a bit.

There was this lounging platform over the river. You see the current to get an idea how fast the river was flowing.

These are the rafts we planned on using the next day, following our excursion, to float down the river for 45 minutes and get picked up by a hotel truck and brought back.

For comparison, here's the same picture of the rafts the next morning, when we were shocked to see how low the river water was. It turns out that each night, they release little water from the upstream dam, but then let it flow again later in the day. 

On my stroll, I also saw this "hammock" where it dips down into the river water so you can stay cool.

Again, for comparison, here is what it looked like the next morning at low water level.

The resort also had this "romantic restaurant" right next to, and on, the river. I'm not aware that anyone in our group elected to eat their dinner here. We all chose the restaurant linked to the reception area, in our case, believing it was indoors and would be air conditioned. Nope, it was open-air and still hot and humid! My dinner was spicy, causing me to perspire profusely for two reasons.

On my walk by the river and its riverfront restaurant, I was able to buy a Phukut Beer and cool off a bit. I went back to the room and Janet was ready for us to cool off in the pool. It was indeed refreshing. We visited with others from our group, and Janet pretty much realized that everyone (except one she spoke with on Day 3) was anti-Trump.

Later, at our dinner, we sat with the couple from Kansas (Hal and Chris) and had a nice visit. But I sure did sweat a lot! I ordered both a Thai salad and a pork curry. The salad was full of unusual ingredients, some not chewable, and the curry was good other than the unchewable pieces of pork. This was probably my least favorite meal on the trip, partly because of how hot and humid it was. The tall Chang Beer was the best part!

When we got back to the room, the refrigerator still had not gotten very cold. No more beer for the evening.