Hellfire Pass, train ride, and monkeys!

Day 6  Thursday, April 5, 2018  North of Kamchanaburi

What a unique experience to ride for 30 minutes on the "Death Railway" line still in existence. We boarded at the northern-most point where the train still runs, in Nam Tak, after spending the morning visiting Hellfire Pass, where so many POWs died digging through 325 linear feet of solid rock to lay tracks for this train line in 1943.

After breakfast, about 24 of us boarded our bus for the fairly long drive north to Hellfire Pass. Along the way, I took this photo to show the mountains to the NW, which are the foothills of the Himalayas. On the other side of that mountain range is Myanmar (Burma). We also passed two elephants, for a brief moment, on our drive.  And some huge gold Buddhas, and some spectacular temples.

From the parking lot, it was a long descent down these steps to reach the pathway where the Death Railway used to run.

This is what it looked like when we reached the bottom - a flat pathway where the train tracks used to be. We are walking north, toward Burma. The POWs had to cut away at that rock on the right to make a level path. To the left is the deep Kwai River Valley, with the Myanmar border beyond.

This was the approach into Hellfire Pass. Ahead you can see rock on both sides, and the POWs had to cut completely through the solid rock to create this flat passage. It got the name "hellfire" because the POWs thought it looked like the fires of hell during the night, when they were forced to work non-stop, where many torches were used to light up the cutting. That short section of tracks was there just to give you an idea of what they looked like.

As we entered the Pass, there were many personal memorials placed on the rock wall. We see the Australian and British flags, the two main nationalities of POWs who cut/dug through Hellfire Pass.

Now this gives you a chilling sense of how incredible it was to dig through all that rock. You cannot even see the end of the rock as it bends to the left ahead. And it's up to 75 feet high. (Funny how that tree has grown fully up during the past 73 years.)

They found the remains of one of the spikes in the wall. We each had audio guides to listen to survivors describe the horrors of working there in 1943. The way they cut through the rock was to hammer in spikes like this, fill the hole with dynamite, blast it, and then haul away the rock. The POWs would be sledge-hammering all day and all night.

In so many spots along the wall, there were little memorials placed. We were incredibly emotional this whole time listening to the stories on the audio guides, and imagining the horrors that took place where we were standing and walking.

In this photo, we have passed the tall tree and still the rock passage goes on, way up ahead bending to the left, where it finally ends.

 Reaching the end of the 325 foot-long passage, which is 108 yards. On the right you can see memorials placed.

There are the memorials, with official plaques as well.

The plaque describes the making and horrors of constructing this passageway as well as the entire Death Railway. It says that they cut this passage in just 12 "desperate" weeks. 70% of the workers died. They were pushed and pushed to go faster and faster, despite monsoons and disease and dysentery and starvation. The plaque was placed by the Australian-Thai Chamber of Commerce of the Australian Government. Most of the POWs and those who died were Australian, although there also were POWs from Britain, the U.S., and Netherlands, plus conscripted nationals from Thailand, Burma, and Malaysia.

At the end of the pass was this memorial, with Australian and Thailand flags. The railway path continues on in the background for another 2.4 miles. They had to build numerous trestle bridges over culverts and rivers, for a total of 688 bridges over the entire 240-mile railway.

Janet and I climbed this stairway to the platform you see up there, for a view of the pass from above.

Here's the view from above, looking back through the cut. Hard to believe that humans cut through that rock using only primitive tools, much less diseased and depleted humans being forced to do it.

Janet is taking in the view of the previous photo. By this time, I has ascended the other side of the cut.

One could return to the parking lot on this long, steep stairway (which we did not do). It was another terrible point to know that the POWs had to descend and ascend this very trail, to and from their camp where our parking lot was, and of course there were no stairs then, just mud.

Once we were back up by the parking lot, we saw this map of the larger area, and found it interesting. We visited only a small part of this map, in the center right where it says MUSEUM and "Konyu Cutting (Hellfire Pass)". The walking trail goes on for 4 km, to the left-center where it says "end of walking trail." Along the way, where there are stripes across the trail, are trestle bridges.

Near the trail end on the map it says "Site of 'Pack of Cards' Bridge." That's infamous because it collapsed three times during its rushed construction in just three weeks. It was made with unseasoned timber fastened with wooden pegs, bamboo ties, and rattan rope.

In the lower left you can see the River Kwae Noi, which is the actual name of River Kwai.

Once back on our bus (and in air-conditioned comfort!), we drove a short distance to this waterfall.

A short walk from the waterfall was this old train engine on display.

We then walked back across the road where our bus had stopped for the waterfall, and spent a while looking at all these shops. At the far end, Nu led us to a stall where they let us taste their variety of flavored banana chips. Janet and I decided to buy bags of the paprika and sweet versions.

The stalls all looked somewhat like this one. Loaded with stuff to sell!

This stall had meat samples to taste.

And of course I must take pictures of the Carnation displays --again, the way they advertise that they are selling Thailand Iced Tea.

What? Another Carnation display? Ken, are you going to show us EVERY one of these you come across? Give us a break, man.

The bus drove us a little farther south to Nam Tak, which is the terminus of the current railway.
Across from the train station, we had lunch at this traditional Thai restaurant, all made out of bamboo and wood. They brought trays of various entrees that our group really liked, because they were what we were more used to getting in U.S Asian restaurants.

The train was late, so we had to hang around, shop, look at old photos, and withstand the heat and humidity. But here the train is finally arriving!

Waiting to depart. Our car was this open type, but the cars on either side of ours had regular train seats.

A view ahead after we got rolling.

I took this photo to show the jagged mountains in the distance - the foothills of the Himalayas.

We passed by this view of the Kwai River, which the railway tracked for a long section of its distance.

After not TOO long a time, we departed the train. It was just before the train was to go over a very famous wooden trestle viaduct bridge that was the longest bridge of the railway. In this photo, the train is continuing on from our station.

As the train took off, I scampered down the path to the river to capture this view of our train crossing this famous viaduct. It's the original bridge, called Wang Poh.

Behind Janet are the steps I hurried down to get the train photo above. The Kwai River and Janet were both quite attractive at this bend.

I then walked down the tracks a little ways to a big cave with a Buddhist display. This photo turned out to be a pretty cool shot of the river and viaduct. Many POWs died making this bridge, as it was so complicated being on the edge of the cliff. But as I mentioned, what's there today is the original, so it was well built.

I took this photo to show the under-structure of the trestles, still strong after 75 years.

This was the large cave we could walk to down the train tracks about 40 yards. You can barely see the sitting Buddha back there.

Here's a close-up of the shrine at the back of the cave (even though it's blurry). There was just one person there praying; everyone else in the cave were tourists.

Now it's time for all the monkey pictures! On the ride back south to our resort hotel, the bus suddenly pulled off into this area and stopped. Out our windows we watched as macaque monkeys descended around us from all directions. In a matter of minutes, especially after Nu got out and tossed the first treats, there were hundreds of macaques swarming around. Apparently, tourists have been doing this same thing here for quite a while.

Not only Nu, but we all got off the bus and watched and photographed the spectacle. Nu first had a half a coconut as he got off the bus, and a macaque "attacked" him to get it. Nu quickly tossed it before the monkey could truly get to him! Then he opened his bag of banana chips and tossed them. As we were arriving, Nu warned us not to tease them or try to feed them out of our hands. Just toss your treats!

The critters were everywhere!

 There's the guy who "attacked" Nu and got his coconut. It was all his; he wouldn't share.

 So many of them had their babies with them, holding on to mommy either on top or from underneath, as this one is doing.

 The one in the center has baby on her tummy.

 Piggy back ride? Macaque back ride?

That's all the photos I took for that day. As we got back to the resort, I was planning to do the rafting trip offered by the hotel. The last trip of the day was at 4 pm. Nu asked how many wanted to do it and he called ahead to let them know that we had a few takers. Janet was originally going to do it, but didn't like the idea of our returning to the hotel sitting in the back of an open truck bed.

But the skies were threatening! It actually made it more pleasant outside - cooler and seemingly less humid. In the end, the hotel cancelled the trip due to the threatening storms. That also meant we did not use the pool. So, we stayed in the room for the next hour or so and I uploaded photos and edited them, and I also took a nap. By then, the room refrigerator was cold and we enjoyed the beer we had brought in.

At dinner, it was much cooler than the night before. The storm never did hit us, but it sure made it nicer outside. We also were more careful in what we ordered for dinner, so that we would get something we knew we would enjoy compared to the previous night there. It was wonderful!

At the end of our trip, someone asked me what my favorite day was, and I said it was this one.