Ludwig's Odyssey: Central Thailand - Ayutthaya & Kanchanaburi

And so back to Thailand, to see the bits that we missed last time.

A few days in Bangkok to enjoy some wonderful food and see Star Wars!, then a train journey north for a couple of hours to arrive in Ayutthaya.

Once arrived, we decided to walk to our guest house as the weather was unusually mild (the tuk tuk drivers only rip you off anyway), got settled in and the weather got gradually colder and colder.

We’ve been used to eating outside all this time but this night, we had to go indoors, the wind chill was something we’ve not experienced for a long long time. It has been cold on a few occasions on our travels but really only a few chilli nights when we’ve been up at altitude. This felt like we where in the midsts of winter, especially as we didn’t have any warm clothing.

We woke up in the morning and the cold snap continued, it was no more than 15c (it should be at least 30c), so trousers on, waterproof jackets on to keep in any warmth and off out on bicycles to see some of the historical ruins in the old centre. (How are we going to cope when we come back home..)

Ayutthaya was the old capital of Siam for 400 years or so until 1767 when the Burmese sacked the city and as befits buddhist beliefs, there were many many temples created some of which were restored in the early 1900s which is what we see today.

It’s a really pleasant area to cycle around going from temple to temple, very reminiscent of our time in Sukhothai.

The second day, the temperature had increased a bit but it still wasn’t anywhere near what we usually see on the thermometer. This time we visited the area outside the main centre which included a couple more temples but also areas where French and Portuguese settlers had been issued land back in the 1600s, including a Portuguese grave site.

We also witnessed a ceremony at one of the working temples (Wat Phanan Choeng) which we had never seen before, a Robe Offering Ceremony. Men dressed in white led the ceremony, after some prayers had been performed, some of these men climbed into the giant Buddha’s lap and some began collecting bundles of orange cloths/robes from silver trays held up by the seated worshipers, the bundles were then tossed up to the men in the Buddha’s lap. Once up there they were unravelled and tied to a rope slung over the Buddha’s shoulder. All the trays collected, the rope was then pulled and the bundled robes snaked up the Buddha’s shoulder. That was it we thought but then the men grabbed the other ends of these robes and tossed them down to the seated crowd.

The people at the front passed the robes back to those behind them and once they had reached the back everyone lifted the robes over their heads. After a short prayer the robes were dragged back up and slung over the Buddhas shoulder. A very odd but interesting ceremony to watch, have a look yourself on the video we took.

The following day we made our way to Kanchanaburi on a couple of buses and settled in to our guest house. We went out for the evening to get some food and on the way we stopped in at the Jolly Frog Guest house, this is the place that Wendy had stayed in when she came here some 17 years back so was curious to see what it was like. It hadn’t really changed that much nor had the clientele, within 2 minutes she recognised someone she had met there all those years ago! John, a really nice guy from Essex who comes over most years to escape the English winter, of course we had to go out and have a few drinks. We enjoyed his company for the few days we where there and his local knowledge was also very helpful, there were other really nice people that we met around that guest house, the food was really nice and very cheap too so we just kept coming back.

Aside from that, the main reason we came to Kanchanaburi of course was to visit the famous bridge over the river Kwai and see the other WWII sites around the area related to the infamous Death Railway.

The bridge is very nice and shiny, mainly all original and made of steel and concrete and not wood as in the film (which was actually filmed in Sri Lanka). Only the middle section has been rebuilt, this was after the British bombed it to stop the Japanese getting supplies into Burma.

We of course had to visit Hellfire Pass (around 80km from Kanchanaburi) which had an excellent Audio Tour, we were lucky that we arrived around lunch time on our hired motorbike and had the place nearly all to ourselves before the coach parties turned up a couple of hours later, this gave us a much better experience to reflect on what happened here.

The poor sods, malnourished, frail and disease ridden that had to chip away at a rock face by hand, no wonder so many died, it's hard to get your head around the cruelty of it. The workers were kept in such inhumanly poor conditions and malnourished to the point of starvation, not to mention all the tropical diseases and cholera that spread around the camps, it’s small wonder that any of them survived.

If you’ve seen the film, The Bridge on the River Kwai, it doesn’t really portray what really happened here, the Railway Man is much more accurate.

Back in town, opposite the Thai-Burma Railway Museum, a very well made museum about the building of the line is the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery where at least half of the PoWs that perished are remembered here.

PoWs and Romusha (Forced Asian Labourers) built the line in record time (415km in just over a year) which killed around 20% of the 60,000 odd PoW workers and possibly 90,000 or more of an estimated 300,000 Romusha workforce.

It’s not all doom and gloom, there are other, non war related attractions too, but we didn't visit many of them, we preferred to hire a motorbike and see the countryside instead, visiting the odd temple here and there which was a great way to see the area.

We sort of got stuck here for over a week when we had initially decided to stay just three nights. Accommodation, food and drink is very cheap here and it’s got a nice vibe even with the go-go bars, they are easily avoided or not whichever your preference ;-).

Next stop Prachuap Khiri Khan as we make our south.

Ayutthaya