![\"Day](\"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/Day86KanchanaburitoHueHin8of17.jpg\" "\\"Day")
<\/a> Kanchanaburi is the site of the infamous \u2018Bridge over the river Kwai\u2019 and we were eager to spend some time there learning about the building of the bridge but also as a tribute to Steve\u2019s grandfather who was a PoW in Singapore during the war and worked on the construction of the Thailand \u2013 Burma Railway\u2026also known as the \u2018Death Railway\u2019 which the Japanese wanted as a key link to India without having to use the sea.<\/p>\nThe guide book had pre-warned us that the bridge looked nothing like the 1957 film as they had depicted it as constructed from wood, and, after a couple of checks that we were stood on the right bridge we took time to appreciate the gigantic task that over 30,000 British PoW helped\u2026\u2026\u2026.wrong word, were \u2018forced\u2019 to build.\u00a0 It was thought-provoking for all of us \u2013 or for Steve who described it as a \u2018Back to the Future\u2019 movie moment as he could see himself fading away at the thought that he wouldn\u2019t be here if his grandpa had died which made us all think that we wouldn\u2019t be there either on the bridge if it wasn\u2019t for Steve\u2026\u2026all still present and correct we carried on!!<\/p>\n
Wanting to know more we headed to the Death Railway museum for a very humbling lesson about the area and the hardships that both civilians and PoW\u2019s endured under Japanese rule.\u00a0 The railway, which is 258 miles long, took only 16mths to build versus a 5 yr engineer\u2019s estimate.\u00a0 The conditions workers were under is unimaginable and resulted in over 116,000 deaths (6,450 British) mainly from malnutrition and disease.\u00a0 Makes you appreciate the suffering our grandparents\/parents were under at the time.\u00a0 Love you Grandad (Mr Jones) \u2013 hope you\u2019re still spreading the word about FTFE and handing out flyers!!! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Our next stop after a long drive was Hua Hin and our first view of the sea on Stage 4 and Steve\u2019s since leaving in July.\u00a0 We had our usual comical looks whilst trying to find somewhere for us and Martha to stay. We tried the Shopping Mall \u2013 busy, Fishing Port \u2013 smelly, Temple \u2013 looked a little out of place!.. until and exceptionally helpful and lovely local offered to escort us on her bike to a hotel with room for us all inc Martha.\u00a0 People really are lovely here \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
LB<\/p>\n
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Location : River Kwai – Kanchanaburi to Hua Hin High Point: Helpful people Low Point: Stinky chat in the cab No Point: Barham\u2019s phone The day started early at 6am with our first view of the river Kwai from our Hotel.\u00a0 The late night karaoke boats (incl. squealing Thai\u2019s onboard) gave us an idea of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-expedition-updates","category-luang-prabang-to-singapore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3649"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3659,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3649\/revisions\/3659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}