Kanchanaburi
Site Of The Death Railway (The Thailand Burma Railway, 1942 43) And The Bridge Over The Khwae Yai; Gateway To Erawan National Park · Kanchanaburi, Kanchanaburi
Kanchanaburi is a riverside town about three hours west of Bangkok where the Khwae Noi and Khwae Yai rivers meet, and it is the place where the Second World War is remembered in Thailand. In 1942 and 1943 the Japanese army forced Allied prisoners of war and far larger numbers of Asian labourers to build the Thailand-Burma Railway, the Death Railway, through the jungle to Burma; many tens of thousands died, and estimates of the total run from about 90,000 to well over 100,000. The steel bridge over the Khwae Yai, made famous by a 1957 film that was largely fiction, still carries trains, and the town holds the immaculate Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre and the JEATH museum. Further up the valley are the Hellfire Pass memorial and its walking trail, and the surviving line runs along a wooden viaduct above the river to Nam Tok. The province is also green and wild: the seven tiers of Erawan Falls, the parks of Sai Yok, raft houses floating on the river and, near the Myanmar border, Sangkhlaburi and its long wooden bridge.
Bridge over the River Kwai, Tha Ma Kham, Kanchanaburi, Kanchanaburi, 71000, Thailand
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern: the bridge is always open to walk across, with trains crossing a few times a day; the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery opens daily from about 8 am to 5 pm or later; the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre from about 9 am to 4 or 5 pm daily; the Hellfire Pass Interpretive Centre from about 9 am to 4 pm daily, with the trail best finished by mid-afternoon; Erawan National Park from about 8 am to 4:30 pm, with the upper tiers closing earlier, often about 3 to 3:30 pm. The Nam Tok line has only a few trains a day in each direction. The traps that ruin a day are reaching Erawan in the afternoon after the upper tiers close, missing the one morning train or the last return from Nam Tok, arriving at a museum just before its closing, and visiting on a Thai holiday weekend. Confirm current times before relying on them.