Can't Cycle - But Great At Karioke

Tuesday 10 October

Whilst we were enjoying the fiasco of dinner last night, it started to rain, Thai style, and crescendoed to a thunder and lightning show, just as we were going to bed. When we woke this morning it was still raining – just – and by the time we had our suitcases in the lobby it had stopped altogether, but the grounds were sodden.

I felt quite poorly this morning with a massive sore throat and headache – was it only the effects of air conditioning? After a breakfast infested with hundreds of Thai-style children – they could actually have been Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, or any other south-east Asian country – ranging in age from about 6 to 16, racing around the food servery like rodents, we boarded two new minibuses and headed to Hellfire Pass, about 70 kms away. This is a large cutting through the mountains, which was made by the prisoners of war to connect the Thailand and Burmese sides of the railway. We walked up and down along a treacherous path – made dangerously slippery by the recent rain – and saw a track, some twenty feet below, wide enough to hold a single railway line. The sheer rock face had been literally dug out to produce this great chasm - one man holding a metal rod that was hammered from above by another man and then twisted to fracture the surface. The debris was collected in bags holding about 25kgs each and carried away – on men’s backs – reminding me of the man delivering our coal when I was small. All the time the Japanese army watched from above, throwing large stones and rocks at the workers to encourage them to work faster (the increased rate of working was known as ‘speedo’ - 24 hour working, longer shifts for the men, and harsher conditions). We then walked down to the base of the pass to stare down in awe at the sheer size of the cutting and wonder at the amount of work that must have gone into producing this one small section of the railway. The first difficulty for the Japanese army had always been crossing the rivers – there were 68 bridges in all along the 415 kms length of track, only eight of which were metal, like the one we saw yesterday - but the second difficulty was always cutting through solid rocks to continue the line, and Hellfire Pass was one of the most challenging. There is a small grey granite memorial, in the shape of a pyramid, at one end of the pass, commemorating all the soldiers and local people who died working on this part of the project.

Walking back to the top of hill again, we could see the jungle spreading out before us, down to the bottom of the winding river Kwai valley, and up the other side, steep cliffs, covered in dense foliage. Just clearing the vegetation itself would have been a mammoth task, especially considering the types of basic tools that were to hand.

There is a new museum here – opened in the mid 1990’s – containing lots of pictures showing the degradation that the men here suffered. There was also a couple of films, one lasting only five minutes or so, with a brief synopsis of the events from 16 September 1942 when the railway was started, until 25 December 1943, when it was completed. It had been predicted to take five years to finish, but in fact, it took only 15 months! A total of 16,000 prisoners and 100,000 local peoples from all over South East Asia died out of 30,000 prisoners of war and 200,000 local people employed on the construction. It was a very sombre party leaving this area – it left much to cogitate and raised many questions – such as why, in the face of all the evidence – pictorial, written, and personal – do the Japanese still deny that any atrocities took place when the bridge was built. A simple acceptance may release the guilt certainly felt by some Japanese people, and would definitely go a long way to appease the Thai people here, who still cannot forgive Japan as a nation, more than 60 years on.

We then set out to Arutthaya – the capital of the second Kingdom of Siam – a journey which would take more than four hours – a reminder of the visa run a couple of weeks ago. We stopped for lunch at a “transport café” where we had a huge choice from ready prepared vats of Thai food, including chicken “jungle curry, beef red curry, a pork ‘bone’ curry with greens (which had small nuggets of bone in!), and other dishes involving frogs and whole shrimps with their shells on. We chose ‘pad thai’ a simple Thai dish, with not too many ‘dodgy’ ingredients – which was very, very good. I did taste the ‘jungle’ curry, and red curry, both of which were hot.

We reached Arutthaya around 15.00 hours. Our cases were ‘dumped’ at the local travel agents, while we were escorted across the road to be “fitted” for our bicycles. We were to ride around the town for two hours, on the main roads, visiting three temples. Colin was aghast – even if he wanted to learn to ride a bike, riding through the high street of a busy town and along and across dual carriageways was not the ideal training ground. He decided to stay behind in a café and give the temples a miss.

The rest of set off – I was a bit wobbly to start with – but very grateful to the short time I had ridden Juz’s bike round and round her garden last summer – it assured me I could still cycle. The roads around here are very flat and quite straight, so navigating is not too difficult, until you want to turn right – even trying to judge the traffic lights is almost impossible, as vehicles can turn left, even on a red light, so the way is not always clear. In the first 50 yards I nearly knocked down two men, who insisted walking in front of me, and a stray three legged dog! The temples we visited were important ruins from the time of the second Kingdom of Thailand – between the 1420s and 1767, when the Burmese overran the area and desecrated everything standing and the capital was moved to Bangkok. We learned the difference between a stupa and a prang –– shape: the first is round and conical, the second is cylindrical; building materials: the first is made of brick while the second is made from lacterite (?) a lava-type stone from Cambodia, that archeologists think was made of soil taken from river beds and dried in the sun before being cut into “breeze block” chunks; decoration: the stupa is not decorated on the outside (the central chambers may have been painted ornately with frescos), while the prang was decorated with lavish plaster designs on the outside. But as with all of Thailand, once you have seen one temple, two may be acceptable, but three is over the top. Sadly in the 1970’s one prang was broken into, and “National Treasures” from the 1400’s were stolen, by digging down from the main chamber, abot 50 feet to the crypt where the treasures had been stored – only a couple of the pieces have been recovered and they are currently in America, where they are being date-tested to ensure they are genuine. About the same time, vandals/thieves also came and removed the heads from hundreds of sandstone Buddha statues in the temples (all in one night?) and nobody has any idea who the culprits were. The thinking is that they were stolen to order – but there are literally hundreds of “bodies” left over the three temples, and only one head left – found in the roots of a baobab tree (the same tree where Buddha received enlightenment!)

After two hours we arrived back at the bicycle shop (having missed an elephant on the way!), all safe and sound. We were all extremely hot and sticky by this time (the sun was out all afternoon and it was very hot). The only place to shower and change was one shower room at the travel agents (well to be more honest, there was a shower head on the wall, that luke warm water would gently stream from) or there were two showers in the hotel opposite, that could be used for 30 bahts. Colin had already used the one in the travel agents while we were cycling, so had all our gear there ready – towel, shower gel, case at the ready for some clean clothes – so I used the room at the travel agents – I was unsure whether you were supposed to aim the shower head at the nearby squat toilet, or let it run on the floor – I opted for the second choice, and it didn’t seem to make too much mess.

All clean – perhaps not so dry – and changed, when we were all congregated in the hotel bar at the roadside opposite, Colin had been elected to give Pok a contribution from each of 200 bahts from of us, towards a new mobile phone – he had lost his the day before, somewhere round the floating market, and was pining about contacting his girlfriend, besides now being unable to make contact to confirm our arrival times, etc. He was a bit overwhelmed by the gift.

We traveled again by tuk-tuk to the river, where a boat awaited to take us up the river, while eating another Thai meal – this time, green chicken curry soup, pork and cashews, sweet and sour whole fish – probably grouper – crab cakes, mixed vegetables and more steamed rice, followed by a variety of fruit. Quite tasty – but on the whole we have been spoilt by the food on Koh Samui. After eating we brought bread to feed the frenzy of catfish that fought each other for the crumbs we sent overboard and then it was time for karaoke! Having taken some time to set up the machine, Pok went first, and then picked on Colin to perform the next song. He went up and selected – guess which song? – of course – “Love Me Tender” (I think this is going to be the theme song of our trip as it keeps popping up along the way). I have never heard Colin volunteer for karaoke before (well, he didn’t quite ‘volunteer’ here, but there was not too much coercion), and he sang bravely into the mike, looking as if he was enjoying himself. Of course, we all sang along too. Then it was someone else’s turn. Once back at the pier, we were taken back to the travel agents to claim our luggage, and then on to the train station, for the overnight train to Chang Mai. We arrived there about 20.15, for the 21.01 train, only to be told it would be at least an hour late. We were all feeling weary by this time, despite the early evening hour, and sitting around on hard benches on Arutthaya station is no fun – trying to avoid the mozzies, The station was packed and everyone seemed to be waiting for our train. It was lucky we had reservations for a bed for the night.

When the train eventually arrived at 22.15, we were all relieved and soon found our “seats”. These turned out to be two seats facing each other, with an overhead bunk to fold down, once the train started., with another “compartment” on the other side of the train. There were large metal luggage racks alongside the rows of seats and Pok tied all the luggage to the racks, for safety. A ‘carriage supervisor’ came and made up the beds (the two chairs pulled out into one bed) with clean sheets and pillow cases for the mattresses and pillows stored in the overhead bunk. Following a visit to the loo (it was European, had a dirty seat and emptied straight on to the track but was in an infinitely better state than the squat one opposite), we all settled down to sleep as quickly as possible. My sore throat, which had eased during the day was returning – as I got tired I presumed - and I didn’t drop off to sleep as easily as I had thought. But after a wander down the corridor, where I met several other travelers (one lad had all his back pack out and was attempting to rearrange it in his bag), I managed to sleep.

This will be the last blog to be published until at least Sunday, when we should be back in Bangkok, after trekking, elephant trekking and rafting (all supposing the weather conditions allow it). At present Bangkok is severely flooded in a lot of areas, and the king has offered to allow 250 rai of royal fields at Arutthaya to take some of the flood waters, to relieve the pressure further downstream (the farmers at Arutthaya are not at all happy about this offer, and have protested, but Bangkok is suffering badly at the moment from the large amount of water streaming down from the hills up in Chang Mai). The train was delayed at Bangkok due to the floods. Lets hope the next few days stay dry or we will be trudging through mud and likely to get very wet, on our way to the remote villages in northernThailand.