I really can't make up my mind about Kanchanaburi. When I tell you that I only spent one day there you'll tell me I should have spent longer and that surely one day is not enough time to sample the good and the bad of a town. The peculiar thing about Kanchanaburi is that the good and the bad are tightly intertwined. Its like a set of Russian dolls where each alternate doll is pretty, then ugly, happy, then sad. Its a contradiction of a place.
When I left Kanchanaburi, I resolved to write something about the place. On the bus to Ayutthaya, my next stop, Jim Hank's "Santa's gonna come in a pickup truck" crooned from the radio creating a surreal country and western sound in an unmistakably asian landscape. Across the isle from me, an aged monk munched happily on an ice-cream cone, in clear violation of the monastic rule forbidding food after midday. More clashes and contradictions. It was as if I had taken something of the town away with me.
In short, Kanchanaburi is famous for only one thing. It is the point at which the Thai-Burmese railway crosses the river Kwai and like any town immortalised on celluloid, it capitalises on the tourism. But Bridge over the River Kwai is not Ryan's Daughter, or The Quiet Man. It is based on a true story and if anything softens the truth about what happened. It was more than a few hundred prisoners of war who dies constructing the Death Railway, thousands of Thai and Burmese civillians were enslaved by the Japanese army and lost their lives too. The quiet and peaceful allied war cemetary commemorates the combattants of the Dutch, Australian and the American armed forces, the unnamed locals are for the most part in unmarked graves.
I always like to look in a museum first when I arrive in a town and the World War II museum beside the bridge is quite unique. The building is adorned with chinese dragons. There are Buddhist and Hindu shrines in the courtyard. The displays are hand painted and hand written on the plasterwork. Wartime photographs show general Tojo's trial at Nurnberg. Artefacts left after the occupiers fld are on display. The story of the construction of the railway is vividly told, with nothing left to the imagination. Blood stained and starved looking mannequins are used to illustrate much of the story. One room is dedicated to the allied bombing of the bridge in 1943. A huge mural on the wall shows the approacing bombers dumping their load. In the foreground on the floor a ditch filled with red-stained muddy water is piled high with disfigured and bloody mannequins. The Japanese had forced their slaves up onto the bridge in a vain attempt to dissuade the allied bombers from fropping their bombs. Two spans of the bridge were destroyed in the bombing and many of those on the bridge were killed or maimed.
The remains of one hundred and six bodies who were found on the site of the museum are entombed in one of the rooms. Scattered around the tomb are some of the broken implements found with the bodies. A small alter bedecked with flowers, incense and food for the afterworld allowed a poignant moment. Just in case I found this too depressing, just in case I might leave the museum pondering man's inhumanity to man, the walls of the next room were decorated with smiling portraits of former Miss Thailand winners. About twenty pretty unblemished girls smiled at me as if to say that nothing nasty had ever really happened. I had opened a thoughtful doll and found a thoughtless one inside.
Next stop, the bridge. It was much smaller than I expected. About a half dozen iron spans supported on concrete pillars. The sections destroyed in the war had been replaced and tourist trains now travel up the death railway through Hell Fire Pass and on almost to the Burmese frontier. Wooden plank between the rails allow tourists to cross to the west bank. But not, as I tried, with some element of solemnity. Not, in memory of those who had died to construct a railway which only operated for a few months before becoming abandoned. No, instead happy smiling Japanese tourists pose on the bridge for snapshots. My long sleeves, green trousers and broad hat must have made me look like an Australian soldier because two of the groups beconed me to join in their happy smiling photographs.
On the west side of the river, hawkers pressed their wares on me. Plastic modles of the bridge seemed particularly popular. One seller presented hardwood carvings to me. She held a serene Buddha in one hand, a spread eagled naked woman in the other. She catered for all tastes it seemed.
Kancharaburi is a long narrow town, wedged between the railway and the river. The bridge is at the northernmost tip. Dotted along the river are small guesthouses catering mostly to backpackers. I chose one because it had a large peaceful lookng garden facing onto the river. Tethered rafts floated a few metres out from the riverbank allowing even more seclusion and it looked as though I might get some peace to think about what I had just seen.
Not so. Opening this peaceful and charming doll, a noisy and unpleasant one appeared within. Ironically it was Israeli tourists who were splitting the silence with rap, rave and rock music. Each trying to out-loud the next. I wondreed how they would react if this was the twon of Auschwitz? I took my book and walked out to one of the rafts, out of earshot of the ghetto blasters. That was pleasant until sundown, the time when the mosquitos usually appear. Instead however, the air was filled with the sounds of karaoke. In an incredible travesty, the river which thwarted Japanese expansionist plans in the war is now used for floating karaoke barges at the weekends. There was nothing triumphalist about it that I could see, but tasteful it was not. I retreated to the restaurant. There was nothing vegetarian, so I opted for a mixed seafood dish with rice.
Presently the restaurant's TV spluttered to life for the evenings video presentation. Deep Rising is a badly written account of how an intelligent sea monster invades a luxury liner and somehow gets defeated by people who speak in monosyllables. I stared at the plate of boiled squid tentacles which I had been brought and looked back to the TV where I was informed that 'this is some real b**rd of a fish, lets go give it some lead'. It could have been worse. The neighbouring guest house was screening 'Bridge over the River Kwai'.
Enough said? Maybe, maybe not. I could have stayed longer. There were nicer things to see. The Japanese government has a solemn memorial to those who died. The allied governments have commemorated their war dead. I felt though that the Thai government could have been a little more sensitive and not reopened the railway and maybe created an exclusion zone around the bridge so as to let it remain a real war memorial. In truth though I have still not made up my mind.