Adventuring... we are adventuring... there ya go, two OMR before you even knew what was going on...
Well I am back in Bangkok, it is half four on... Wednesday afternoon, according to the computer... The last couple of days have been among the more memorable I have had for a very long time for a variety of reasons. I am sitting down to rest and gather sanity from doing some writing. Where to start... well, yesterday...
I got up around 8 after a pretty short and average sleep (as they all are at the moment for some reason) and caught a minibus (actually a pretty nice new van) north with assorted other euro types to Kanchanaburi, about a two hour drive in the usual "entertaining" SE Asian traffic. Once there I left the others to their assorted tours and hotels and wandered down the road to where a rather solid but unremarkable looking black bridge spanned a shiny brown river... which was of course the Kwai, the big black bridge being one of many, but the only one which is THE Bridge on the River Kwai.
Far from being a remote spot in the jungle the bridge is now on the northern edge of Kanchanaburi township and, I am rather sorry today, the usual tourist-trap commercial B.S. is all around it. Ice cream stalls, food places, about 500 shops hawking all manner of souvenir crap, a wooden cartoon-looking "train" ticket booth selling tickets on a 15 minute tourist ride over the bridge... but it was still a pretty surreal feeling to walk out over the river on the narrow stretch of black steel and actually to be standing on THE bridge. It was a weird mix of emotions for me, it was kind of hard to take in. To me I guess the bridge is not really a monument to those who built it, but it does bring sadness, and anger. I walked back and forth a bit, trying to get a feeling for the whole thing, and trying to take photos that didn't contain fat tourists in bright clothes, but the coaches must have left Bangkok just after we did because it wasn't long before they came in their droves. I left and made my way over to the "Death Railroad Museum" which claimed all sorts of things on the signs but was in fact a rather pathetic collection of miscellaneous World War II related rubbish and a bunch of copied photographs, plus a glass case which apparently contained the remains of 106 Thais who died working on the Japanese railroad.
Somewhat disheartened by the whole affair I wandered down the road a bit, looking for but not finding a bus station where I might get a ride north. The man in the little wooden train had advised me that sadly the proper "Death Railroad" train that does a two hour trip over the actual railroad laid by allied soldiers working as Japanese slave labour was not running again until the next day. With no minivans seemingly heading in that direction and feeling like I really hadn't seen as much as I needed to see, I figured I would have to find my own way to where I was going. After a while down the main road I figured I may as well keep on walking to the Kanchanaburi Cemetary, I had initially planned to get a tuk-tuk or taxi but I was already on the way... this ended up taking some time, but when I got there I was greeted by a tasteful little plot with a white stone gate, next to the smokey noisy main road, being carefully tended by a group of local gardeners. I walked the rows for a long time, as I tend to do, and managed to find a Kiwi, a young air force Pilot Officer, aged 23. I wondered what his story was to end up a lonely Kiwi sharing the suffering of all the Aussies and Brits and Dutch and Thais and Indians and various others.
I sat down for a while and contemplated, then got up and started looking for the mythical northbound bus that I knew was supposed to be heading in the right direction. This took a lot longer than anticipated (every thirty minutes my ass), and I had all but given up as the clock ticked on and on, mindful that the minibus driver had told me to be back by 1630 for a ride to Bangkok. Finally a local bus approached and I flagged him down, but it was the wrong one... I waited some more and another appeared and this one was right... I knew it now had to be near on three, and the bus ride alone was going to take an hour and a half one way... but I thought "screw it"... I hadn't come all this way not to do things properly had I? Not like I was going to be back to do it again in a hurry... so I paid my 50 baht and settled back. Maybe there would be another way home. If it didn't take toooo long to get there...
The kilometer markers passed achingly slowly, and the tired old bus struggled and groaned up the winding roads as we gradually gained altitude. Stops were frequent as people got on and off at dusty little bus stops, and the usual women came aboard trying to sell home made snacks and drinks in plastic bags.. I was tempted to grab one as I had had only one coke all day and hadn't eaten... But I decided to wait for now, there is really no telling where that water comes from... If I was going to catch some evil parasite I figured I would wait until I was already dying. We chugged on, passing several police security checkpoints similar to the ones in the south (we were now on the Burmese border rather than the Malaysian), once again I the token white guy and the subject of some curiosity.
Finally we passed kilometer stone 64 and with my total lack of Thai and the ticket man's total lack of English we agreed this is where I wanted to get off, and he called the bus to a halt. I was stoked there was still some light left but the sun hung low so I didn't waste any time... I had seen a watch on the bus and it had said quarter past five... I had heard the place closed at four thirty but I didn't care. The two soldiers at the gate looked slightly bemused as I casually wandered past but didn't object. A tiny sign told me I was in the right place (I was worried for a minute there) and I continued down a narrow sealed drive, past a herd of dairy cows, round a corner, down a hill, under trees... Until I saw the carparks, big enough for a dozen double decker tour coaches but tonight wonderfully empty... the museum was closed and locked but I didn't care, and the sole minibus driver standing next to his vehicle was the only person watching. I didn't hesitate as an old guy I presumed to be the caretaker wandered around a corner, busy tidying up after the day. Without looking back I rounded the corner of the building eyeing up anything that looked like a trail, and saw some stairs that led down the steep hillside. Expecting to be called back at any second I started trudging down the wooden stairs and raised walkways, trying to keep my bootsteps light so as not to attract attention. The light dimmed even more as I got into the jungle, and I thought about how humorous it would be if I tripped and ended up in a tangled heap at the bottom with nobody there til morning... I reached the bottom and my boots crunched onto the gravel of the track, and I waited for a yell from up above... but none came. I started off with some pace, camera snapping as I went, trying to get everything I could before I lost the light entirely. The occupants of the minivan waiting above, probably Aussies looking at them, walked past and smiled and climbed the stairs back to the top. And I was alone. I was there... I had made it... and I was alone, on Hellfire Pass. So I walked on, stoked, savouring the incredible view between the trees and bamboo, as the sun set over mountains beyond a vast smokey valley, the beauty painfully ironic considering the suffering that had created the place. Here and there scatted railway sleepers still lay where they had been placed by the prisoners of war 60-something years ago. Twisted trees grew from both sides and atop the solid stone walls, cut from the hill by the allied soldiers forced to work and die there by the Japanese.
I walked on for a while longer, wall to the right side, trees and a steep drop to the other, wondering at the sheer manpower required to dig this godforsaken track, and finally rounded a corner to be greeted by the pass itself, a long deep gouge in the rock, carved through the middle of a hill, named for the infernal glow of the campfires and lanterns used as the prisoners worked through the night. Solid vertical stone walls rose up on either side and dwarfed me as I entered and followed the path where the rails once lay, to the middle point, where a solitary tree had somehow since grown out of the rocky floor, reaching upward toward the fading strip of light overhead. I stopped there and my boots became silent, and all there was to hear were the familiar sounds of the jungle, crickets and bugs and the occasional bird... a gentle breeze in the treetops... peaceful, quiet, still. And I thought about the spirits of the men who had died here and along the track in either direction... in their hundreds, ordinary guys like myself, made great by their decision to stand up and fight, and made to suffer unimaginable horrors as a consequence. I wondered if they were still here, among the jungle shadows, sitting atop the high walls of the pass looking down, or moving back and forth along the path they had carved like a silent river. And I was alone, a long way from home, as they had been, where they worked and fell, as the dark rose around me... and I put my hand on one hard rock wall, the same hewn by their hands, and soaked in their blood, and sweat, and tears. And I bowed my head. And I stood there, for a long, long time.
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