Thailand-Burma Railway Part 1

Day 2 in Thailand was an 11 hour round trip to visit the Thailand-Burma Railway.  One very famous location along the Thailand-Burma Railway is commonly referred to as the "Bridge on the River Kwai." There was a Academy Award winning movie made about the bridge in 1957. The Thailand-Burma Railway is also called the "Death Railway" because so many men lost their lives during construction. Certainly this is not your typical vacation spot for everyone, but so worth it.

We began the day in the rain but as we headed west towards Kanchanaburi (128 km west of Bangkok) the rain disappeared.  One interesting type of taxi:

Along the way, I saw a car flip around in the road on the other side of the median and end up in the median bouncing then finally settling down. I gasped but B hadn’t even noticed. It happened on his side of the car!

Road signs are rarely, if at all, in English.

The driver for the first day wasn’t too bad, but the second driver repeatedly drove in his own lane hitting all the storm drain lids as he tried to go around traffic. He drove too fast and tailgated, too!

As we traveled in Thailand we often saw what we thought were small temples in the front yards of homes. We learned that one is called the “spirit” house. It looks like a temple and is put in front of the home to protect it. There is usually another temple-like smaller structure in Thai style. Neither is a temple.

April brings the profuse blooming of “golden showers” trees across Thailand. Our guide said it is just beautiful. It’s the national flower of Thailand. We got to see just the beginning of it. Yellow is also the color of the royals.

We learned the main crops are rice, sugar cane and corn but a huge crop must be pomelos. We saw dozens and dozens of stands selling pomelo everywhere we went. Apparently a lovely desert is concocted from sticky rice and pomelo.

We saw quite a few Michelin tire signs. Also, the trucks of all types are heavily decorated.  We saw many decorated with small versions of Michelin’s Bibendum — Michelin man.  

In one town there were groupings of cement critters in the medians separating lanes in the road: deer, rams, donkeys, elephants, giraffes. I managed one shot of some rams. I still don’t know why they were there. We did see an extremely large shop selling these cement critters along our way.Perhaps advertising?