Goodbye Bangkok

We left Bangkok this morning headed for Kanchanaburi, the home of the famous Bridge over the river Kwai. It is terribly anticlimactic, I'm not sure what I expected, but this is not it. After looking at it and taking the token picture we went to the WWII museum next door which was not in any way worth the entrance fee. (it reminded Kathleen of one of those "Worlds largest ______" spots).

It had an antique train engine that was used by the Japanese in the entrance way. I was afraid of putting too much weight on it and falling through the side it was so rusted over. Then there was a rail car prison cell, with the caption "rail cars like this were used as prison cells for POW's and workers who were working on the rail tracks.” There was a life sized wooden manikin of a very unhappy looking prisoner.

After that was a land rover and a motorcycle "used for short distance travel by Japanese officers". And finally we walked through a corridor of the most random and arbitrary stuffs from the WWII period, like rows and rows of coins, jugs, etc. At the end there was a guy carving soap, that I thought was pretty awesome. But what was totally worth the 80 Bhat (the Thai currency) to get in was the iguana cooling off in the mid day heat by the entrance. It let me touch it (yay!).

This town is really quiet, in the best way possible. Not a lot of obnoxious tourists or traffic. We have a really nice room in a guest house not far from the main drag, but far enough that on the off chance things do get loud we won’t hear much of it.

The countryside is so green, more so than anywhere I have ever been before. Must be the sun, the plants must love it. Speaking of which, apparently the longest solar eclipse on record was a few days ago, and the next comparable one will be in 3045 or something far-far away like that. Just a fun fact I learned from a foreigner turned local.