More photos, Kanchanaburi

Kanchanaburi is about two and a half hours west of Bangkok, and is the site where the Japanese imprisoned thousands of Australian and British POWs and forced them to build a railway to Myanmar. Conditions for the POWs were a lot like conditions for prisoners at the concentration camps, I think. They were crammed into closed freight wagons for four days and nights and didn't have enough room to lie down. They slept on lice-infected bamboo mats with blood-sucking insects, and their food rice infected with lime, kerosene, dirt and rat feces. When they got meat and fish it was filled with maggots -- prisoners skimmed the maggots off the top of the stew before serving.

Their chances of survival correlated directly with where they were placed. In the Tonchan Spring camp, 29 of 600 prisoners died. In the Songkurai camp, 1,200 of 1,600 died.

The Japanese wanted to construct this railroad in a year, even though architects told them it would be impossible with the 2,000 men they'd originally planned to use. So they installed 55 prisoner camps along the railway and put thousands of POWs to work.

Kanchanaburi is the site of the Bridge over the River Kwai, which had a book written and a movie made about it. The bridge was bombed by the Allied Forces in June 1945. Along the entire railway, about 15,000 POWs and 10,000 civilians died of sickness, malnutrition, exhaustion and mistreatment.

The Kanchanaburi War Cemetery is one of three on the Burmese-Siam Railway, and is the site of nearly 7,000 graves of POWs. Most are British, Australian and Dutch.


I passed the Bridge on the River Kwai but didn't get a picture. Then I was gonna go back later, but it's a little ways out of town and I didn't want to walk/ride there in the rain.

Anyway, Kanchanaburi is also the site of Wat Luang Ta Bua Yanna Sampanno, A.K.A. the Tiger Temple. It's about 25 miles out of town but still located in Kanchanaburi Province. The idea is that the entrance fee (300 baht, or about $9) goes toward building a big tiger reserve. So supposedly the tigers will be able to roam free once they raise enough money, but people have their suspicions. I've already said all I have to say about the controversy in a previous post, so I'll just post the photos below and let you decide for yourself.


This is the basic setup of the temple. The tigers spend about four hours a day in this area, on relatively long chains attached to the ground. Mostly, they sleep (or at least relax), but you can see the ones to the right are pacing a bit.


This guy was pretty chill. He spent most of his time sleeping and then was the last to go back to the reserve at the end of the day.

This is the baby. He liked playing with the monk and seemed to have a pretty good repor with some of the volunteers. But there were other volunteers I didn't trust...

Walking with the tiger (with cat-like speed, it seems)...

Playing with the monk...

It's a very weird place. At the end of the day they bring all the animals out together, and they run around and eat. They all live together and roam around like friends. It's all very odd...

And finally, you might remember the story about the cats hanging out at the bungalow. They were very cute...