Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, Bridge on the River Kwai

On Day 5, we will head by bus up to Kanchanaburi, which is well known because it is the setting for the actual events and the movie based on the happenings during the end of World War II at The Bridge on the River Kwai.   The bridge is a major tourist attractions, of course, and there are many museums and sites dedicated to what happened, and what little is known about, the Japanese & Thai partnership during WWII.

One Japanese tourist that was staying at the same guest house as us in Kanchanaburi actually came up to me afterwards, asked if I was from an Allied country, I said I was American, and he apologized.  He said he didn't know about what happened there, what his people had done, as this isn't taught in Japan.  He had just come back from one of the museums, where he had just learned that the Japanese used western Allies POWs, as well as downtrodden Asians,  as forced labor to create a railway from the Gulf of Thailand through Burma so that the Japanese army could get supplies to fight the Chinese.  

16,000 Allied POWs died making this railway, and it is referred to these days as 
the Death Railway.

This is me, of course, on the actual bridge.  The guest house I stayed in was on the River Kwai.  Not next to it, actually floating on top of it.  It was very cool.

There is a superstition in Thailand that you will have luck for one year of you ride on 
an elephant.  I don't know if I had any more  luck the year after I did ride one, but it was cool.  

One very strange occurrence, though, is that the elephant rider, a poor boy I assume but he will ride the same elephant for the life of the elephant, actually started 
stroking my legs when we were walking through the jungle.

I gave him a tip to stop doing it.  It was actually creepy, and I hope this year he doesn't start
weird shit with my nephew & I riding the elephant together.  But I will have some money for 
the tip. 

We only spent 2 night in Kanchanaburi, and really, I think that is all my nephew & I will be staying this time as well.  You can see quite a bit on a long, one day trip, and that is what we will be doing.

Tomorrow, I will talk about Ayutthaya, the former capital of the Kingdom of Siam.