Further to YMOTG’s recent forays into Kanchanaburi Province, we also stopped to take a look at the (in)famous Bridge over the River Kwai.

Anybody with a year 10 ejumacashun knows about the railway line linking Thailand and Burma during WWII and how over 100,000 lives were lost building it. Many documentaries and movies have been made detailing the hardships endured by POW’s in particular during the construction, and with these thoughts in mind I approached the site with a sense of foreboding and pathos for the departed thousands.

That is, until we reached the bridge and looked around to discover the entire area is now just a giant tourist trap bristling with souvenir shops selling t-shirts and cheap gemstones brought in from Myanmar. Children ran about yelling and screaming as tourists stood on the bridge and laughed while having their photo taken. Needless to say in this kind of atmosphere it was almost impossible to dredge up any kind of empathy for what the original labourers went through.

We walked across the bridge and laughed as we had our photo taken too, just like all the other tourists. The river itself is actually very picturesque, and it was hard to stop and think about the atrocities that occurred here when a cool late afternoon breeze took the edge off the summer heat and all you felt like doing was dunking your feet in the water and sipping on a large icy cold heinekin.

Back in the taxi headed for the bus terminal to take us home, I had our driver in fits of hysterics when I suddenly remembered that foreigners all over the world pronounce the river’s name as kwai (rhymes with sky) – which actually means “penis” in Thai, when the name should sound like “kwair”. The joke gets some extra length (pun intended) when local maps point out the River Kwai Yai (Big Penis River) and the River Kwai Lek (Small Penis River).

I can’t help but think that this spelling faux pas was a deliberate payback by mischievous locals on the foreign invaders during the war. Perhaps that secret is also buried with the fallen who lay there. I guess we’ll never know.