Many people speak of trekking in the north of Thai­l­and, but such over-popular options are not the fla­vour we go for. Instead, we had read of tours start­ing from Bangkok that would com­bine the amaz­ing jungles around the Burmese bor­der with a trip to the Bridge on the River Kwai and the Death Railway.

Our trip star­ted out with a small bus full of people. What would this be like? The trips we had been on in Viet­nam had essen­tially disappointed.

No so this one!

Our first stop was a hotel, a real hotel. It was in sight of the bridge itself and against the water’s edge. We found out that the other people in the group were not on the same trip and this one was going to be just Cesca, the guide and myself.

We were taken via tuk tuk to the com­pany offices for the first part of the adven­ture: the bike ride. Hav­ing been bit­ten by the qual­ity of bikes in Viet­nam, where my velo­ci­pede had fake sus­pen­sion, I was not expect­ing much. How­ever, I was pleas­antly sur­prised to find that these were brand new high qual­ity bikes. With a happy check of the brakes I jumped aboard as did Cesca and the young female guide. We set off down the road and towards a local museum where we read about the hor­rors the Japan­ese brought to this area. Across the road sat a large cemetery to the war dead and we sol­emnly walked around this. Then we set off out of town via an exceed­ingly pleas­ant and wind­ing route through local vil­lages and coun­try roads. I was really enjoy­ing myself, when we got to a very heavy climb. I wondered at the route choice, but once to the top it became appar­ent. Off the road began a large Buddhist com­plex built into the nat­ural caves dot­ted around the area. Lined with large statues we cycled into this zone and up to a couple of some­what bored look­ing monks guard­ing the entrance. The guide paid for us and explained that we were about to visit a large nat­ural cave series that is used as a temple.

“What are the monks doing?” I asked.

“They are mak­ing brace­lets,” she answered.

“How much are they?”

“Would you like one?” she said with a beam­ing smile and without another word she ran off and bought Cesca and I one. She handed it to me and I con­sidered the design. It is made of brightly col­oured string or cot­ton and very thin. At one point, the mater­ial has been ingeni­ously bound into a sort of tube, which will pull open. The guide handed it to me, “care­ful pulling it, once unwound only a monk can do it back up. Just undo it enough to get your hand in, no more.”

We both obeyed and I con­sidered the gift. It was not my nor­mal fash­ion to wear a brace­let other than my Tac­tical Man Band, a leav­ing gift from my good friend D, and I sup­pose that is the heart of the mat­ter. I can­not wear some­thing that has no mean­ing. I do not wear any­thing just for the ‘look’. It has to mean some­thing, have a story. On the other hand, I am a philo­soph­ical Daoist and wear­ing a Buddhist brace­let is an expres­sion of that. I wear it to this day.

Cesca added it to her col­lec­tion and sud­denly had an idea. She now sports many brace­lets from our travels and they all mean something.

Any­way, the guide led us into the caves and we wondered at the size and shape. At once nar­row, cer­tainly for a big west­erner, and yet they go on for hun­dreds of meters. Inside all sort of Grot­tos resplen­did with icons and statues, keep watch over the drip­ping and damp silence. We were led down and around and even­tu­ally to the base­ment. Here sat a large Buddha peace­fully over­look­ing the depths of the Earth.

We hung around for a few moments before mak­ing our way back up via a dif­fer­ent route that brought us out south of the bikes.

Magical.

Then we hopped back on the bikes and were away to another cemetery. All the war graves here are in amaz­ing con­di­tion. Mainly thanks to the efforts of the Aus­tralian and Cana­dian nations. This one was par­tic­u­larly beau­ti­ful with a well-kept lawn broken up with small clean stones. It was a spe­cial place and I am glad we vis­ited it.

I real­ised that this trip was going to get more soul­ful with the com­ing vis­its organ­ised for the after­noon and the fol­low­ing day. With that on my mind, we rode back down the hill towards town and the bridge itself.

For a movie buff, the Bridge on the River Kwai is fam­ous more for its appear­ance in the clas­sic war film of the same name. A sem­inal fable of Brit­ish resi­li­ency and the ‘proper order’. The truth is not so com­fort­ing. Firstly, the bridge was not blown up by com­mandos, I can assure you of that, it was hit by the RAF, but not out of action for long. In addi­tion, unlike the film, the Brit­ish did not design the bridge or lend the know­ledge to the Japan­ese to build it. Rather they were simply used as hard labour. Indeed the Japan­ese have been excel­lent engin­eers for many cen­tur­ies. Moreover, I once saw a pro­gram that fea­tured Brit­ish sur­viv­ors of the camps in this area and the por­trayal of the senior Brit­ish officer, by the late great Alec Guin­ness, is not only unhis­tor­ical, it is actu­ally an insult to a true hero. The men on the pro­gram swore that he saved them all, and was noth­ing like the char­ac­ter in the film.

This is what I knew, and what I under­stood of the story before I got there. I thought that was mov­ing enough.

What I learned was the next day was har­row­ing in the extreme.

How­ever, before then: the bridge itself.

Every night a train ser­vice crosses the Bridge on the River Kwai. The bridge itself is still stand­ing in good con­di­tion and arrayed around both ends is a con­crete area laid with tour­ist things. We stood and watched as the train crossed and all around us people took pho­tos and video of the event. Then we walked across it. This is the sort of thing that is allowed in your aver­age South East Asian coun­try. In Eng­land, stu­pidly soft that we have become, it would be deemed too dan­ger­ous and fail some sort of safety audit and be closed. It was breath of fresh air to be able to some­what take my life in my hands and walk the struc­ture. The stone pil­lars hold­ing up the newer iron bridge are all that remain of the ori­ginal bridge, but it still reeks of ages past, of Vic­torian style build­ing, Brunel and so forth. A rem­nant of a bygone age.

After the Bridge we cycled back to drop off the bikes and then vis­ited a swim­ming pool in a nearby hotel before din­ner and turn­ing in for the night.

The next day brought a bright sun and a more bus-orientated day. We star­ted with a visit to a water­fall where we encountered a very large and friendly pray­ing mantis, fol­lowed by a visit to Hells Gate.

Dur­ing the war, the Japan­ese were plan­ning to invade India. Quite how they were going to man­age that feat will never be known, but the plan involved the mov­ing of vast amounts of war weaponry and sup­plies to the bor­ders of Malay so that they might invade across the Indian Ocean. The smart and easy way of it would have been to ship the equip­ment around the pen­in­sula of Singa­pore (which had fallen) and into the Malay waters. How­ever, the Brit­ish had broken Enigma and with it had broken the Japan­ese codes. Using this know­ledge, the ships would have almost cer­tainly been sunk. There­fore, the Japan­ese made a des­per­ate gam­bit; they would build a rail­way through the moun­tains and jungles of their con­curred lands that would con­nect the forces and remove the need for shipping.

Build­ing a rail­way through the harshest jungle in the world is no mean feat. It required a steely iron determ­in­a­tion and a shock­ingly large amount of engin­eer­ing knowhow. The knowhow they got form the European school before the war. The determ­in­a­tion they had in spades. They also had two types of labour. Hired Indian work­ers and cap­tured Allied Pris­on­ers of War. To the Japan­ese this was a per­fect force to clear the jungles for the rail­way. They forced the POW’s to work, some­thing they are not sup­posed to do in the con­ven­tions, and slowly the great task of build­ing the rail­way was begun.

That is about as apo­lo­getic as I can get in describ­ing this event.

The truth is not so easy to stom­ach. The truth is that the Japan­ese had no respect for for­eign life what­so­ever. The truth is that they worked the POW’s to death, fed them very little, gave them no care and atten­tion and beat them mer­ci­lessly. Thou­sands died of trop­ical dis­eases, mal­nu­tri­tion, being worked to death and being murdered by the Japan­ese. For the men work­ing on that rail­road, it was hell.

The most infam­ous spot was Hell­fire Pass.

Rail­roads always have trouble with hills and moun­tains. The usual prac­tice is to use heavy machinery to dig out such hills, but the Japan­ese decided that one par­tic­u­lar hill would have to be dug out by hand. This was the most ardu­ous work ima­gin­able. The weather here on the Burma bor­der is pure jungle heat. Wet and hot. Wounds opened here would never heal; in fact they would fester and grow. Ill­nesses here would include all sorts of para­sitic infec­tions, stom­ach bugs that would cause internal bleed­ing, dys­en­tery, unsafe water, heat stroke and the ever present over arch­ing killer that is Malaria.

Men dropped like flies.

Moreover, if that was not enough, the rail­road got behind the ludicrous sched­ule and the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment declared that the POWs were “lazy” and would have to be worked harder. This was known as “Speedo” and the dir­ect­ive meant that the guards beat the POWs con­stantly. Con­stantly. Without letup. People were only allowed off work if their stools were flooded with blood, else they were beaten to the line and forced to work to their deaths.

So what is left of this horror?

What remains there now is a very high-class museum ded­ic­ated by the Aus­trali­ans to their coun­try­men who died in that hell. A full audio tour and walk around the site is included in the entrance ticket and it has sur­viv­ors of the hor­ror telling their tales. These tales tend to the heart break­ing stor­ies of indi­vidual cour­age: the doc­tor who saved lives, the cap­tain who died for his men. Access to the site is hard enough, it being down the side of a steep stair­case run­ning around the hill and any vis­itor to here in the sum­mer would per­haps feel a 10th of the dis­com­fort felt 24hours a day the men who died here.

Even now, I felt that I was in a crime scene. It is almost unbe­liev­able to me that the Japan­ese, in my life­time a gen­tile and kind race, were these manic imper­i­al­ist killers.

After walk­ing down through and back up, Cesca and I stopped for a litre of water each. Flu­ids just dis­ap­pear from your body here and it was vital that we had enough water for the day.

Our next part of the adven­ture had begun.

We were driven to a sta­ging area and then picked up by our guide and a local vil­la­ger. He arrayed us with water and then we were off into the jungle. Trekking is some­thing Cesca and I love. It gets you out of not only your com­fort zone, but out of your men­tal map of your­self. You are immersed in the sights and sounds of the trek and have plenty of time to think. This was real trekking. The vil­la­ger spoke almost no Eng­lish, but our ever-helpful guide trans­lated splen­didly. The jungle was all around us and I could not see that we were fol­low­ing any sort of recog­nis­able path through it. After a while, the vil­la­ger cut us down some bam­boo and fash­ioned us some walk­ing sticks, some­thing that really helped. We crossed rocky rivers, went up and down rocky slopes, through val­leys, up hills and every­where the jungle was all around. No signs of human life. I really felt that we were really in the mix. Of course, we were prob­ably only a thick bush away from Star­bucks, but it felt real. What also felt real was at one point we were cross­ing this giant fallen log, using it as a bridge over a massive drop, when the vil­la­ger and guide both froze. In front of us was an enorm­ous snake that spot­ted us and slithered into the under­growth. It was about 5 feet long and looked to me like some sort of pit Viper with its arrow like head and hiss­ing out a warn­ing to us. It dis­ap­peared and our hearts stopped ham­mer­ing in out chests. Relieved and laugh­ing a little we all continued.

About 7 hours later, we came to a stream. There the vil­la­ger stopped and made some cups from bam­boo (I still have mine). Into these, he poured some local fire­wa­ter and we drank each other’s health. It was strong stuff and that is put­ting it mildly. He then led us onwards and out of the jungle into pas­tures. Through these and onwards to a small pur­pose built wooden vil­lage. This was arrayed with bam­boo huts into which we depos­ited our gear. To wash we went down to the river and washed stand­ing in the freez­ing waters. Not the safest thing I have ever done, but I was at least clean.

Then we went and helped with din­ner. Other vil­la­gers arrived and one man played a strange stringed instru­ment as we helped pre­pare the food. Wok cook­ing is a favour­ite of mine and we soon got stuck in fry­ing all the vari­ous dishes. Din­ner was won­der­ful and as the night drew in, we went to bed in our hut, idly won­der­ing about Spiders and bed bugs.

The next morn­ing, we were up and at them at an ungodly hour. I am not the most morn­ing ori­ent­ated of people and struggle to wake up. This morn­ing, they had what must be the ulti­mate way of sober­ing me up but not in a good way.

The guide called me over to a mud bank where the vil­la­ger was viol­ently dig­ging out a hole in the ground. It looked vaguely familiar.

“What is he doing?” I asked.

There fol­lowed a rat­tling con­ver­sa­tion in the local dia­lect, which is a little bit Thai and a little bit some­thing else.

“The guide turned to me and motioned the hole, “He find­ing you spider.”

“Spider!” I exclaimed.

“You say last night, you like spider, so he find you one.”

My recol­lec­tion had been that I had indic­ated a cer­tain level of reluct­ance on the part of spiders in my room. Quite how this turned into me want­ing to see one was lost to me. How­ever, before I could stop him the viol­ent dig­ging stopped and the vil­la­ger was now pok­ing a slim stick into the hole. I was fas­cin­ated to see how he flicked the stick in a cer­tain way and ground it around the hole, but I could not see into it myself. Sud­denly he cried out and jumped back as an enorm­ous and very angry spider came out of the hole. Spiders are nat­ur­ally noc­turnal and this big fella’ had been woken from his morn­ing slum­bers by someone knock­ing down his home and drag­ging him out by force. He reared up and waved his legs menacingly.

I instinct­ively took a step back. He was huge and black and about the size of Cesca’s hand. I would bet that he was some sort of Tarantula, but I don’t know. The vil­la­ger was not so hampered by fear and he pushed the stick under the beast and flicked it up and out of the hole, onto the bank. The spider made a dash for it, but the vil­la­ger was ready and it reared again. Fangs the size and shape of clipped big toe nails juddered as he tried to scare us off. The Vil­la­ger was hav­ing none of it and with a very deft and prac­ticed move­ment, he slapped the stick down on the spiders back and pinned it to the floor. He then rushed up the stick and grabbed the spider from the back hold­ing it down. He then gripped it in a cer­tain way, obvi­ously some sort of spider jujutsu hold, and lif­ted it up in his hand. The spider was totally in his con­trol. Sat­is­fied, he smiled, walked over and thrust the strug­gling giant arach­nid in my face.

“You touch, please” said the guide. Gingerly I reached out. “Not there! He bites you. Leg.” My hand froze and I adjus­ted my aim. I felt one of the large foot­pads. It was amaz­ingly soft and not all spiky. Kind of like rough felt or a good shag car­pet. “Now you,” he said indic­at­ing that Cesca should also stroke the strug­gling arach­nid. Gingerly she put for­wards a hand but the wav­ing legs meant that she closed her eyes as she did so.

“That his balls you’re hold­ing,” I poin­ted out.

She yelped and opened her eyes; sure enough, she was grop­ing the poor creature’s spin­ner­ets. “Urrg!” she exclaimed.

The vil­la­ger smiled, laughed, and put the spider down on the ground. The spider obvi­ously did not quite know what to make of all this and even­tu­ally decided to make a run for it, pos­sibly to call a con­stable and report being moles­ted. The vil­la­ger rattled off some­thing in his local lan­guage, which the guide trans­lated for us.

“He say, you lucky his father not guide today. He eat spider.”

Both Cesca and I made the same face of dis­gust, and had we been Chris­ti­ans, we would have made the sign of the cross.

“What, raw?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Can we have some­thing else for breakfast?”

“Yes, come, fruit ready.”

And that was that. As we tucked into the mer­ci­fully spider free break­fast fruit one of the vil­la­gers was cut­ting into some bam­boo and draw­ing a long thread from the flesh.

“He mak­ing you present.”

Sur enough, he was. Using a skill passed down for gen­er­a­tions and com­pletely unknown to me, this guy weaved a long thin rope out of the bam­boo by wind­ing it around his toe. This he then threaded through small bands of bam­boo, cre­at­ing a very cool brace­let. After he had made two, we were presen­ted with them and both Cesca and I wear them to this day. They have been through shower, seas, ump­teen hot days and nights. Still they hold on. Obvi­ously, this is a won­drous mater­ial, com­pletely nat­ural and yet strong as any Paracord.

We bid good­bye to the vil­la­gers and headed out. This time we went via the road and walked for only a few hours before com­ing to a couple of guys hold­ing an ele­phant. They indic­ated that we were to ride. I was not sure about this. Reg­u­lar read­ers will recall our time in Chi­ang Mai where we worked on a sanc­tu­ary for abused ele­phants and I was not sure I wanted to ride one. The loc­als mis­took my reti­cence for fear.

“You climb, no worry, very safe,” one said, won­der­ing at a European my size being appar­ently afraid of elephants.

I still looked unsure. I was try­ing to see the signs of dis­tress in the mighty creature, such symp­toms as mov­ing con­stantly form one foot to the other. The ele­phant regarded me with as much con­fu­sion as the loc­als. The talk­at­ive one tried a dif­fer­ent track.

“Long walk, you don’t ride.”

“Very long,” his fel­low volunteered.

I sighed and reluct­antly climbed aboard the gigantic animal. The Thai’s exchanged looks. Atop was a small col­lec­tion of wooden planks to sit on, which had been strapped to the ele­phants hide. We set off at the lan­guid and relaxed pace with the mahout gently pok­ing the ele­phant to con­tinue. I felt hor­rible. I had vis­ions of the blind ele­phant I had fed bana­nas to. Her eyes had been put out by an angry mahout after she had dis­obeyed an order. She had been about to give birth. The mahout in his rage killed her baby and then burned out her eyes.

You can ima­gine how I felt on the back of this elephant.

Cesca put her arm around me. “It’s OK sweetie,” she said gently. “The ele­phant looks healthy.”

She was right, it did. On the jour­ney we passed vil­lages, fields and many Thais work­ing. They all smiled and I remembered why Thai­l­and was known as the land of smiles. Buddhist coun­tries have a nat­ural instinct for hap­pi­ness. At one point we passed a banana plant­a­tion and sud­denly the ele­phant left the path. It crashed into the tall banana plants and dragged a fair size tree down. The mahout was hop­ping in anger, try­ing to get the beast back on the path, but the ele­phant simply ignored his ear pulling and the sound of indus­trial size banana plant eat­ing, a sort of heavy crunch­ing sound, reached our ears from below. Even­tu­ally the mahout regained con­trol and the ele­phant wandered on drag­ging a huge plant along as a packed lunch. This was very funny. To us any­way. The next twenty minutes of the jour­ney was punc­tu­ated by crunch­ing sounds. After the vit­amin poten­tial of the giant plant was exhausted the ele­phant dropped it and around the next corner, we came to a ford. As the pachy­derm entered the ford, his giant trunk stretched down to drink. Again, the mahout hopped with anger, and again the ele­phant ignored him and the sound of water being sucked through the creature’s giant straw of a nose made Cesca and I chuckled to ourselves. Even­tu­ally, the jour­ney came to an end at the banks of a nar­row river. There wait­ing for us was another set of vil­la­gers. We climbed down from the ele­phant and wished it goodbye.

My guilt for rid­ing it had not been assuaged, and I will not be rid­ing one again if I can help it.

We walked up to the river’s edge and I could see a make­shift raft in the water. The vil­la­ger motioned us onto the raft, point­ing that we should be posi­tioned at the front and back. The water lapped over the logs as the raft dipped when we stood on it. I was just find­ing my foot­ing when a pole was thrust into my hands. I turned to say some­thing to the man, but he was already push­ing us off into the rivers cur­rent. We were off and alone!

Raft­ing, they say, is a job for the exper­i­ence pole-man. If they were to make a film about the dangers of untrained raft hand­ling, they cer­tainly could use our jour­ney down this fast flow­ing river as a guide of exactly what not to do. All we needed was the Benny Hill sound track. We shouted to each other like two demen­ted Chuckle Broth­ers, “To you, to me!” and slammed the poles into the corners to try and turn in time, for­cing the front of the raft under the water and threat­en­ing to cata­pult Cesca over my head and into the under­growth on the bank. At other points, we missed the gul­lies through stony waters and ground to a shud­der­ing halt, for­cing us to try des­per­ately to pole ourselves off the rocks before enough cur­rent had built to flip us both under.

Luck­ily, no one saw us.

After half an hour of this, I spied a straight sec­tion and a wait­ing Thail­ander half way down. We both con­spired with unspoken agree­ment to sud­denly look as pro­fes­sional as pos­sible and glided up to the bank like experts arriv­ing home from an Olympic timed run. With a pro­fes­sional nod to the man, who wasn’t fooled I think, I handed over my pole and strode like a true Eng­lish­man up the bank and over to our guide who had obvi­ously driven down to this, which I sud­denly real­ised, was the sta­ging area from the day before.

“Lunch?” she asked.

Lunch turned out to be uniden­ti­fied meat on a stick, chicken hope­fully, and migh­tily tasty. Cesca made her­self at home by play­ing with the local kids, who clearly wanted our food, while I relaxed under the shade of a small canopy.

After ten minutes, another Brit­ish couple turned up and joined us and we got chatting.

“I work for Paul Ray­mond,” said the man.

“Oh?” I asked, “Do you know Clare and Dave Gibbs?”

“Why yes!”

“They are friends of ours, I went to Dave’s stag night”

“Blood hell! I know them, what a small world!”

A small world indeed.

Our final stage of the jour­ney was to be driven to a train sta­tion and then jump aboard the Kwai Bridge train. This was a bit sur­real as Cesca and I were rigged for jungle hik­ing and bedraggled from our adven­tures over the last day, and the train was full of day trip­ping tour­ists. Nev­er­the­less, the old loco­mot­ive passed through the gor­geous coun­tryside and we relaxed for the hour it took until our stop. At the stop, we jumped in a Tuk Tuk and were whisked back to the tour office that we star­ted at a couple of days before.

What a trip!

We tipped the guide heav­ily, some­thing are a rule we never do, and Indeed have hardly done since, such was our pleas­ure at the run­ning of this trip. She was very happy that it had gone well and we bid her a fond farewell before jump­ing on a bus back to the city.

That even­ing, we decided that India was, “worth the risk.” I spent a few hours check­ing all the boards and web­sites and every­one said that the danger had passed. What would we find when we got there?

The next day, we checked out and rushed to the air­port. It had been one hell of a few days in Bangkok. People often talk of north­ern Thai­l­and as the place to trek, and per­haps it is more beau­ti­ful, but I urge all read­ers to con­sidered the Burma bor­der area as, frankly, it is very quiet, full of happy people and very very well run.

So, another chapter on our jour­ney closed. I could not help feel­ing sim­ilar to how I felt leav­ing New Zea­l­and; I did not want to. There are some many won­der­ful places in the world and to see them with the free­dom of a trav­el­ler is some­thing to be savoured and cher­ished. I had more eye open­ing moments in South East Asia in three months than in the rest of my life. A place asks you to look into your­self as much as you look out at it. The scenery is thick and in your face, the nat­ur­al­ism of the people is a clash­ing, jar­ring wake up call to the mind of someone from Eng­land. Someone from Lon­don. Every­one should come here and be chal­lenged, puzzled, scared, cher­ished, mas­saged, fleeced, flattered, fed and watered.

We climbed aboard the plane, and saluted South East Asia good­bye. What a con­tin­ent, what a people, what a life chan­ging experience.

Three months in India beckoned, but I knew that part of me would always hold SEA in my heart.

And it still does.

Regards,

Basho

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