History in Kanchanaburi

After a breakfast of pineapple pancakes and coffee, I rented a bike for 50 baht/day and rode 5km outside of town to see the Chung Kai War Cemetery and Wat Tham Khao Pun. Chung Kai was the site of a prisoner camp and 1700 British, Australian, Dutch, and French soldiers are buried there. The temple is a series of nine caves, one of which was supposedly used by the Japanese to torture WWII POWs.

On my way back into town, I stopped at the JEATH war museum. JEATH is an acronym for Japanese, Australia/America, Thailand, and Holland, the countries that were involved in the construction of a nearby railway (itself referred to as the "death railway" and it has it's own history). I lunched at a place where I didn't really know what I was ordering and no one spoke English. Turns out it was just pork and noodle soup, so it worked out for me!

After all of the sad history that I exposed myself to today, on the plus side there was a lot of great scenery to be photographed during the trip.