The REAL story of the Bridge on River Kwai, Kanchanaburi, Thailand

‘What a load of shite, eh?’ says Dick Lee, in a thick cockney accent. The octogenarian former-HQ dispatch rider is building up quite a head of steam about the seven-Oscar-winning Bridge on the River Kwai. It is 54 years since the movie premiered to worldwide acclaim, but he is not alone among ex-POWs who still voice their disenchantment.

Note well-fed PoW on left

A friend, Paul, remembers attending a screening for veterans in London in 1958 with his father, Captain Hugh Pilkington. ‘He turned to the doorman and said “what a lot of tripe”.’

But perhaps the biggest idea of how wide of the mark the script was comes from Colonel Philip Toosey, the commanding officer played by Alec Guinness. ‘He didn’t even recognise himself as the character portrayed in the movie,’ Julie Summers, Toosey’s grand-daughter and author of The Colonel of Tamarkan, tells me. ‘The film made millions of people think they were seeing something realistic when they were not.’ Unsuccessful entreaties were made to the film’s flamboyant producer, Sam Spiegel, to add a supertitle that branded the movie ‘fiction’.

So where did the movie go wrong?

Bombshell: there never was a River Kwai. Jing jing!

Blame Pierre Boulle. In 1952 the French author published his novel Le Pont de la Riviere Kwai. A POW himself, he’d heard survivors talk of building two bridges on Khwae Mae Klong; and many railway camps were along the adjoining Khwae Noi. The ‘khwae’ part obviously stuck in his head. But khwae is simply the Thai word for river. ‘So he inadvertently named it “River River”,’ laughs Summers.

In 1942, the Japanese desperately needed a railway link between Bangkok and Rangoon Burma to fuel their push into India. Use was made of 60,000 Allied POWs in Singapore and Java, a windfall labour force. A further 200,000 native labourers were also chain-ganged.

With the route fording rugged terrain adjacent the Burma border, 688 bridges spanning nearly 13 kilometres were needed along the 415 kilometre sector that became notorious as ‘The Death Railway’.

The rather ugly asymmetrical bridge

One bridge had to span 378 metres across Khwae Mae Klong at the provincial town of Kanchanaburi (‘city of gold’). Tamarkan, on the south bank near the confluence, was historically where the Burmese crossed the river in their bid to sack the ancient kingdom. The POWs swelled the usual population of 5000 and local vendors enjoyed a boom, trading much-prized duck eggs which supplemented meager rice rations.

Kanchanaburi was also headquarters of the Imperial Japanese Army 9^th Railway Engineering Division. ‘They was no mugs, they knew what they was doing,’ Lee reckons. Some of the best minds behind the Thai Burma Railway – including engineer Yoshihiko Futamatsu – went on to design Japan’s ‘Bullet Train’.

For eight months POWs toiled in blistering sun and driving downpours to complete The Bridge, with little mechanical assistance. Materials from an 11-arched steel bridge in Java were shipped up, and British-laid railway tracks in Malaya were recycled.

Train coming ... #$%&!!!

While never sabotaged with explosives, quality control was deliberately lax, the admixture of the concrete pylons diluted when guards’ backs were turned. The wooden service bridge adjacent was also home to a fine colony of white ants, introduced by the very men who’d built it.

One humorous episode involved two Japanese guards who disappeared during a lunch break, presumably consumed by the setting concrete. They were subsequently found, AWOL with their local girlfriends!

Nine POWs lost their lives during construction, but a further 400 of 2600 Australians, English, Dutch, and Americans based at Tamarkan perished from disease, malnutrition, and wayward Allied bombs. (The attrition was low compared to 24% of all POWs who died in Japanese hands --12,800 Allies and up to 100,000 Asians died building the railway.) Credit to Toosey, a strict disciplinarian and stickler for maintaining hygiene and dignity. And, unlike in the movie, he did encourage – even covered for – one escape attempt.

With little or no fanfare, the bridge was completed at the end of April 1943. After a foot regiment, the first train crossed May 1. Many POWs probably willed The Bridge to come tumbling down. But it stood defiant.

Again, unlike in the movie, The Bridge did its job, enabling 1000 tons of goods and munitions each day to reach Japanese troops in Burma, despite the RAF and USAAF trying to blow it back to Indonesia. Hitting a narrow-gauge rail line from several thousand feet proved tricky, so American military boffins devised the Azon: radio-controlled bombs with adjustable fins. BOOM! On June 24 1945, three curved spans were blasted into the river. A couple of months before war’s end, The Bridge was out of action.

Post-war, the bridge was repaired. Two rectangular spans lend an awkward asymmetrical look. With the movie achieving ‘classic’ status, the Seventies saw a new army arriving in Kanchanaburi – backpackers. Lee says: ‘There was nothing there at the time except a couple of rooms and a shack.’ They all wanted to see the bridge on the River Kwai. But there was no such thing. So Amazing Thailand responded by changing the name from Mae Khlong to River Kwai. Happy now?

The Bridge remains one of the biggest drawcards in a kingdom with a royal flush of drawcards.

Friendly but persuasive ...

Kanchanaburi -- three hours northwest of Bangkok and gateway to Erawan Falls, the Tiger Temple and Hellfire Pass -- is a buzzing low-rise town where everything screams ‘tourism’ … T-shirt stalls, friendly but persuasive post-card vendors, T-shirts, pirated CDs, T-shirts, hawkers cooking Unidentified Frying Objects, T-shirts, and bars where you can ‘get shit-faced on a shoestring’ (as one sign exhorts) while watching screenings of The Movie. Cue infectious Colonel Bogey March soundtrack. Pencil-sharp V8-engined long-tail craft cannon along the river like Brock at Bathurst. Floating karaoke bars pump out insidious music each evening, surely a war crime in itself.

There is a dramatic beauty. Depending on the season, the backdrop is either the purple peaks of the Burma Ranges, or a hazy grey painterly rendition. But, no, Thailand was deemed not jungley enough -- the film was shot in Sri Lanka (Spiegel sending the movie footage home on five separate flights).

The train line insinuates itself into the burgeoning tapioca-and-sugar cane provincial centre of 175,000 it helped foster. We hop off the third-class rattler at Kwai Bridge Station, where vintage locomotives and Japanese diesel truck-trains litter the station. 

‘Do you think that’s it?’ my travel mate, Kerry, asks.

The Bridge is not as heroic as it looks in the film. It does not have the iconic gravitas of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, nor the Golden Gate. Mainly because its matt-black arches sit at street level. We approach it side-on from water level for a more theatrical impression. ‘But that can’t be it … it’s metal,’ says John from Murwillumbah, derailed by the movie.

We walk the planks. They creak underfoot, as a scrum of tourists pick their way across the metal spans. When the train and tour buses arrive from Bangkok it is standing room only, as we sardine our way from one end of the bridge to the other. Yawning gaps open to a watery grave 20 metres below. ‘No OH & S issues here then,’ quips John.

The shady Theerawat

Khun Theerawat, a Tourist Police officer, confirms that once a year a careless tourist will fall into the river below.

 TOOOOTTT!!! A short, sharp horn blast. Expletives deleted! A yellow-and-red loco chugs into view. Fortunately it stops at the platform. Relieved, nervous giggles. The train inches gingerly forward to the slaps and groans of displaced planks. Further horn blasts shoo stragglers. Beaming faces peer from open sash windows. Motor-drives click and whir in syncopation with the train’s squeaking wheels. Two Muslim girls give a super-friendly wave. The train clatters above umbrella-ed vendor carts, past tapioca fields, then swallowed by the jungle ...

‘I walked into the jungle where a bit of the old railway was still lying,’ Lee says. ‘It was so silent, you think, “Did that all really happen?” Like a bleedin’ dream.’

More like a recurrent nightmare. Which is why, to me, the most resonant line in the movie is when Alec Guinness says: ‘I hope in years to come, when the war is over, people remember who built it and how they built it.’ Amen. Ironically, certainly not by watching that movie.

Now, if I could just get that damn Colonel Bogey March tune out of my head.

Question: been to Kanchanaburi lately? How do YOU find the place now?

kanchanaburi -- Erawan Falls: Tigers, Caves and Epic Battles.

So you're in Kanchanaburi ('the city of gold') and you've done the bridge and Hellfire Pass and the markets and the museums. And you still want more? Fear not, there's plenty more ...

Rent a car (well not if you have your own car or motorcycle, you understand, I mean that would be plain ridiculous) and head on out to the 3199. What a fantastic route. It's not as major as the 323, but oh so rural and oh so scenic.

Around the 30km mark out of town you'll come to a town called Wang Dong (no snickering down the back, please). Then shortly you'll start seeing large rocks on the side of the road. And these rocks will look like humans. Or trees. Woah, what's that giraffe doing there? And King Kong??? Oh my god, get me out of here!!!

No, it's not some magic mushroom hallucinogenic flashback. It's the product of the local stone quarries. Many of these figures stand three to four metres tall, a little too large to stick into your carry-on as a present for little Johnny back home. But ideal if you're a local council and need something to liven up that park in town. You can also buy things like table and chair sets, all carved from the local mountains that fringe this area.

Another few kilometres along, you'll see the turnoff to The Nine Army Battle Historical Park. This commemorates the epic battle in 1795 when 70,000 Thais under Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke (Rama I) defended the Kingdom against an invasion by 144,000 soldiers and cavalrymen under King Bodawpaya of Burma. This victory is regarded as one of the greatest in Thailand's long history of continuous sovereignty. Here you can see dioramas of the action that took place, and even a sandbox of toy soldiers in the supposed formations of the day. Tip: if you go late in the day, all the other day trippers will clear off, allowing you to wander up the watch tower and enjoy a most peaceful view of sunset in the valley.

Just a few short kilometres on again, you'll see the turnoff to Erawan Falls. Among Thais it's one of the country's attractions that elicits the most nods and gasps. Erawan National Park covers around 550 square kilometres -- if you don't believe me, get your tape measure out -- and offers endless stunning scenery. On a good day, with the right timing, the right light, a good tailwind, and a few lucky shakes of the joss sticks, you might just catch a glimpse of an elephant, wild monkeys, Asiatic pythons, king cobras, an eagle, or even a tiger. Jing jing! The national parks rangers have listed tigers as an endemic species here.

No, there's no money back guarantee if you don't see one, or get bitten in half by one. If you want a cast-iron guarantee that you'll see a tiger, visit the Tiger Temple down the road instead. But some don't agree that Buddhist monks should be making money from these animals, ie charging entry to get in, more to pat the things, more for a photo with it, more to stick your head in its mouth, more to re-attach your head to your body, etc. It's deemed too commercial by some that the monks should enjoy such materialistic trappings. (Does that make them Trappist Monks I wonder?) But if you want to see tigers up close, that's the place to go.

The Falls themselves are spectacular. Not in the league of Victoria Falls, but then, what is? What makes Erawan attractive is that they are in seven separate cascading levels, dropping down from around 1000 metres. Most are easily accesible on well-worn paths. Only the top level requires a bit of mountaineering skill. But well worth it, as you would have left all the lard-arses well down below.

Little known fact # 327: speleology is the name given to exploring caves. And there are several en route to the top cascade to poke your head into, the best being Wang Bahdan, Pratat, Rua, and Mee/Mi (which has five chambers to explore).

Bring your swimmers. The water is beautifully clear and bracing. Aah, bloody magic! And, you'll get a free fish spa in the process ... the little suckers will latch onto any available bit of skin you put under water. A few parts creepy, a few parts weird, and -- yes, I'll openly admit -- one part erotic. No wonder fish spas have become so popular!

Between all of these activities, it's easily enough for a most enjoyable full day's trip. So don't cut your time in Kanchanaburi short -- there's hundreds if not thousands of years of history waiting here for you.

kanchanaburi -- Lake Heaven: ALMOST HEAVEN

I love it when my partner and I do things simultaneously. No, no, no, not what you're thinking ... in this case it was a simple exclamation of 'WOW!'

You see, we'd just driven in on the hilly and somewhat serpentine road past Erawan Falls, when suddenly this panoramic vista opened up in front of us: Forested limestone mountains and a huge lake with colourful alpine chalets dotting its shore.

'It feels like I'm in another country,' she said. I doublechecked the map. We were still in Thailand by my reckoning (although one is very close to the Burmese border in this northwestern corner of Thailand and we had taken the odd wrong turn when she was navigating and ... oh, I really don't want to go into all of that again ...). But the other country this felt like was what ... maybe Queenstown New Zealand, with the Remarkables behind it? Perhaps Canada. Or even Chingis Khan Mountain in Terelj, Mongolia. With its autumnal colours it certainly didn't look nor feel like Thailand.

Then we got out of the car. Oh yes, it did feel like Thailand after all I thought as the mid-afternoon heat nailed us. Oh, and a glittering gold temple radiating from among the trees made it unmistakably Thai.

This is Lake Heaven, one of several resorts dotted around the Srinakarin Dam, about an hour north of Kanchanaburi city. Jaunty wooden chalets in a variety of chirpy colours look more like Swiss ski lodges than tropical lodgings. The whole thing is built out on a series of pontoons. There are about 25 accommodation units built on the water, plus communal areas such as restaurants, and jetties where a dizzying area of water-borne contraptions and vehicles await us. There are jet-skis, waveriders, kayaks, zorb balls, banana boats, donuts, trampolines, and an inflatable see-saw (where a teenaged boy and girl are having a rocking, giggling good time). On land, you can trash the forest tracks on ATVs.

We opted for a jet ski to check out this impressive lake -- ringed by mountains -- which disappeared tantalisingly off past islands and headlands to the left and right of us.

I fired the thing up, having stumped the operator by asking where the brakes were (er, trick question, it was an automatic). We were soon skimming along the mirror-like surface at near on 80km. I do double that on my motorbike sometimes, but on the water you can feel every single ripple at this speed. Overloaded boats ferry excited passengers to Huai Khamin waterfalls, where they can spot elephants, deer and even tigers. Jing jing!

This 1500 sq kilometre national park came into being 20 years ago to honour the Princess Mother's 90th birthday (although it's unclear whether she went out jet-skiing that day or not). The dam itself was put into the Kwai Yai River to provide hydro-electric power. Many locals can be seen dangling a fishing rod in at various points to catch barb fish. Elsewhere, house boats occupy secluded coves.

'Wow!' I said it again. It is achingly beautiful. We jet-skiid for half an hour and still got nowhere near the end of this massive dam.

Heading back to Lake Heaven, we splashed about in the waters. Had fun with some of the inflatables (no, no, no, not what you're thinking). It was just good clean fun. One of those days it felt really great to be alive ... and not in, er, Heaven. Ya wouldn't be dead for quids.

Kanchananburi Resorts, River Kwai, Rose Garden and Roundup

Over the next few days I'm going to bring you some of the highlights of Kanchanaburi province, just a couple of hours northwest of Bangkok.

If people know Kanchananburi at all it's usually because of the Bridge on the River Kwai -- see my earlier postings on that. But, as I discovered, there's so much more to it than western military history. There's actually a ton of Thai military history (ding dong battles with the Burmese over the years), water sports, cultural villages, beautiful nature, and hopefully tame tigers.

So check back soon for my blogs on:

The Rose Garden Riverside http://www.rosegardenriverside.com/

The Royal River Kwai Resort & Spa http://www.royalriverkwai.com/

Lake Heaven Resort and Park http://www.lakeheaven.com/

Erawan Falls

Tiger Temple

Plus some top tips for dining and clubbing in Kanchanaburi city ...

Fish spa -- SOMETHING FISHY AFOOT

I'd never heard of a fish spa until a few months ago, and now it seems I cannot go five metres without seeing a day spa, resort, massage place or souvenir shop exhorting 'fish spas'. I'm surprised that 7-11 are not offering them yet.

Anyway, I thought to myself: 'Fish spa ... how ridiculous that people would pamper their piscean pets to such an extent.' I mean Paris Hilton having her poodle pedicured is one thing, but having your pet fish massaged? That's just ridiculous.

As it turns out, yes it is ridiculous. But not as ridiculous as I felt when I was told that a fish spa was actually a place humans go for treatment by fish. Not the other way around. Oh!

Now apparently this madness has been going on since 1400 BC in ancient Egypt, whereby the Pharaoh's poor blistered feet were nibbled to a nice nubile finish by a fleet of fish from the Euphrates River. We're talking about the very cradle of civilisation here, folks.

But more recently it seems that Turkey is to blame. (I just got a mental image of a Turkey Spa ... where your toes are gobbled by our feathered friends.) You see, Kangal is the spiritual home of the Garra Rufa fish, which are the best at this sort of thing because these suckers -- pun fully intended -- are toothless and generate only enough sucking power (no sniggering down the back please) to remove the dead and flaky skin, not the live stuff. Hence they are known also as 'Doctor Fish'. They grow only to a maximum of six or eight centimetres, so it's not exactly like their fins are poking out of the water and the Jaws soundtrack is brooding in the background.

Now there is apparently a real scientific name for the act of the fish spa. It's called ... wait for it ... ichthyotherapy, meaning the use of fresh water fish for cleaning wounds. Drawings from the prisoners of war on the Death Railway show them waist-deep in the waters of the River Kwai whilst little fish cleaned out their tropical ulcers. In fact, in that same area, you can still get a free fish spa at Erawan Falls if you simply wade out into the waters beneath the cascades. They will nibble anything at within reach. And I do mean anything!

On that note, don't be suckered into any place that uses telapia from China. These do have teeth and are much bigger than real Doctor Fish. Just another cheap Chinese imitation on the market. So don't come running to me when your legs have been nibbled off at the knees!

The going rate seems to be in the 200-300 baht range for half an hour in the big cities, about 300 baht an hour in some of the outer areas. I recently enjoyed an 'all day if you want' session at Big Buddha on Koh Samui for 300 baht.

It is a unique sensation, dipping your legs up to calf height into the waters. Initially the fish dart for safety in the opposite end of the pond. Then slowly, tentatively, they swim back, lured by the tantalising upstream waft of my feet, which promise the multiple delights of raging tinea, psoriasis, overgrown fungal-ridden toenails, and generally years of podiatric neglect. An aphrodisiac to your average Garra Ruffa. One fish actually started humping my big toe. Jing jing!

Then the word got around: 'Buffet down the far end of the pool!' Suddenly both my feet were covered in sucking fish. There were fish sucking on other fish just to get the juices from my festering feet. It was a feeding frenzy. At first it feels like a slight electrical pulse, a tingle. Ok, I'll say it -- quite erotic. In fact there was a lady down the other end who was fairly in orgasmic rapture. (Just quietly I think she'd slipped a fish or two down the front of her pants.)

Fish jockey for position. They elbow (OK, most fish don't have elbows but the Garra  Rufa does, I'm sure) each other aside to have a crack at a particular morsel of skin. They squeeze in between your toes. All the while sucking, sucking, sucking. Those unlucky enough to be squashed by a careless foot, float off to the top, only to be reduced to a scaleless skeleton by their former best friends in no time at all. It's dog eat dog out there.

Which gives rise to another new business idea: EXTREME FISH SPAS. Wheel in the piranhas! Release the alligators! That'll make it more interesting and get rid of any dead -- or live! -- meat in a hurry.

And when it's all done, your feet are soft and smooth and generally more presentable.

It's funny the crazy human fads out of which empires and fortunes are carved. Still, gross as this might be to some, it sure beats the colonic irrigation fad that swept through Samui a few years ago.

That really proved there was a sucker born every minute!