The upshot... two bundles of wonderfully clean, and, mmm hmm spring meadow fresh scented, sodden pages that were formerly travel documents. Now, this possibly wouldn't have been such a big issue if we weren't planning on heading to Cambodia early the next morning. But we were. It doesn't take a genius (thank God, as clearly anyone who washes passports along with the undies isn't one and Heide was in shock and mourning as she'd just lost a book with about 60 international stamps!) to work out that a few lumps of papier-mache doesn't typically get you through international borders. Instead we'd have to make a trip to the British and American Embassies to get our wallets lightened by a considerable number of dollars. Ah well, at least it happened in Bangkok and our room had HBO so it wasn't all bad. The net effect of this little episode is that with the Cambodia plan now a lathered mess we'd have to revert to PLAN B. Except we didn't have one.

Still, armed with a Lonely Planet and soothed by a few fruity shakes (we've resolutely stuck to our no-more-Chang rule!) we drew up a new side trip. Kanchanaburi. Can-a-cold-beer? No, Kanchanaburi, a town that became infamous as a result of being the point on the "Death Railway" where it was necessary to build a bridge over the River Kwai.

It's about three hours or so aboard an "ordinary class" train from Bangkok to the western provincial town of Kanchanaburi, the later sections of the trip are actually on the "Death Railway" itself. The morbid moniker for the set of tracks comes from its origins. During World War 2 the Japanese, in an effort to ensure an alternative supply link between Thailand and Myanmar (then Siam and Burma) to the Straights of Malacca, decided to construct, or rather, have others construct a railway. Decades earlier the British had run a feasibility study to determine the, well feasibility, of such a project. It had been deemed impractical as a result of the terrain; which roughly comprises of: rivers, jungles, sharp gradients and areas so remote that they were incompatible with bringing in the heavy machinery necessary for the task. Japanese engineers estimated the project would take 5 years. The Japanese High Command deemed this far too long and demanded completion within a couple of years. What followed can be described quite simply as horrific abuse. Some 16,000 Allied Prisoners of War and perhaps 100,000 forced Asian labourers died in the construction effort. The deaths (I'm sorry but this sort of things can't be brushed over in my usual glib fashion) came mostly from disease (primarily: Cholera, Malaria and Dysentery) starvation, over work, brutality and execution. The tales are of course well documented and harrowing (to say the least) but best kept for something other than a travel website. Remarkably the slave labour force managed to complete the railway on October 17th 1943, just 17 months after starting. To add insult to injury the line was inaugurated by a Japanese "brothel train". Sick.

In the town of Kanchanaburi sits an Allied war cemetery with the graves of about 7000 servicemen who died building the railroad. Next to it stands the quite wonderful Bridge Over the River Kwai Museum. It deals with the construction of the railway in a well balanced, none judgmental, but sympathetic fashion, which makes it rather odd to find the number of comments in the visitors book that read along the lines (sorry for the terrible pun) of: "Jap bastards" (a visitor from Auckland NZ et al) These comments struck us as rather misplaced. After all, isn't it such animosity that led to the deaths of every one of those men now at rest in front of us? Of course if the writer was in fact a survivor of the atrocity I completely accept that the pain, even now, some 60 odd years later, is raw and understandably so) The cemetery, like so many across the world is simple yet graceful and beautiful. Some of the comments on the gravestones, such as: "He died as he lived, a brave lad and a good son" are deeply moving and in stark contrast to the more malevolent messages inside.

From the cemetery we visited the bridge itself, which though bombed during WW2 had been rebuilt. The most recent version I noted was done so using Japanese steel, ironic I suppose that here they were both literally and figuratively building bridges. I mentioned earlier that one of the reasons the British decided not to go ahead and build the railway was the gradient of certain stretches of the proposed route where it would not be possible to bring in heavy machinery. The Japanese answer to this problem was simple. More men, with picks, shovels and the odd bit of dynamite to hack a way through the rock. The best known cutting was called "Hell Fire Pass" on account of it being hellish and the flickering lanterns necessary to illuminate the task at night which gave the impression of being a passage to hell. To me it was both horrific and awesome. You can still see the gouges in the 25 meter (70 feet) rock wall where the tools of the forced labour smashed down in to the stone. Standing in the depths of the Hell Fire Pass you look up and think if it were not for the fact that you were standing there you might think it impossible to construct this using basically nothing but human endevour.

Luckily for us there was something to bring some levity to the situation. Snakes! I'm sure that they were far from a welcome sight in 1942 but now, especially to me, as I'm very, very sad, they were great. Heide first spotted a green one (estimated length 18 - 24 inches) then we saw another one with blue / grey and yellow. I haven't a clue what they were but I tell myself they were deadly. (Come on... humour me!)