Lest we forget
The Parents and I meet at 0600 in the resort lobby, and we walk out, past many street vendors and children going to school, looking for our daily coffee. We walk over a bridge next to a religious building, with a beautiful rock garden, and a large central building shaped like a cone
We had used up around half of our time, so at the end of the bridge we turned back, in search of coffee. Most of the coffee shops wouldn't open until 0730, which is when we hoped to turn back for our resort, so we decided to venture just a bit further away to a place called To Bar Coffee Cart. Expecting a similar experience to yesterday, we arrive to a cafe decorated in dozens of different coffee bags, with a man tending to his espresso machine. We order our lattes, although i try and fail to order something interesting from the menu, due to my lack of thai skills. The coffee is great. We walk back to the resort, just in time to scarf down some buffet breakfast before it's time for our day activity.
There is a diorama of a specific P.O.W camp, with construction of a rail bridge in the background. There are groups of tiny soldiers with timy guns forcing tiny P.O.Ws to work. A sign above challenges the viewer to spot 4 elephants in it. There is a scale model of the railway and the terrain around it, with lights to point out where the P.O.W camps were placed. It shows what parts of the railway are currently underwater due to a dam. (the path of the railway on a map below)
There is a statue in the middle, made from a drawing left by a P.O.W., depicting two gaunt, sick soldiers, supporting a third, sicker soldier. The drawing was named "Two Malarias and a Cholera." There are paper crosses adorned by paper poppies placed at the bottom, signed by Australian visitors. There is a scale model of a wood rail bridge, along with a train on top, funded by the Australian government.
There is a display showing how many of each demographic of people, the slaves and each nationality of P.O.W, along with how many died. A graph shows the percentage of each demographic who died. 2.8k Australians died on the railway. That's 6% of the total count of Australians on the project. I speculate, to myself, that this number includes New Zealanders. A stained glass window is dedicated to those who passed.
We had used up around half of our time, so at the end of the bridge we turned back, in search of coffee. Most of the coffee shops wouldn't open until 0730, which is when we hoped to turn back for our resort, so we decided to venture just a bit further away to a place called To Bar Coffee Cart. Expecting a similar experience to yesterday, we arrive to a cafe decorated in dozens of different coffee bags, with a man tending to his espresso machine. We order our lattes, although i try and fail to order something interesting from the menu, due to my lack of thai skills. The coffee is great. We walk back to the resort, just in time to scarf down some buffet breakfast before it's time for our day activity.We meet our group in the resort lobby, leave our bags and meet our local guide with our mountain bikes. We head off the same direction as our morning walk, but turn off soon after, for our first stop of the day. Outside the museum, our local guide explains that this area is the closest town to both the first and the largest excavation sites for a railway comstructed by the Japanese in world war 2 from Thailand to burma, to transport supplies and troops to china such as to avoid travelling by water, where there was more resistance. We enter the museum to learn about it. There are exhibits funded by both the Australian and Dutch governments, as well as some private donations. There is a reconstruction, as well as a real piece from a wooden rail bridge structure that was standard for the P.O.Ws and slaves to build
There is a diorama of a specific P.O.W camp, with construction of a rail bridge in the background. There are groups of tiny soldiers with timy guns forcing tiny P.O.Ws to work. A sign above challenges the viewer to spot 4 elephants in it. There is a scale model of the railway and the terrain around it, with lights to point out where the P.O.W camps were placed. It shows what parts of the railway are currently underwater due to a dam. (the path of the railway on a map below)There is a statue in the middle, made from a drawing left by a P.O.W., depicting two gaunt, sick soldiers, supporting a third, sicker soldier. The drawing was named "Two Malarias and a Cholera." There are paper crosses adorned by paper poppies placed at the bottom, signed by Australian visitors. There is a scale model of a wood rail bridge, along with a train on top, funded by the Australian government.There is a display showing how many of each demographic of people, the slaves and each nationality of P.O.W, along with how many died. A graph shows the percentage of each demographic who died. 2.8k Australians died on the railway. That's 6% of the total count of Australians on the project. I speculate, to myself, that this number includes New Zealanders. A stained glass window is dedicated to those who passed.We get coffees. It's a while before anyone speaks.
We ride next to the war cemetery nearby. Our guide tells us this one houses just dutch and british. Many headstones say as follows; "Here lies a soldier, known only unto god." We ride on.
We move out of the town and into more regional areas, and to gravel roads. We ride between rice fields, in different stages of germination, some with tiny sprouts, some that our guide says are ready for harvest, and some still burnt down, to return their nutrients to the soil.