bottled water and an old man aussie.

this past weekend Mike and I travelled to Kanchanaburi and stayed at the BlueStar guesthouses. For 100 baht (3 dollars) the room included two single beds, a bathroom, fan, porch and a small card table with 2 chairs to sit and enjoy the view of the river. The guesthouse was made of bamboo and wood, and stood on stilts over the river (we could see through the floor boards of our hut down onto the surface of the water).. The next day we woke up and rode the train on The Death Railway into the mountains. The railroad was constructed during WWII and over 100,000 POW's died building it. When the Japanese had captured the land, they forced Thai, American, and Aussie POW's to construct the railway to connect to Burma. The trecherous conditions and malnourishment killed thousands upon thousands of POW's. During the time that these POW's were building the railroad, they were being bombed by their own countries (in attack to stop the Japanese) Life was horrible for these people..the Japanese would kill them if they didn't work hard or they'd soon be bombed by their own people if the railroad wasn't soon completed.


We rode the train to HellFire Pas (it used to be part of the railway) until the Burmese tore up their part of the track, disconnecting the railway into their country- however, even though the railroad has been torn up, a path way leads through the mountains for about 3miles that you can hike.

So, we hiked that and spent the day in the woods wandering around taking pictures at scenic overlooks and certain areas marked "BOMB CRATER".

Yes, that's right. I have a picture of myself standing in a WWII Bomb Crater in the mountains of Hell Fire Pass. Quite the photo-op, eh?

The weekend was indeed adventurous; however, I believe my favorite part of the whole weekend was meeting an Australian man on the train who uttered these words of wisdom and hilarity:

Pulling out an ice cold water from his bag after riding on the train for nearly 3 hours, I oddly looked at him in shock- how had he gotten cold water?!

He looks at me, smirk on his tanned face and states:

"Froze it last night. hah. Us Aussies are clever people-
we invented ice and stuff like that-"

as he smiled and enjoyed his frosty beverage. After several drowning gulps of his water, looks back at me and says [concerning water]:

"..eh..it's not as good as beer- but,....I guess it's okay."

Cheers.