Thailand - Day 2 continued, Bridge over the river Kwai.

 

We had lunch at a restaurant looking over the river

and we could see the train (that later, we would ride on) go across the wooden trestle bridge (that later we would walk on)

A Banana Palm flower.

The bus then took us to the

trestle bridge, built by the POWs and we walked along it

to a cave that they had used as a camp, now occupied by a Buddha

and incense sellers. According Ammy, cats and dogs in Thailand are happy and well cared for but choose whether to stay with someone or not. We have seen lots of dogs, not as many cats, and many are just roaming loose but do appear well fed.

after exploring the cave we walked back along the tracks

and I tried to get photos of the swallows swooping around.

Thailand has swallows, including the barn swallow, wire-tailed swallow, Pacific swallow, and red-rumped swallow. from Google. I have no idea which species these were.

Gaten fooling around as we could hear the train approaching.








The 45 minute train ride was lovely. Part of the "death railway" tracks were ripped up and part, in Thailand, is still in use linking the country villages and homesteads with the towns.

We had views of the river

and the countryside. We saw a lot of Tapioca being grown and some being harvested, long root tubers being dug up and loaded onto pick up trucks.

The tapioca industry of Thailand plays an important role in the agricultural economy of Thailand. Tapioca is dried cassava in powder or pearly form. Tapioca (Thai: มันสำปะหลัง; RTGS: man sampalang), besides being used as a food, the "native starch" it provides is used as a thickening agent and a stabilizer in many products. Native starch is a powder obtained from plants containing starch.^[1] Native starch is extracted from the root of the cassava plant, which has the ability to grow in dry weather and low-nutrient soils where other crops do not grow well. Cassava roots can be stored in the ground for up to 24 months, and for some varieties for up to 36 months, thus harvest may be extended until market conditions are favourable or starch production capacity is available.from Wikipedia.

The coaches were old and wooden, rickety

and, with Nic and Dave

I sat in the last one.

We had the windows open and a lovely breeze coming in. Photo by Nicky.

Aside from the fields of Tapioca, there were banana, papaya and mango orchards, fields of corn and bamboo and cattle (I saw some that looked like Brahman and some that looked like water buffalo)

Occasionally we stopped at small stations but sometimes we just stopped at a crossroad and people got on and off.

We slowed to go over the River Kwai

so we could take pictures and then pulled into a station, were we disembarked.

A small market catered to the tourists.

The arches are original to the bridge, the rectangular pieces are replacements for the part that was bombed.

I didn't walk on the bridge

but, instead, watched the water traffic

and

the market activity.

Then on to our hotel, which was lovely.

We swam, ate dinner and I fell into bed!

Our room had a little patio that looked over water teeming with Koi. I saw a water Monitor and an iridescent blue Kingfisher (looked him up, he was a White Throated Kingfisher)