Hellfire pass

This morning I hired a motorbike from the guesthouse and went out to Hellfire Pass. It’s about 80km from Kanchanaburi, not far from the border with Myanmar. Here was one of the most difficult parts to build of the Thai/Burma railway. The POWs and Asian labourers had to make cuttings through the mountains and bridges over gorges and rivers. The area was remote so away from supply lines. Then the Japanese decided it had to be finished quicker because their troops in Burma were running out of supplies so the work rate was doubled. People were working 18 hours a day throughout the monsoon season. Cholera was rife, as was malaria and dengue fever. Some prisoners and workers were beaten to death by guards. And the cuttings were made by hammering the rock until the hole was 1m deep and explosives could be put in, then manually carrying away all the pieces of rock. It was names Hellfire Pass because when they were working through the night by the light of lamps and candles, they thought it looked like hell.

This is one part of one of the cuttings. The railway line itself was taken up after the war. The area is used by the Thai military but there’s a museum and you can walk several kilometres of the line while listening to Australian former POWs talking about what it was like there. The extra is the view from one part of the track looking across the valley. Over the other side of the mountains in the distance is Myanmar.


When I got back to Kanchanaburi I found that my Vietnamese e-visa had come through a day early so I booked my flight. Saigon on Thursday but that means I have to stay in Bangkok tomorrow night.