Escape Velocity

It’s said that travel changes you and I’d have to agree with that. I know it has me. We’ve spent so much time in Asia that now I have to smile if a mall has a fourth floor and I’m surprised if the elevator has the “unlucky” #4 button. In Penang we lived on the 29th floor of a high rise and on the way down the floor readout had a hiccup at the 24th floor which read 23b, 14th floor read 13a, and the fourth floor read 3ab, just to be safe. We got down just the same. My hospital in Penang had no 4th floor even though I had physical therapy on the fourth floor every day. Yours Truly found that a little disconcerting.

I’m not about to reach out for the chicken bones to find what it all means but I find I’m a little more aware of things like how the flow of my day seems to be going or why an older gentleman dressed in denim who also just arrived at the Kathmandu Airport just asked me where I got my shoes. Turns out that’s a long story but, “No, I’m not going trekking. These Merrells are my everyday shoes.” The affable Dutchman named Peter wished us good day and with it getting dark, we all busied ourselves with procuring ground transportation.

Ours turned out to be to be another yellow 4-door Speck with doors as thin as a sheet of corrugated cardboard. The driver applied himself diligently and soon we were being tossed about like dice in a dice box.

Outside the cab a horrible scene had developed into the intimidating kind of nighttime chaos that would fit right in to that river night scene in apocalypse now. You know the one. The traffic was horrendous but there were thousands of people partying out in the streets, bundled against the cold. It was an “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore” moment.

That’s when I recalled how everyone reacted when we said we’re going to Kathmandu. “It’s a shithole.” Hard to believe it could be that bad. Well, everything looks worse at night. We hadn’t yet arrived but I wouldn’t say it’s a bad omen. The driver, all things considered, knew every path and alley in this city but he could not find our hotel. Ok, that’s an omen. Finally he stopped in an alley to call our hotel while completely blocking the knife & dagger shop we were practically stopped inside of. The hotel sent out a search and rescue party to find and guide us back on foot so our taxi left. The alleyways are paved in rough brick which caused our wheeled duffels to flop over but I liked the clickity-clack sound. I told Marce that we’d laugh about this later.

Eight flights of solid marble stairs later, we had arrived. Kathmandu. Yeah, so far it’s a shithole.

In the morning another flight of stairs led to al fresco breakfast on the roof. The temperature was a reach for us but I enjoyed the raven’s company.

Stepping out of our alley who should be the first person we see? It’s Peter, the affable Dutchman from the airport. Like us he’s a head taller than anyone else. He quickly suggested an afternoon foray to the Pashupatinath Temple on the Bagmati River. Of course, of course, sounds great.

The taxi let us off at the top of a ridge that led down to a tiny river where a great pall of smoke and incense lay in the valley choking us.

The heavy air is the kind of thing that Marce hates.

It quickly got serious though. Oh my god, these are funeral pyres.

It’s the Hindu festival Maha Shivaratri and lines of faithful chant and dance through the temples.

Meanwhile, down at the river families are performing rights and ablutions before our very eyes.

Some have to be instructed, some corrected, some families stand there stunned.

What a scene. Sobering to think about what we’re breathing in. I’m told some are brought to a low lying building to await death. Too real.

We eventually hiked our way up the hill past every huckster in the valley to the temples on top and some of them still show serious damage from the 2015 earthquake.

By this point the grounds were overwhelmed with people making taxis fairly scarce so suddenly negotiating with them became much tougher. That’s how it goes in Kathmandu. It’s tough, but maybe it’s not a shithole.

Our Thai visas are due to expire shortly and rather than spend our last days in Bangkok we chose to stay in Kanchanaburi. There’s not much here beyond the Death Railway and related activities but the days are relaxing and quiet.

After the hot hike to Hellfire pass and back we both deserve a good massage. I opted for a one-hour foot massage, and Jack chose neck and shoulders. His masseuse must have felt he needed more than that and ended up completely working him over head to toe. As for me, I could go for a foot massage every day.

We find it disconcerting wherever we travel to see the penetration of Western brands into local culture, but at least here Ronald McDonald is being respectful with the usual Thai greeting.

Once again we were up early for the train back to Bangkok but this time we ordered up a tuktuk so we didn’t have to schlep our luggage the mile to the station. Our driver asked for my phone and enthusiastically took about ten photos of us, posing us here and there, trying different angles.

We probably could have gone directly to the airport but I was concerned we wouldn’t be able to make the connection from the train to the plane so we spent a final night in Bangkok. That gave me the opportunity to hit Uniqlo for some warm clothing for our next destination, and Jack a chance to have his last full English before we return to the UK in April.

Then it was off to the airport and goodby to Thailand. It’s been a great visit and we’ll definitely be back. Now, Westward Ho!

To get a real sense of what the laborers endured building the Thai-Burma Railway it’s best to make the journey to Hellfire Pass, the deepest cut through the mountains on the line. It’s not the easiest place to get to if you’re relying on public transportation. We got up at 5am, and walked a mile to the train station for the predawn train. This is the last bit of the line in existence. The British dismantled most of it after the war because it would have been too difficult to maintain, given the terrain and conditions.

We rumbled over the Kwai River as the sky began to lighten, and for the next two hours we traveled through fields of manioc toward the mountains, stopping for school children on the way.

Along the journey the train slows way down to traverse one of the few remaining original wooden trestles. The train passes inches from the rock wall on one side (no photos of that side, but there’s a great shot of it in the movie The Railway Man,) and curving around the cut high above the river on the other side. Lots of people ride the train just to see the trestle and get off at the next stop to take pictures, then ride the train right back to Kanchanaburi. Our train had a large Japanese tour group.

The train doesn’t go as far as Hellfire Pass, so you have to take a bus for a half hour then walk another half mile to the visitors center. We walked through the little village to the highway for the bus only to learn it wouldn’t come for an hour. The cook at a nearby food stall struck up a conversation with us, then offered to ride us up the mountain in his truck. Yes, please!

The interpretive center and the memorial walkway were built by the Australians to honor the prisoners of war who died during construction. The videos and displays describe the dire conditions — no shoes or proper clothing, barely subsistence rations, no medicines against tropical diseases or injuries — and we took our time through the galleries, difficult as it was to learn the brutality of the Japanese captors.

Then it was time to start the walkway. There are two options, a shorter one-hour walk to Hellfire Pass, and a longer, more challenging hike over uneven terrain through more passes and points of interest. We opted for the longer one, which required us to carry a safety radio, and someone from the visitors center checked in with us every hour to ask our position and make sure we were ok. Both walks are enhanced by an audio tour.

The beginning of the walk reminded me of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC, where friends and family members leave notes and memorabilia near their loved ones’ names. Here, fellow prisoners of war leave flags, service pins and other memories to honor their friends who didn’t make it.

The entire railway line was constructed with hand tools, including cutting through solid rock along the cliff edge. Hellfire Pass is the deepest of those cuts and standing between the walls it’s hard to imagine how anyone survived this brutal work, half starved and barefoot in dry-season heat and monsoon mud.

At the end of the easier part of the walk are the flags of the countries whose prisoners are honored, and a place to sit down in the shade. The temperature was rising and I suspect we were approaching 35°C/95°F without a breath of air.

We forged ahead on the extended trail, listening to ever-more frightening stories on the audio tour, dragging our feet up steep uneven steps, scrambling down rocky slopes, trying to understand how human beings can treat other humans with such cruelty. It was not an easy walk, both physically and emotionally and we were relieved when it was time to turn back.

At one resting spot on the audio tour an ex-POW described the beauty of the valley they worked beside every day, covered in dense teak forest. He vowed to return after the war but by the time he came back some time later the teak was completely gone. Many of the sleepers on the railway were teak, a wood so heavy it took six men to carry one sleeper.

Back at the interpretive center we cooled off with a couple of smoothies, then waited on the highway for a bus to take us the two hours back to Kanchanaburi. The entire trip took more than twelve hours.

Before this trip all we knew about this chapter in WWII history was the fictionalized story in the movie Bridge on the River Kwai. The real story is much more brutal and we’re both glad we were able to understand in a small way what so many men suffered in the name of war, and to pay our respects.

For years I’ve been adding flags to my Google map whenever I read about a place we might want to visit. Bangkok is hot and dirty and wasn’t piquing our interest so we cast about for someplace to get away from the crowds and pollution.

There’s a mark on my map at the River Kwai bridge because who doesn’t love Alec Guinness and William Holden? And who doesn’t wish they could whistle the theme song from the movie? (My dad could. He was as good a whistler as Der Bingle.)

The bridge is in a small town called Kanchanaburi, and it took a few days to learn how to pronounce that. You get there on the Death Railway and to get to the train you take a ferry, which may or may not come in time to catch the train, or you take a taxi. We went for the taxi.

The train was slow and bumpy but it was nice to get away from the Big Mango. In about three hours we were checked in to a rustic cabin on stilts on the River Kwai. A cold shower and a couple of beers later and we felt good enough for the hot mile walk to see the famous bridge.

It’s important to point out at this juncture that the book the movie was based on is a novel, and while the basic underpinnings of the story are true, the plot is completely fiction and the author took some serious historical license in crafting his tale. For example, the wooden bridge depicted in the movie isn’t the actual bridge over the River Kwai that we’re about to walk over. In fact, there were more than 600 bridges on the Thai-Burma Railway. Let’s back up a little.

By 1942 Japan had invaded Thailand, then Burma. To supply their troops in Burma and prepare to invade India, they relied on the shipping lanes through the Malacca Strait and the Andaman Sea. But after their defeat at Midway the sea route was too dangerous, as it was patrolled by Allied submarines. A railway connecting Bangkok with Burma was the answer, despite the fact that the British had surveyed the land decades before and rejected the route, through mountainous, mosquito-infested jungle terrain, as impossible.

The Japanese were undaunted and in June 1942 began transporting about 200,000 Southeast Asian slave laborers and about 60,000 British, Australian, Dutch and American prisoners of war to start work. The conditions by all accounts were much worse than what was depicted in the movie. By the time the railway was completed, it’s estimated that about 100,000 civilians and 12,000 prisoners of war died from the inhumane treatment and severe tropical conditions. After the war many of the Japanese commanders were tried and convicted of war crimes, some sentenced to death.

Of the more than 600 bridges on the railway only a few were built of concrete and steel. The real bridge over the River Kwai is one of them, and while it was bombed by the Allies, it was rebuilt and stands today as the original. The magnificent wooden bridge at the center of the movie plot is likely based on one of the long wooden trestles elsewhere along the route.

The existing bridge is a tourist destination and why we’re here too. People walk along the tracks over the bridge until one of the two daily trains signals its approach.

Kanchanaburi is also the site of a museum about the death railway, as well as the War Cemetery, containing nearly 7000 graves of personnel whose remains were moved from various POW camps and other lone graves along the railway route. What’s striking about this war cemetery is that these are not the young men barely out of their teens we usually think of, but older men, mostly in their 30s and 40s, probably with wives and children. The thought of all these broken families brought me to tears.

The museum is moving and well presented, covering the history of the conflict, the engineering of the railway, the treatment of the workers and the conditions they endured, as well as the aftermath of the ordeal. There are effective graphic displays of the death toll by group, and art work by prisoners determined to record the hell they barely survived.

We got quite the education on the day, and at the museum cafe we were amazed at all the histories and memoirs written about this brutal chapter of World War II. But even this isn’t the whole story. That will come when we travel the last remaining bit of the Death Railway to Hellfire Pass. But that’s a story for another day.

(For a realistic depiction of the conditions of the Death railway construction, watch The Railway Man on Netflix, starring Colin Firth.)

After two months in beautiful northern Thailand, hot and dusty Bangkok isn’t quite hitting the sweet spot for us. We scour top ten lists of things to do and not much is piquing our interest so we’re reverting to our default travel mode, randomly exploring by public transportation, shopping, and eating.

We found an Ethiopian restaurant — one of our favorite cuisines — but getting there was going to be a bit of a challenge. We started with the riverboat, which was supposed to connect with a canal boat but when we got to the canal landing some locals told us the boat wasn’t running. A hot walk lead us to a bus stop and eventually to the restaurant. It took nearly two hours to get there but it was worth it!

We wisely sprung for a tuktuk ride back to the hotel.

One thing on everyone’s top ten list is a visit to the Golden Mount Temple, and while we’ve seen some fine temples during our time in SE Asia, this one promised a panoramic view of the city. So it was back on the riverboat and the long walk up the steps to the top.

In 1820 Bangkok suffered a cholera epidemic and so many bodies piled up that in some areas they resorted to allowing vultures to reduce the backup. This monument below the temple commemorates that gruesome period.

It was another oppressively hot day but luckily the temple grounds hosts a cafe with cold drinks, cooling towels and welcome shade.

As always we explored local markets.

One of the best ways to cool off in hot Asian cities is to go shopping in one of the massive malls. This is also an opportunity to get ice cream, always a noble pursuit.

This mall had the largest Starbucks we’ve ever seen, three levels plus an enormous outdoor patio with a fantastic view of the city.

The heat and dust are really getting to us. It’s time to move on.

The trip from Bangkok’s railroad station was long but mostly uneventful, and I remember thinking, other than pulling up in a bright yellow two door speck, this could be East Harlem USA. The hotel lobby was almost impressive in a marbly sort of way and with an elevator, on our budget unheard of. With virtually nothing within easy walking distance we knew that we’d have to decipher Bangkok’s convoluted hodgepodge of overlapping attempts at mass transit. A weekly pass would be our typical modus operandi but a sky rail pass means nothing to the rickety bus driver even less to the river ferries which as near as I could tell there may have been at least three or more different classifications. So it’ll be pay as you go for a week.

Bangkok is an old city and like most old cities they grew up around transportation and that would be the river. Pouring over wildly inaccurate transit maps we soon noticed that most of the things we wanted to see were on or near the Chao Phraya river, or canals. Good to know. I really wanted to see the Royal Barge museum and it looked like a good fit for an adventure on the river ferries. The first problem is that it’s quite a hike just to get to the ferry landing but we figured how hard could it be from there? Typical of Thailand neighborhoods there’s a surprise around nearly every corner. The way I see it that’s true art.

Who makes knick-knacks on such a massive scale?

I’d like to say that the ferry nudged up to the dock but unerringly they never missed an opportunity to slam against the pier. I guess it’s their signature method. As we pulled away I noticed the river was still chocked with large tree bits, floating junk, and about as bad as I’ve ever seen and I’m from Pittsburgh, but the good old Monongahela has nothing on this river except maybe traces of heavy metals.

Being the quick studies that we are we soon realized that we were in fact at the canal but on the wrong side and the only way to cross the canal was a mammoth hike up to a six lane highway bridge. Feets don’t fail me now! Finally we gained the bridge after ascending four flights of concrete stairs and descending a similar number on the other side of a three hundred foot span. We were left without a clue, but at least we were across. After a few fits and starts, assuming that the museum was somewhere back the way we came except now we’re on the correct side, we found nothing but nasty little pathways through I think it would be safe to call it a slum.

Zig-zagging through the hood for a while I noticed our first clue.

A small blue arrow drawn on a piece of paper tacked to a vertical dirt wall. I was convinced we were on to something. This went on for quite a while when turning another corner I saw a sign that said tickets. Damn we’re good at this. Apparently one is expected to buy a ticket for a canal boat, where I have no idea, and then you are comfortably deposited at the museum dock but where is the fun in that?

So you pay a camera fee and hang a tag around your neck as the designated photographer and wonder at the magnificence of all of this.

The original royal barge marina was bombed during WW2 and several royal barges were badly damaged. The king tasked the museum project and barge maintenance to the Fine Arts Department and National Museum of Royal Barges. Great idea to dry dock these treasures. Eight of the most significant royal barges are housed here but there are 51 considered royal starting as early as the 12th century.

The king’s Golden Swan is considered to be the largest single trunk dugout in the world.

Royal procession of barges had a very strict protocol and it was notated in the big book. Special uniforms, flags, and detailed instructions on positioning protocol.

Finally it was time to leave but a young couple said they knew an easy way out of the maze so we followed them and sure enough came out of the slum at the ferry landing.

Longterm travel brings joy and adventure but also challenges and frustration. I guess we haven’t been paying attention but we discovered that Jack’s debit card expired and mine is about to expire. We use our cards to get local currency wherever we go and without them we have no access to cash. This is especially critical right now as we’re traveling in areas where credit cards aren’t generally accepted. So now what?

Our replacement cards are sent to our mailing address in New Jersey. The bank will sent us replacements directly but only after canceling our one remaining working card. We chose instead to have my sister mail the New Jersey cards to us in Thailand. But where? And how long will it take?

This scenario threw a spanner into our Make It Up As We Go approach to travel. We spent a few days deciding where to go that could receive a DHL package and getting the address to my sister so she can start the ball rolling on her end.

We are Bangkok bound. A hotel accustomed to business travelers seemed like a good choice and after phone calls to the front desk to alert them to our incoming mail all we had to do was just get ourselves there.

We booked the overnight train from Chiang Mai and splurged on a first class sleeper cabin. Unfortunately the newer train was fully booked so we were on the older, shabbier, but still clean one. For the same price, I might add. That seems unfair.

The seats weren’t particularly comfortable, there was no room for our luggage, and since Covid there’s no food service. But it was about a third the cost of flying and we’re always up for a new experience.

The train pulled out of the station just before sundown so there will be no scenery to look at. We brought our own food and water, and when the train attendant made up our beds we just settled in to read for the evening.

The air conditioning was on full blast despite all efforts to turn it down or block the vents. We both shivered most of the night and we were glad to arrive at 6am and warm up.

We had booked the hotel for a week expecting to wait for our DHL delivery but as it turned out the package beat us there. Now we’re in a comfy hotel just beyond our normal budget for a whole week. We hadn’t planned to spend any time in Bangkok and don’t really know what to do here. But we’ll figure it out. We always do.

We often give in to the inexorable pull of the road not taken. One hundred feet from Wayside, our Chiang Mai home, is a charming sun-dappled alleyway that on this day I just could not resist. It’s not like I had someplace to be. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have a place to be. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve walked past.

Courtyards to places that I could never have imagined were on one side of the walkway but on the other side were the high walls that surround what I like to think of as “our” Temple. I could hear muffled voices, and looking over a locked gate, I could see a monk and a few people in discussion. I’d never seen anyone in this back corner of the temple grounds, even though we spend a little time here nearly every day.

Entering the grounds, we humbly approached the group and instantly figured there are major reconstruction and upgrades being made to this backwater orphan of the temple complex.

The pool over which the temple was built is still falling apart but we could see magnificent undulating creatures taking shape on a bridge over the water. We asked a young woman about the work going on and she said she’s a volunteer and pointed out the sculptor. He’s well-known and was brought in to create the traditional Naga staircase. The figures are sculpted completely freehand in concrete.

The artist was mixing concrete in a little pail and his young helper said he was sculpting according to the pictures in his mind.

He has done 16 temples and sculpts in wood as well. This project will take six months start to finish. One naga is male, the other female, and when finished one will be painted silver, and the other gold.

We never saw any plans or drawings.

The elephant temple adjacent to the pool is the oldest and most sacred in Chaing Mai, often seen with several dozens of monks surrounding it, so it’s easy to see why this temple is getting a serious upgrade.

We made it a point to visit every few days to watch the fascinating progress. The artist came to recognize us and always greeted us when we arrived. He didn’t seem to mind the audience.

With our visas expiring soon it’s a shame we won’t see the finished work.

We seem to keep missing Lunar New Year celebrations wherever we are. In Sydney in 2017 we enjoyed an unexpected dragon dance through a market but missed the big day, and in Singapore in 2020 we watched decorations pop up around town in preparation for the event but we had to leave before the actual festivities.

This year we were determined to catch the real thing, or at least what we could, given where we are. We figured Chiang Mai is our best bet so we reluctantly left delightful Pai for the minibus journey back over the mountains to our home base in Chiang Mai.

Most of the celebrations would be in Chinatown, a long hot walk from the Old Town, so we chose to get up early and watch the start of the official kickoff parade at the East Gate.

It’s been a while, but I wanted to take this time to talk about local Thai transportation. There’s this conveyance here called a songthaew. It’s essentially a pick-up truck painted bright cadmium red with two hard longitudinal bench seats and a bit of a roof, but open to traffic out the back.

I include this information by way of explaining that this is the cheapest way of moving about Thailand. Designed for eight souls, I’ve never seen one with less than twelve or more cramped backpackers while circulating Pai looking for more. You go nowhere without a fully packed truck. Remember, there’s always room for one more. Somehow this all works out unless something goes wrong which would cause a lot of fun-seekers to tumble out the open back of the pickup. So far we’ve managed to avoid the songthaew.

We signed up for the rare, for us, “tour” to Pai Canyon and sure enough, it was time to become acquainted with our very own bright cadmium red songthaew. I will admit that the first step up through the doorless open back was challenging while simultaneously avoiding giving the very low roof a righteous head butt, it was obvious that first we’d be wandering around picking up more adventure seekers. Rarely has driving 12km through the Pai countryside seemed so long. We arrived just before sundown to the classic Thai carnival atmosphere. Music, food, balloons, cheap plastic Buddhas but the job at hand was a frontal assault climbing a surprisingly steep pathway up a long hill toward what I hoped was the correct way to Pai Canyon. We were fairly confident because we’ve developed a good nose for sniffing out the right way to go, and at least it wasn’t 360+ stairs.

Breathlessly summiting a dusty hilltop we were met with a strange scene of uncommon beauty.

The only thing left for all sunset lovers is to negotiate one’s way back to your ride in absolute total darkness. There simply are no lights at Pai Canyon.