River Kwai Bridge and Thai Burma Death Railway Museum - Kanchanaburi, Thailand

If you are a historical or war buff, chance is you'd probably have heard about the bridge on river kwai in Kanchanaburi. It has a sad world war II story behind the bridge that was made famous by a holy wood movie. Ten thousands of civilians and prisoners of war died making one of the 8 bridges that connect Thailand and Burma.
Truthfully, I never heard of this story, and I only came to know about this and went there on 26 January 2015 was because I had to go to Kanchanaburi to do a 3 day volunteer at a village school there.

So on the last minute, I decided to put going to the bridge on the river as part of my itinerary and booked for a rafting accommodation nearby.

Despite my local friend's advice to take the bus from Bangkok, which she said will take 2 hours, I decided to take the twice a day train. It took me 3 hours, about 40 min late from schedule (which is common so I expected it).

The way to Bangkok Noi, thonbury train station isn't as hard as it seemed.
Go to sathorn pier, take the 40 baht express boat stopping at tha wang lang, a 30 min journey. When exiting the pier, take a taxi, ask for meter. The first taxi I asked refused meter and asked for 200 baht which I declined. The second taxi used meter and less than 10 minutes drive and 45 Baht later I arrived at the station.

Thonburi train station

The only platform at the station

There is only one class ticket, 100 baht and only one platform.
I got off at River Kwai Bridge station, one station after Kanchanaburi, which is just before the train passing the bridge going towards Nam Tok

On the way we passed towns and fields

River Kwai Bridge Station

The river and the bridge is just few meters away from the River Kwai Bridge station. There bridge is surprisingly short, and I read somewhere that the main part of the bridge was actually destroyed by bomb and had been restored since. What disappoint me is that there is no explanation or sign which part is the original and which part is restored. You can walk to the end of the bridge.

The market stalls at the beginning of the bridge

Bridge on the River Kwai

The bridge from a restaurant nearby

River Kwai

Near the end of the bridge

To know the history behind the bridges, visit Thai-Burma Death Railway Museum, which is about 5 min with sai ling (sort of like the tuk tuk of Kanchanaburi). The museum is one of three war museum, it is the most expensive one (140 Baht for adult) but it is the best one in terms of management. It also have English explanation and documentaries.

Opposite of the museum, is the kanchanaburi war cemetery, no entrance fee, one of the two cemeteries in Thailand. There were about 144 cemetery, and to easily manage them, all the tombs were moved to only 2 cemetery.

If you have an extra day to kill in Kanchanaburi, I would go for the hellfire pass, one of the cutting site they were using during the building of the bridge. Do go on your own, even though it isn't the easiest to go, but you will save a lot of money, because the museum does offer a full day tour which include a trip there plus all other war related sites, but it costs almost 6000 baht.

Apart from those, as far as I know, there isn't much to do in Kanchanaburi. For night time, you can hire a 3 hour floating restaurant big raft that will take you on the river Kwai, and sometimes passing the bridge, depending on the circumstance. You can have dinner, karaoke and dance too.