A tasteless trip or a way to honour the past?

 When I booked my trip one aspect of the trip I was slightly unsure about was the trip to the River Kwai, both because of the history of the area, but also because I was not sure about sleeping next to the river in the dark.  However, in some ways the trip turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip. First I was not totally alone, second, the museums in Kwai were really informative and in the end the river element was really lovely.

I was picked up early for the trip and soon joined by a couple.  In the hour or two that it took us to drive to one of the cemeteries in Kanchanaburi, we discovered that all three of us were from Hertfordshire.  They had bought a four day version as a separate package, I was on the three day one,  we were together for a day and a half.  So first a visit to the cemetery which was very moving, then to the museum which was very informative.  Obviously much of the information was familiar to someone of my age, but not to the others on the trip.  What was less familiar was both the sheer number of Asian people who had also died in addition to the many Dutch, Australian and English soldiers and the heart-rending accounts of what happened to those who survived yet did not get home for years or at all as the war raged on.   In the afternoon, after a fabulous meal at a way side restaurant where guides seem to swap their charges, we moved onto Hinktok Camp. Apart from a nod to the style of what the prisoners of war went through in WW2, the glamping site seemed a happy beautiful place, but of course it had a dark history, which the small museum on site reflected.  Above the site there was a third museum which we visited the following day which focused on the Hellfire Pass the bit of the railway where many Aussie soldiers lost their lives.  The camp was joyful and I had a really wonderful massage there, but it was also very thought provoking and sad, so it was nice to head down the river and then just rest there for a night.   I also learned on these two trips a lot about Mon culture.  The language is slightly different to that in Thailand and the dance style slightly different too.   The Mons mostly fare from Burma, but have moved across over many years. Our first guide came over when he was only 14 but my second one was a third generation Thai Mon.  

Elephant video really from later on in the holiday but right now just happy if the video appears.