After spending the night in the luxurious tents at Hintok River Camp, some of us woke up nice and early (5:50 am) to see the local Buddhist monks come down from the mountain and collect food, money and items from the village people.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that the next day would be a Buddhist celebration, we found out that the monks would not be making their daily route down the mountain. Not letting this ruin the occasion we decided to trek a few hundred metres to the temple where two monks live. We were given a small ornament each and listened to what the monk had to say about the PoW's that worked on the Thai-Burma railway. The monk wasn't stereotypical and his mobile phone interrupted his teaching twice – which was to us, extremely funny.
Leaving the temple, Edward was surprised to find that one of his shoes was missing (we had to take them off and leave them at the entrance). It turned out that one of the many stray dogs roaming around outside the temple had decided to take his shoe and play with it. After about 5 minutes of looking, searching and laughing, especially from John and the monk on the microphone, we found his shoe in a pile of rubbish and we were able to make our way down the mountain, back to camp and have breakfast. It definitely made a story for the other students at breakfast. That and the fact that the monk was so laid back. It was a very eventful and funny way to start the day.
After breakfast Rod Beatie took us around the Hintok River camp which sits upon land he not only used to own but was once a PoW camp at some point during WWII. He pointed out some of the main sites he had excavated and found traces not only of the PoW's but of civilisations and communities that had lived on this land many years before. Some of these discoveries he pointed out to us included that cook house and the hospital. He also talked to us in great detail about politics and the insanity of this war and of war in general.
We then piled onto the bus and travelled to the location of the PoW camp that Sir Edward “Weary” Dunlop once worked at. Rod then passed around some of the items he had recovered during his excavation of “Dunlop Camp”. He also told us about some of the engineering of the PoW's to produce showers at this particular camp. Back on the bus we looked through some of the books that we were reading and they confirmed what Rod had told us about the amazing showers made from bamboo piping down in Hintok.
From here we travelled for about 2 hours and most of us fell asleep on the bus and needed to be woken in order to see the Ban Kaow Museum. We looked at lots of rocks there, much to our pleasure, and then we again piled onto the bus and travelled to the railway station. Expecting only to wait at the station for 15 minutes for the 1:30 train to Kanchanaburi we had to wait until 3:30 for the train (due at 1.40) to finally arrive. We had a “picnic lunch at the station that consisted of fried rice, and chips – which although wasn't terrific, was enough to satisfy our hunger and all scraps were fed to some of the many stray dogs.
We were told that the reason there are so many stray dogs is because it is against the locals' religion (Buddhism) to kill a dog and therefore when people don't want or can not afford to have a dog any more they simply place them on the streets or in the care of Buddhist monks.
The train ride was filled with many songs and the hour spent on the train was withered away very quickly. Back on the bus from through heavy rush hour traffic we were finally rewarded for all our patience and waiting throughout the day when we were given a hotel room to quickly have a shower and freshen up. Travelling to the airport we said goodbye to Toy, the Bus driver and 'Wet Towel Man' (who was given an Aussie Rules football by Mckye) before having a small dinner and boarding the plane to Paris.
Our time in Thailand has been extremely memorable and has been jammed full of experiences that we have learnt from and that we will all cherish forever. Although slightly sad about leaving this country and all the people we have met we are looking forward to France and Belgium as we plunge into further study and understanding of the Western Front.
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