Hellfire Pass

Hellfire Pass. It actually indicates that something must be interesting here or popular like bridge over Kwai river in Kanczanaburi. Still I decided to visit the place on the way back from Myanmar border. Hellfire Pass was a name of this pass given by POW(Prisoners of War) who have worked on it and the reason is that this was one of the most difficult ones to finish buidling a railway from Thailand to Myanmar(Birma at the time).

Plan was made by Japanesse and their engineers calculated that it will take couple of years to finish the project in normal conditions, so Japanesse decided to push the work with POW and some workers from Thailand(some, but still few times more then POW's), so they finished it in  16 months. On the way thousands of them has died because of hunger(only 2 portions of rice with vegtables per day), disseases, tortures, etc. Story behind is very interesting, but sad at the same time.

It is not the scale of Nazi death camps in Poland, but still impressive to look on the results.

The best thing about this museum and trek around it is the quality of exhibition. It is simply the best museum in SE Asia for me. Everything in Thai/English, great movie also in both languages, aircon in the building, everything carefully prepared for you and really well done. You can simply enjoy looking and reading as everything is just "served" for you. Good job!

The vistor it self :)

Here was the railway during the war(after British destroy some parts of it being scared of some new supply lines for partizants and later Thai goverment decided to destroy most of it as they didn't want such a symbol)

Short description as I'm not the best in history.

Most of the work was done by hand using basic tools. Dynamite was used to blow bigger parts of rocks, but only few times.

Impressive, huh?

Views from the pass

And more old trail. Apart of digging in the rocks, they had to go through jungle, built support structures(most of the time made from bamboo or other wood, as steel was too expensive), built bridges(the Kanczanaburi one is one of few made of steel, most of them were bamboo construction - cheap and easy to rebuild after airstrikes)

Australian memorial

And from the top.

From the museum. Some important artist design that.

So there is plenty of history behind, but I don't remember everything and I also don't want to bore you with such an informations. Interested? Go by your self to west part of Thailand and figure it out. Worth it !