T&A

We arrived in San Francisco late in the evening, and the first taste of North America we received was the customs official yelling at people to fill the immigration lines. There was no please, or thank-you, and he was harsh and loud. We quickly figured out how to take the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), and took it to downtown. The BART system was much older, louder and dirtier than what we were used to. It was also run by an actual person, and not by a computer. At one point the conductor came on the loudspeaker and started yelling at someone standing in the doorway of one of the cars. This was a big contrast to the ultra modern system in Hong Kong or Singapore, where everything was fully automated, smooth, silent, and which also used the wind generated from movement for ventilation. The San Francisco subway lines were stuffy and hot.

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Well, it’s been a while since we’ve been back, but we never actually finished the story. Here are the last two entries.

Hong Kong is a city composed of many islands, mainly Hong Kong Island, and Kowloon Island. It is a financial and architectural metropolis located just off the East cost of mainland China. We left Singapore early in the afternoon, and arrived in Hong Kong in the evening, just after dusk. As soon as we arrived at the airport, we picked up our bags, and purchased an airport express ticket and an “octopus” card. The octopus card is a multi-purpose card that can be used for almost all forms of public transport including the ultra modern MTR subway, buses, tram cars, as well as at stores such as 7-11 and KFC. It only cost 7HKD (1 USD) with a 50 HKD refundable deposit. If more money was put on the card and not used before returning the card, there is a full refund issued. The airport express ticket was good for a single trip into the city on a modern subway/train with few stops.

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We pictured Kanchanaburi to be a small village along a river in the middle of some jungle, but it was actually quite a large city since it is the capital of its province. Although it’s a big city, it does have close and convenient access to national parks and waterfalls, but we were here mostly to visit the bridge on the river kwai and a tiger temple.

The bridge on the river kwai, made famous by the movie, was basically the start of what became known as “The Death Railway.” The Japanese occupied Thailand and much of South East Asia during WWII, and decided that it was necessary to build a railway into Burma in order to occupy Burma, and cut off important supply routes to China. The railway was constructed by tens of thousands of POWs, many of which died from disease, malnutrition, fatigue, and the commanding Japanese themselves.

We stepped off the bus and were immediately greeted by the usual touts. This time we decided to listen to one of them; perhaps because we are at the end of our trip and don’t really care to hunt for a better bargain. The woman led us to a driver that was going to take us to the guest house for 80 baht each. When we started to walk away, he eventually lowered his price to 40 baht total. He took us to what turned out to be a really nice guest house called “Jolly Frog.” It looked like this place would be quite popular in the busy season since it had nice rooms, a nice courtyard with hammocks, and a massive restaurant with reasonable prices. After checking into our room, we decided to go for a walk towards the bridge.

Literally 15 minutes into the walk, we made a detour to an air conditioned internet cafe. The heat was unbearable. This was the first time in our trip that we had to stop walking, even in the shade, and get out of the heat. We stayed in the cafe surfing the web for at least two hours until it was around 3pm and the temperature had started to cool down. At this point, we were able to finish the walk, which turned out to only be a few minutes more to the bridge. Along the way, we noticed that a woman lost her hat as she drove by on her friend’s motorbike. An old man driving the opposite way slowed down and picked up the hat. Both of us were thinking that it was nice to see such generosity by the old man. However, instead of turning around and giving the hat back, he simply dove away slowly as if he would stop if someone complained. No one complained and he simply puttered down the road after stealing the hat. We still joke about the “nice old man.”

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