Oh, The Places I'll Go!: Kanchanaburi Part 2: Hellfire Pass

So after leaving The River Kwai Jungle Rafts, we headed out on the bus for Hellfire Pass. Hellfire Pass is a portion of the "Death Railway" I mentioned in my last post. It is an area where there was a heavy loss of life and extremely difficult conditions for the Allied POW's and laborers. It was named Hellfire Pass because the emaciated men worked by torchlight most of the time, and it was described as what Hell must look like...
We reached the Visitor's Center and looked around the at museum for a bit, and then headed out to the trail. I (inconveniently) forgot my raincoat, so of course it rained the entire day, but we still were able to get in a great hike on the trail! We were able to get headsets that gave us a more detailed account of what went on in each part of the trail. It was somewhat eerie to walk on this pathway, knowing that so many men were brutally treated and died here. At the same time, it was incredible seeing how deep the rock cuttings were, particularly because they were cut by hand. Pretty surreal.
After about a three hour walk, we made it back to the bus and headed towards the Allied cemetery- our last stop before headed back to Bangkok. Despite how tired I was from the hike, I wandered around the cemetery for about an hour, just looking at row after row of young soldiers who had died during their work on the railway. It truly was sobering to come to this cemetery directly after being on the trail itself, and it definitely made it more real to us. One aspect of the cemetery that struck me was the unidentified soliders' graves. There was even a spot where the ashes of 300 unidentified soldiers were buried together. It just struck me how so many soldiers could be left without any identity and buried without anyone knowing who they were- very, very sad.
The second half of our trip to Kanchanaburi was pretty somber, but I was so happy I was able to go and experience a bit of history that I knew nothing about prior to this weekend. I would definitely recommend anyone coming to Thailand to visit it!

P.S. My camera completely broke mid-hike to Hellfire Pass, so I apologize for the lack of pictures. I successfully bought a new camera and now am taking much cooler pictures :)