Four days in Kanchanaburi: Thailand's darkest history, in its greenest province

Three nights on the River Kwai: the museum and the war cemetery, the surviving stretch of the Death Railway west to a Khmer sanctuary, and a whole day at the Erawan falls.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Kanchanaburi
Places
7 across 4 days
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Two hours west of Bangkok the plain runs out and the limestone starts. Kanchanaburi sits where the Kwai Noi and the Kwai Yai meet, a long thin town along one road, with rafts tied up along the riverbank and a great deal of history that nobody would wish on a place.

In 1942 the Japanese army began a railway from here to Burma, built by Allied prisoners of war and by conscripted labourers from across Asia. Around 16,000 prisoners and some 90,000 Asian workers died on it. Two immaculate cemeteries, a very good museum and a bridge everyone has heard of are what remain, and they are the reason most people come.

The other reason is the province, which Thais rate as one of the most beautiful in the country and foreign visitors mostly drive straight through. It is waterfalls, reservoirs and national park, and the best of it is close enough to do in a day and be back for dinner on the water.

Highlights

  • A museum that explains the railway properly, with a window seat looking down on the graves
  • Seven tiers of turquoise waterfall you are allowed to swim in
  • A slow train along the surviving stretch of the line, on the original alignment
  • A Khmer sanctuary out in the fields, as far west as the Angkor builders ever got
  • Rafts on the river, and dinner floating on them

Where to stay

Kanchanaburi, three nights

The layout is simple enough that you will not need a map twice. Saeng Chuto Road runs the length of town from north to south and links the bridge, the train station and the bus station. Mae Nam Kwae Road runs parallel to it nearer the water and holds the guest houses, the bars and most of the places you will eat.

The war sites are spread along that spine: the cemetery and the museum near the middle, the bridge at the north end, the second cemetery across the river. Everything else worth the trip is out of town, north-west along the river towards the national parks or west along the railway.

Day by day

Day 1 in Kanchanaburi

The railway centre and the cemetery it looks down on

Arrive in the afternoon and start with the museum, because it closes at the end of the working day and everything it explains will still be around you for the next three.

The Thailand-Burma Railway Centre is a serious, quiet, carefully made museum: models of the alignment, film of the survivors, and an honest account of the conditions the line was built in. Give it an hour and a half. The café upstairs has a bench along the window with the war cemetery below it, which is the right place to sit for a while before you walk down into it.

Then cross the road. Nearly seven thousand men are buried there, and the inscriptions their families chose are the part that stays with you. Dinner afterwards on the river, on one of the rafts.

  1. 14:30

    Thailand-Burma Railway Centre

    Culture

    The best account of the railway anywhere in Thailand: how it was surveyed, how it was built and who died building it. Allow an hour and a half, and the ticket includes a drink upstairs.

  2. 16:20

    Kanchanaburi War Cemetery

    Historic

    6,982 prisoners of war, British, Dutch and Australian, moved here after the war from graves along the line. Lawns, straight rows, and the personal inscriptions at the foot of each stone.

  3. 19:00

    Dinner on a floating raft

    Eat

    The restaurants on the guest house road put their tables on pontoons over the water. Order the river fish, and expect the whole floor to shift when a boat goes past.

With more time: There is a second war museum by the bridge, in a palm hut modelled on a prisoners' hut, with a section of the original wooden bridge outside it. It is far tattier than the railway centre and worth an hour only if the subject has taken hold of you.

Day 2 in Kanchanaburi

The bridge, and the train that still runs west

Walk the bridge before the coaches arrive. It is an iron span, the second one the Japanese built here, and the two boxy sections in the middle are post-war replacements for the three the Allies bombed out. You cross on the sleepers with steel refuges to step into, and if a train comes you use them.

That train is the reason to be at the bridge early. What is left of the Death Railway still carries three or four services a day north-west along the Kwai Noi, on the original alignment, past cuttings hacked out by hand. Get off at Tha Kilen, an hour or so along.

Mueang Sing is a short walk from that platform: a Khmer sanctuary of red laterite inside a moat and a wall, built when the Angkor empire reached this far west in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is usually almost empty. Check the return train time before you settle in, because they are few, and take a songthaew back to town if you miss it.

  1. 08:00

    Bridge over the River Kwai

    Visit

    The famous one, and still in use. Cross on foot early in the morning, before the tour groups and the heat, and look at the two square spans in the middle: they are the repair to Allied bombing.

  2. 10:00

    The train along the old line

    Travel

    Board at the bridge or at Kanchanaburi station for the run out to Tha Kilen. Three or so departures a day, wooden benches, open windows, tickets sold on board for very little.

  3. 11:30

    Lunch at the park gate

    Eat

    A couple of stalls sell noodles and grilled chicken by the entrance. There is nothing else out here, so eat before you start the walk round the ruins.

  4. 12:00

    Mueang Sing Historical Park or Prasat Mueang Sing

    Historic

    A laterite Khmer sanctuary in the Bayon style, its main tower ringed by a wall, a moat and an earth rampart. Eleventh to thirteenth century, and about as far west as Angkor's builders ever came.

With more time: The line carries on beyond Tha Kilen to its present terminus at Nam Tok, over a wooden trestle viaduct pinned to the cliff above the river, which is the most spectacular surviving piece of the railway. Riding to the end and back is a full day rather than a half, so swap it for Mueang Sing if you would rather see the engineering than the ruins.

Day 3 in Kanchanaburi

Erawan, all seven tiers of it

A whole day, and worth it. The falls are a two hour bus ride north-west of town, seven pools stacked up a forested valley, each one a different shape and every one of them turquoise. It is the swimming that makes them: you are allowed in, and Thai families spend the entire day doing exactly that.

Climb before you swim. The path is easy to the second and third levels, then turns into scrambling over roots and wet rock, and the upper tiers shut earlier than the gate does. The top level is the one the park is named after, said to resemble the three headed elephant of Thai myth, which takes some imagination and a good angle.

Come down slowly, stopping in whichever pool has space. Bring lunch or eat at the stalls by the entrance, and keep an eye on the clock for the last bus.

  1. 07:30

    The bus from Kanchanaburi

    Travel

    Services run from the bus station through the morning and take about two hours. Ask at the ticket window what time the last one comes back, and believe it.

  2. 09:30

    Erawan National Park

    Nature

    Nearly six hundred square kilometres of limestone hills and forest, a national park since 1975, with caves and more waterfalls in the parts nobody walks to. Foreigners pay several hundred baht at the gate.

  3. 10:00

    The Erawan Falls

    Nature

    Seven tiers of falls up a wooded valley, in contention for the most beautiful in Thailand, and open for swimming at every level. Four hours covers the climb, the pools and the walk down.

  4. 13:00

    Lunch between the tiers

    Eat

    Buy something at the entrance and carry it up, or eat at the stalls near the car park on the way out. There is no food above the second level.

With more time: If you would rather have the water to yourself, the province has plenty more: a bigger park further north around Thong Pha Phum with caves and the province's third highest peak on it, and quiet canoeing on the Kwai Noi upstream of town.

Day 4 in Kanchanaburi

Chungkai, across the river

The second cemetery is a couple of kilometres out of town on the far bank, on the site of one of the prison camps, and hardly anybody goes. It is smaller than the one in town and better for it: trees, a bend in the river, and no coaches in the car park.

Cycle or take a boat across, sit for a while, and go back for the bus. Buses to Bangkok run all day, so an unhurried morning costs you nothing.

  1. 08:30

    Chungkai War Cemetery

    Historic

    A small, immaculate cemetery two kilometres out of town across the water, on ground that held a prisoner of war camp. Quieter than the main one, and easy to have to yourself.

  2. 10:00

    Coffee on Mae Nam Kwae Road

    Eat

    The riverside cafés are open early and empty by mid morning. A last look at the water before the bus.

  3. 11:30

    Bus back to Bangkok

    Travel

    Departures run all day for the Southern Terminal, about two hours. Buy the ticket at the counter rather than online.

With more time: With a later bus, there is a cave temple in the hills south of town, reached by a long staircase with a dragon for a handrail, and a spa in gardens by the bridge if the last three days have involved more walking than you planned.

Before you go

Getting in

Buses run from Bangkok's Southern Bus Terminal in Thonburi every fifteen minutes or so from early morning until late evening. First class takes about two hours and costs around 110 baht, with a bottle of water thrown in. Second class costs the same on the new route and takes an hour longer on the old one.

Tourist minibuses run direct from Khao San Road, which is more convenient and less comfortable. There are also a few buses from the Northern terminal at Mo Chit, which is not the same place as the Mo Chit skytrain station and not within walking distance of it.

Getting around

The town is too spread out to walk end to end. Songthaews, converted pickups with benches in the back, run up and down Saeng Chuto Road all day between the bus station, the train station and the bridge for a flat ten baht. Flag one anywhere on the road.

Guest houses and shops along Mae Nam Kwae Road rent bicycles for about fifty baht a day and motorbikes for 150 to 200, which is the easiest way to reach the cemeteries and the bridge on your own time. Ask for a map when you take one.

What actually happened here

The line was built to supply the Japanese army in Burma without using the sea route the Allies were sinking ships on. Work started in 1942 at both ends and the two halves met in late 1943, four hundred kilometres of embankment, cutting and trestle bridge hacked through jungle by men with hand tools.

Prisoners from Britain, Australia, the Netherlands and the United States worked alongside far larger numbers of Tamil, Malay, Burmese, Chinese and Javanese labourers, many of them brought in under false promises. The prisoners are the ones with the headstones. The labourers, who died in greater numbers, mostly have no graves at all, and the museum in town is one of the few places that says so.

Doing Erawan properly

Buses to the falls leave from Kanchanaburi bus station in the morning and take around two hours each way, so start early and check the time of the last one back before you get on the first. A hired motorbike or a shared taxi buys you a couple of extra hours.

The seven tiers are strung up a wooded valley on a path that gets rougher and steeper the higher you go. The upper levels close well before the park does, so climb first and swim on the way down. Bring shoes you can walk in wet, leave the plastic bottles at the gate where they are counted in and out, and expect the small fish in the pools to nibble your feet.

Where to sleep

Most of the guest houses are on Mae Nam Kwae Road near the river, many of them on floating rafts moored to the bank. A raft room is cheap, moves under you all night, and is the thing to do here at least once. The quiet ones are upstream of the bar strip; ask before you book if that matters.

The town also has resorts further out along the Kwai Noi with more comfort and less life around them. Anything within a kilometre of the bridge puts you where the tour buses stop between nine and four.

Kanchanaburi asks something of you that most Thai towns do not. The graves are laid out in rows on mown grass, the names are young, and the museum in town is careful to remind you that the men with headstones were a minority of the dead.

Then you get on a bus, and an hour and a half later you are standing under a waterfall with a Thai family eating som tam on the rocks. Both of those are the province, and four days is enough to feel how strange it is that they sit side by side.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Kanchanaburi worth four days?
Yes, though two of them are out of town. One day covers the war sites, which is what most people come for, and the town on its own would not hold you longer. What earns the other days is the province: the falls, the old railway west, and the pace of a place built along one river.
Can I do it as a day trip from Bangkok?
You can, and tours sell it, but you will spend four hours on a bus to see a bridge and a museum in a rush. Staying two nights costs very little and gets you the bridge before the coaches and the river in the evening.
Is the bridge the one in the film?
It is the real bridge, on the real railway. The 1957 film was shot in Sri Lanka and the novel behind it invented most of its plot, so what you are standing on is the history rather than the story.
How hard is the walk at Erawan?
Easy to the third tier and awkward above it: wet limestone, tree roots and a bit of scrambling. Most people turn round at five. Wear shoes that grip and can get soaked.
When should I come?
November to February is dry and comfortable. The falls are fullest at the end of the rains around October and thinnest in April, which is also when the heat here becomes genuinely unpleasant.
Can I change the plan?
Copy it into your account and it becomes an ordinary trip: drop the Khmer ruins, ride the line all the way to Nam Tok instead, add a night, move whatever you like.