Thailand: Bridge over the River Kwai & Tiger Temple

There were these cute bush elephants around the city and I was super excited to find FamilyMart!  Just like up the street from me in Tokyo.

The Bridge over the River Kwai was the start of the infamous World War II Death Railway to Burma (now Myanmar).

Located some 3 km north of Kanchanaburi (down New Zealand Road, off Saeng Chuto Road), this iron bridge (Saphan Mae Nam Kwae) is across the Kwai Yai River. Immortalized in the famous movie and novel, it was a part of the infamous Death Railway to Burma, constructed by POWs working for the Japanese in hellish conditions during World War II. Some 16,000 POWs and 90,000 Asian workers (most of them enslaved) died during the railway construction. The present iron bridge is the second wartime incarnation (a part of the original can be found in the War Museum), but two central 'boxy' spans were rebuilt after the war to replace three sections destroyed by Allied bombing.

Bridge over the River Kwai

Nearby is the famous Tiger Temple. There they had many tigers who seemed too sleepy for normal and there is a lot of controversy over what is happening there. They told us that they feed the tigers honey to make them sleepy but it didn't seem possible for it to just be honey that the tigers were on...

These guys were also walking around the temple grounds.

This guy was really hyper and apparently just a baby!  Already he was huge.

The other tigers were all asleep from the "honey"...

coconut Thai soup - not spicy

After the temple we all went for dinner at a Thai restaurant and tried so many good Thai dishes.  Most were pretty spicy so too spicy for me but I enjoyed this coconut soup that wasn't spicy at all.