Traveling Through Thailand
My trip to Thailand took me to various parts of the country, from the madness of Bangkok to the calm of the North and the overwhelming beauty of the South. The landscape is diverse, the people are so kind and of course the food is worth the trip alone. I shot these first two pictures on the Railay Peninsula in Thailand's Southern Krabi province. The area is surrounded by high, sharp cliffs. Some of that same rock formed the outcropping I shot in these picture at sundown.
Click on this next image to enlarge it so you can really see the detail. There are actually two mischievous macaques not just the one in the foreground. They were running all up and down the same beach where I took the previous photo, snatching food from wherever they could get it. It was a strange experience at first because living in the United States, you're not really used to seeing macaques or any primate for that matter running free on the beach or anywhere else.
Thailand's temples and ruins are plentiful, beautiful and more importantly, amazingly intricate. This one is made completely of small, pastel colored tiles some of which are used to make flowers while others appear to form jaws or teeth. Clicking on the photo will reveal more details.
I was on the River Kwai Bridge in the Kanchanaburi province when a group of Thai schoolchildren on a field trip walked by with their teacher. The area is perhaps best known internationally as being part of the Japanese government's so-called "Death Railway" during World War Two. POWs were used to construct the bridge which resulted in the deaths of some 16,000 Allied POWs and 90,000 Asian laborers.
For another image from Thailand's Kanchanaburi province, go to my previous post. If you're interested in the history of the bridge, you can find some archive photos by clicking here.
1 comment:
Once upon a time, I walked across the bridge with my Father, who worked for the Japanese during the war a bit further up the line from the camp at Kanchanaburi.
The bridge is set up for narrow-gauge rail cars, and those cars are very small compared to regular-sized U-S railcars. He told me a story about being crammed into a car with dozens of other POWs, on the way up from Singapore. The men were complaining and trying to get some sleep, while he was jammed into the doorway trying to stay awake. I told him I thought that, under the circumstances, sleep was an appropriate option. He looked at me like I was nuts. "Sleep?", he said. "Nononono. The landscape was beautiful, and I didn't think I'd ever get back here to see it again".
That's when I realized he treated parts of the 42 months he spent as a prisoner of war as some sort of exotic travelogue.
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