Only In Thailand: Hellfire Pass

For once we were all relatively sensible so none of us felt like crap yesterday.....we had all had a good night's sleep and were ready for the day ahead!! (The hotel was lovely but breakfast left a little to be desired so if you go you might want to skip breakfast and just get some fruit from town!! In saying that - if you like warm bread

(toast would not be an accurate description) and odd looking sausages then go for it!!). We headed to the train station and sat and watched the world go by till the train arrived to take us to Nam Tok (This is the last station on the Thai-Burmese line). Chris and I had done part of the journey before

when we went with Sadie and Margaret but not the whole trip - It was fab (although you might want to take a cushion as there is no padding at all on the train seats and boy does your bum go numb!!). W

e got some fantastic photos and saw a Thai guy who's hair was worse than mine much to Moon's amusement!!

After the train journey we grabbed some lunch at Nam Tok and then headed over to The HellFire Pass Museum (We didn't make it there the last time - This

is a photo of the Peace Vessel there). It was amazing.....the actual museum itself is really good (what I didn't realise was that the POW's (Prisoners Of War) were actually in the minority and that far more natives (People from Thailand, Burmese and Laos) were killed working on the line!!) - The museum itself is full of items that have been donated by the family's of the POW's so it really makes an impact!! We went down the stairs to where the actual line had been.....looking up at th

e sheer face of the stone it's gobsmacki

ng that they managed to achieve what they did!! It was weird.....I know that my Uncle Will (my Grandfather's brother) worked on the line and I was standing there thinking 'I wonder if he was ever where I am standing now'.

After walking round we headed to the Tiger Temple unfortunately we were too late (What the guide book doesn't tell you is that it closes at 4pm) so we decided that we would just get some beer and crisps and head home. What a laugh we had -

you know I told you that the driver had decided that we were incapable of going anywhere by ourselves....well.....you should have seen the look on his face when he stopped at a service station and we all headed off in different directions - Chris, Tracey and I to the shop, Derek and Moon to the toilet and Jo for a cigarette. I think he decided that each time he would just keep an eye on one of us so at the first stop he decided to follow Jo (she said she felt like she was being stalked by a van as it crept slowly along behind her), at the next stop he drove Derek the 100 yards to the toilet and on the third stop he had to go into the shop to rescue Chris. Jo had spotted th

ree pig fans in a jar in the window and had decided that she just had to have one to go with her phone - Chris tried to buy two of them......he was in there for about 15 minutes and had three people serving him (In the end he only managed to buy one of them!!). So after a couple of beers Jo decided to turn on the fan and, to her delight, discovered that not only was it a fan and a pen it also had

flashing lights!! It was at this point the driver put on the sexy karaoke!! The video's featured fruit displayed in suggestive positions (I will never look at a kiwi fruit the

same way again!!), a very odd small dancing Elvis on a motorboat (no, I don't know why

so don't ask) and some of the campest men I have ever seen - I also have no idea why this was called sexy karaoke but it gave us all a good laugh!! So between that and Jo scaring other drivers with her flashing pig fan the journey home passed in a flash (Get it.....in a flash.....oh never mind!!!)