Why I Won’t Be Revisiting Kanchanaburi, Thailand

This is unlike my usual blog posts. It’s a throwback to the OG blog days where you share your cardid travel experiences online for others to read. You might find it helpful if you’re trying to decide whether or not to add this town to your Thailand itinerary.

This past week, I took a few days to tear myself away from the city life and touch grass. While Kanchanaburi is not known to be a remote, tranquil getaway, it is certainly more peaceful than the congestion of skyscraper-studded Bangkok, and only 2.5 hours away via scooter to boot. I knew about this border-ish town from my early backpacker days in Thailand. While I never actually made it to the city back then, I had vague notions of a blue waterfall inside a national park and historical sights relating to the so-called “death railway” constructed by forced laborers and POWs during WW2. Essentially, I figured it would be a mildly morbid but fascinating look at Thailand’s history while also letting me relax in a forest.

Unfortunately, Kanchanaburi proved to be mentally taxing in an altogether different way.

Before I tell you what’s up with Kanchanaburi, you have to understand a little bit of its backstory.

What Happened in Kanchanaburi

During WW2, the Japanese invaded and occupied Thailand. If you can recall your high-school level history, the United States, England, Australia, New Zealand, and many others made up the “Allied Forces” that were fighting the Japanese during this time. Pre-atomic bomb dropping, Japan wanted to build a railway across Southeast Asia to supply its forces in Myanmar. But the terrain here, in this part of Thailand, is not ideal for railways. You would have to cut through sheer rock and live in the jungle during the construction. A jungle that is filled with Malaria, Cholera, dysentery, etc. So they rounded up 200,000 prisoners of war from various nations and forced laborers all across Asia and made them construct it.

During one single year, they constructed the railway at the cost of nearly 100,000 lives. They beat them, starved them, worked them to death, and let them rot from disease. This is the history of Kanchanaburi and its Death Railway. Yet today, influencers are making videos with grabby “death railway” titles as though they are brave for merely riding it.

Shortly after its construction, the Bridge on the River Kwai was bombed, and the train was out of commission for the remainder of the war. Thailand repaired the train and the bridge in the 1950s, and it still runs today.

The gruesome history of this place is commemorated in a handful of museums, a sprawling cemetery with the names and graves of many dead, and lots of historical sights around the area set up so that you can better envision what this prison camp was like. It’s much like the Killing Fields of Cambodia, Hao Lo Prison in Hanoi, Hiroshima in Japan, and the Rwandan Genocide Museum in Kigali. All are places I have visited that are meant to remind us of the horrible things human beings can do to one another in the hopes that we never repeat our past.

But Kanchanaburi was different.

Kanchanaburi Today: Death Railway Tourism

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Did Thailand turn this somber history lesson into an amusement park, or did tourists just always treat it like one? Smile kids, 100,000 people died in this very spot!

When I visited the Killing Fields in Cambodia 5 years ago, there was not a smile left on a single face. Every tourist was head down, buried in the audio guide, listening to the violence and horror of what happened there. This is the tree they swung the infants into; skull fragments are still resurfacing in the sand after rains. You left with a heavy heart, and it probably weighed down your entire time in Phnom Penh. But it should.

In Auschwitz and Kigali, while you learn about Genocide and Hiroshima, where you learn about the devastation of weapons of mass destruction, you wouldn’t snap selfies or take TikTok videos. You would get shamed for doing so.

So why, in Kanchanburi, do tourists not show the same respect?

A group of Vietnamese travelers, dressed as though they fell out of the pages of a high-fashion magazine, strutting down the train aisle in an endless parade of vanity. Seriously, the number of 360 cameras and selfie sticks protruding from this train was comical. Quietly sitting among the throngs of tourists were a few local riders. Likely descendants of the death railway victims. People whose families witnessed the death and destruction firsthand.

I’m not team no-pictures. Just remember where you are.

A line of tour groups wait to take photos next to a lettered sign, much like the “I love New York” that simply says “Death Railway” with a cutesy little heart. The tourist market at each station we pass has pink shirts fluttering in the breeze with photos of the Bridge over the River Kwai and Hellfire Pass prominently displayed. Imagine wearing a shirt emblazoned with the facade of Auschwitz. The grinning throngs of tourists posing on the spires of the Bridge over the river Kwai, sometimes seductively laid across the tracks, snapping selfie after selfie, to caption the photo with…what? The Catfish below got fat on the corpses of the collective dead?

Why are people visiting this place?

Thailand has no shortage of scenic trains. Idyllic small towns. Waterfalls and National Parks. There are no other “iconic attractions” that you could only see in this region. I can only assume they are visiting because of the war history. Because of the “Death Railway.”

In which case, y’all are behaving badly.

This isn’t respecting the dead, learning from our historical mistakes, or honoring the victims. This is pure vapid commercialization and a desperate grab for social media content. Just peek at how many YouTubers title their videos with “WATCH US RIDE THE DEATH RAILWAY” without a lick of historical context or apparently self-awareness.

What About Kanchanaburi’s Other Attractions?

You might think that maybe Erawan National Park is so much of a draw that the Death Railway becomes something easy to tag on. But Erawan sucked too. If I’m being blunt.

Thailand has a tendency to turn its wild spaces into paved park-like areas that leave me more disappointed with each one I visit. We visited at 8 AM on a Wednesday, and there were no less than a few hundred people, strapped with electric orange life jackets, bobbing around in the slightly blue-tinted pools. Thrilling.

I will say, we did spot some wildlife like the gliding lizard high in the tree-tops after a hot hike to the furthest of the seven pools.

The town of Kanchanburi itself was fine, a bit zealous on the touristy, riverside restaurants serving “local Thai food.” Meaning bowls of Massaman curry and Pad Thai. And the main street was bursting with seedy bars, every seat filled by 3 PM with a white dude over 50, usually accompanied by a young scantily clad woman. I’m not going to get into the ethics of sex tourism in Thailand here. There isn’t any. But it’s worth noting that sex slavery in Kanchanburi was (is) prevalent enough that they have a haunted brothel where locals claim to still hear the screams of women and children who died there.

What Exactly is My Point?

My point is, I was profoundly disappointed with the state of tourism in Kanchanburi.

If you’re an experienced traveler, wondering if you should add this destination to your Thailand itinerary. Don’t. Or if you do, please temper your expectations. Erawan will be crowded. The train is no more beautiful than any other in Thailand. The thoughtless tourism overshadows the war history. Consider Koh Kood or Chiang Dao instead for your slightly off-beat escape instead.

If you’re a tourist in general, anywhere, please think about why you are visiting a place. Do you know the history? Do you care? We have to be better than traveling to places just for clout or social media content. I have to believe that if we care enough to spend the money and travel somewhere, then we care enough to learn the basics about that place. To show respect to the locals living there.