School Trip: Puppet Show and Rama I history

This is the last post about my Thai history trip with students and staff at Grace. You can check out the other Thai Trip 2012 posts that hopefully have a link thingy at the bottom of the page (not really sure). 

This is a mixture of things that didn't fit in other posts and all of these posts were not in order. :) 

After our 12 hour bus ride through the night and visiting the floating market we headed to a temple to see a traditional shadow puppet show. They made the "puppets" out of leather and would perform for royalty a long time ago. They now do special performances to show people what it was like, etc. One of our Thai teacher's husband translated what the monk said about the history, etc.

They were just showing us different moves they would do.
When one guy went up like this on the other person you
would know that his puppet had won the battle.

They moved differently to show if they were walking,
running, etc.

We got to work on our own "elephant puppet"

Beautiful! 

The last place we went to before the long bus ride back was to the Nine-Army Battle Historical Park. We arrived late, but the man who was going to share with us the history of the Nine-Army Battle was still there waiting for us! We quickly went in and sat down to listen to him share all about the battle against Burma. They came in with nine-armies, but King Rama I (late 1700s) led Thailand in victory. It was all in Thai, but our amazing Thai teachers translated it for us!

the building

The map of the battles

He was all dressed up like a Thai  soldier from the 1700s
and our Thai teachers :)

Pretty much everyone!

After this group photo we were back on the bus- going home. On the way we only could find a 7-Eleven to eat at for dinner! Yes, we had our dinner at 7-Eleven! Then we continued home :)

School Trip: Hell Fire Pass

Ok back to my trip I took in October.... soon I will be done with these posts-

 just one more to go after this one! See other Thai Trip 2012 posts...

After the train ride we got back on our buses and headed to Hell Fire Pass Memorial. It got it's name during the "Speedo" time from April -August 1943 when they were working long hours to finish the railroad by the deadline in August. The POWs and Asian laborers, who were skinny from lack of food, etc, cut through rocks by hand late at night by firelight thus giving the name "Hell Fire Pass."

A former Australian POW went back and found the area and asked that the area be made into a 

historical site. So that is how the Hell Fire Pass Memorial come to be.

The whole railroad project (not just Hell Fire) by numbers:

about 12,400 died of the over 60,000 Australian, British, Dutch, and American POWs who worked on the railroad.

between 70,000 to 90,000 died of the 250,000 Asian laborers worked on the railroad.

The reasons for this terrible death total included; lack of good medical treatment, lack of good food, and harsh treatment by guards, etc. The heat must have also been terrible, they had to work the longest hours during one of the hottest time of  the year. The civilian laborers often had it even harder because they didn't have Army doctors to take care of them.

Some of the group

Walking through Hell Fire Pass...most of the railroad track was gone
  as they removed it to be used elsewhere

As you can see I rolled my pants up because it was so hot...can't imagine
what those POWs and civilians went through....

View from the top...that is a lot of rock to remove by hand and explosives

It was so hard to think about what went on during the war, but I am so glad that I was able to learn more about this time in Thailand's history. 

School Trip: World War II Museum and Train Ride

On Sunday after a short singing and sharing time we were back on the bus to go to the World War II Museum.  It was so interesting to learn about the war from this side of the world! If I got my facts straight the Japanese occupied Thailand and then used many POWs and civilians to build a railroad line from Ban Pong, Thailand to Thanbyuzayat, Burma (415K) long to carry supplies into Burma. Their goal was to have it help them attack India. 

A "prison" for POWs

"Flat Stanley" joined us on our trip...the bridge over the River Kwai is in the background

The museum was right next to the Bridge on the River Kwai. You may have seen the 1957 movie about it, but it is not very historically accurate! I learned many things like...

The river wasn't named "Kwai." The river that ran along a lot of the railway was the River Kwae but the bridge never went over it. After the movie made this area famous the Thais decided to rename the river so that people wouldn't be confused. It is now known as River Kwae Yai (big) and the original is River Kwae Noi (small). 

The bridge was bombed by the air not on the ground. I could write more, but this isn't a history book, so I shall stop!

A friend, a roommate, and a student on the bridge with me.

Holding up the bridge :) The round truss spans are original,
but the angular ones are  replacements

After the museum and walking on the bridge we went to the train station to ride some of the rails :) There is only about 130k of working railroad left- so we road on that section- right over the famous bridge!

We thought that this might be the train we were going to ride :)

There were some scary parts and you could just stick your head right out...

A few fans but it was a pretty hot ride on hard seats for about 2 hours

People watching as we went by...

More about my trip soon....

School Trip: Floating Market, Rama VI Palace, and Dinner on the River

So back in October of 2012 I went on a "field trip" with Thai students from my school and a bunch of staff from the school...and I am just now writing about it :) 

It was a whirlwind trip- We left on Friday at 6pm via two buses and traveled through the night.... 

On Saturday morning we went to a floating market where we had breakfast and could see all that people were selling from the comfort of our own boat! 

Breakfast- Thai Style 

After the floating market we got back on the bus and went to a Shadow Theater...but I have too many pictures of that so it will be in another post :)

We ate lunch at Big C Shopping Center...one of my favorite places in Thailand (like a Wal-Mart with a food court). Then we went to visit King Rama VI's Palace....

Then after another bus ride we managed to get to the restaurant- and had dinner on a raft! We were pulled down the Kwaii River by a little boat.

After dinner we headed to a hotel for the night and arrived after making about 6 U-turns! Let me tell you after a night on a bus and two boat trips I still felt like I was moving when I went to bed!