River Kwai Tour
 

We are staying at Hau Hin in February and my brother in law want to visit the Bridge, is it possible as a day trip from Hau Hin

Yes you 'can' do a day trip, it takes something like 3 hrs each way, leave early, back in the evening. Ken Diamond Tours are quite good, they are located on the street between the Hilton and Sofitel, they stay open late 7 days a week (most agents work office hours and these guys speak excellent English).
One point, I guess you want to do the day trip as you already have accommodation arragned/paid for, but I would still think about doing the overnight as it allows so much more time, I 'guess' it might be around $20-25 extra each for the overnight. The Bang Saphan trip to snorkel at Koh Talu is well worth it, about 2 and a half hours by road but you get to snorkel and a nice day out.

Day trip: about $35 all in
http://www.travel-huahin.com/tours/river_kwai_tour.htm

Other trips from Hua Hin:-

http://www.travel-huahin.com/tours/tours.htm

James thanks for the info.

With 4 of us would we do better to hire a car and driver for the day.

hiring the car would be a great idea...
may i be honest....? its not all that great a destination unless you have some family attachment to it...i know james loves it but i don't know why??/ he mentioned swimming in the river and it was brown when we were there and i would not even put my hand in it...like mud color....

easy to find drivers by the way in HH..

I would never suggest swimming in the river !! Yuk !!
Yes a car and driver would be a good idea but you would want to make sure that the driver knew his way around, perhaps if you email Ken Diamond Travel and ask them about a separate car with a driver who knows the area, it's probably a good idea with 4 of you to go for car+driver.

Its well worth a visit family connections or not as parts are very moving, but I would encourage staying overnight otherwise you won't get to see that much. It was great staying right on the river and deep in the jungle. We saw a huge toucan! The River Kwai village hotel had 2 great pools to relax in at the end of the day.
I recommend seeing the main war museums and hellfire pass, plus the cemetary. You can also visit some caves which go quite deep, plus there are elephant rides etc and a trip on the railway. The scenery is also stunning. As for the river, its pretty fast in places and I wouldn't swim in it, the current would take you for miles.

We visited last december and stayed at the Jungle Rafts which were about 1.5 hours upstream by long boat (supposedly parts of The Deer Hunter were filmed here). This was a great place to stay and the water is real clean up there; most everyone went for a swim (including several elephants). The current is definitely very swift so the rafts have ladders to grab onto as you float past. We visited the museums and cemetary, the pass and rode on the railway.

sharon: how did you get to the Rafts hotel? I'm thinking about coming over from Bangkok, just for one night...

Hi Jim. This is definitely workable with a 1 nite stay; people even do day trips. But if you can spare the time, I'd highly recommend the overnite. We were also staying in Bangkok. This was the one part of our trip we did with a group tour and it turned out to be wonderful. Met some great people from all over and it was a nice change and very sociable after doing the rest of our trip with a private guide. We were picked up at our hotel and taken by (large) bus to Kanchanaburi province, 130 km. west of Bangkok. Some of the people with us were on a day trip, others were on either 1 or 2-day overnites at the Rafts. First, we visited the allied soldiers cemetery, a great private war museum, the actual Bridge on the River Kwai and took a train ride along the Death Railway. The train ride was great, across a deep chasm (make sure to look down!), the train filled with mostly locals on their way to a popular picnic spot. Then we all had lunch in a local restaurant. At that point, those of us who were staying overnite took long-tailed boats from the pier to get to the Jungle Rafts. The "hotel" is essentially a whole bunch of floating log-type cabins, tied together, including restaurant/socializing areas. We did an afternoon visit to a nearby Mon Tribal Village, had dinner followed by a presentation of Mon Dance. There's no electricity so they use propane lanterns. There are clean private bathrooms (with cold water showers) in each cabin.
The next day after breakfast we took a boat ride downstream to the Hell Fire Pass Memorial. We returned for lunch and then back by boat again to where we met the bus for the return to Bangkok. There was a different itinerary for the people who stayed 2 nites. I'm trying to find the name of the company that ran the trip for you; the travel agent who booked the rest of our trip took care of that piece also.