My blog is now all done! Finished Kanchanaburi, then our 2 last nights in Bangkok.

Bangkok-khlong tour, National Museum, City Pillar Shrine, Siam Niramit show, Chatuchak Market.

Going home-Asiana Airlines-great experience.

Reflections post covering Cambodia, Myanmar/Burma, and Thailand.

http://chris45ny.blogspot.com Last posts under March

Time to finish my reviews for TA. And start planning for Europe August 2015!

Thanks again everyone for all the help I got in planning this amazing trip to SE Asia!

Chris, I have enjoyed so much reading about your time in SEA., and so glad I came across your blog, and will refer to it often when we visit Thailand in September.

Thanks again, and already looking forward to your next report.

Marilyn

Thanks for sharing your journey Chris. I especially enjoyed Kanchanaburi and Hellfire Pass. There would be few Australians unaffected by WWII, I lost several uncles including one on the Thai Burma railway.

ANZAC day is April 25 and always a national public holiday to honour our fallen servicemen. Dawn services are held in every town and city at the local war memorial or cenotaph, then all the diggers head for the local RSL (Returned Servicemen's League) Club (or rissole in slang) to have a few drinks in memory of lost mates. Our famous national gambling game called "two up" is then played, consisting of two pennies on a wooden paddle which are tossed into the air, the betting being on heads or tails when they land. The "spinner" stands in the centre of a marked ring, flings the pennies up high, then calls heads or tails, while the crowd on the perimeter bet on the outcome. One of each is a null game. The game used to be illegal except on ANZAC day, but now seems to be tolerated at other times.

I intend to visit Kanchanaburi on our next visit to Thailand, hopefully in September.

Your wrap up is food for thought and so nicely and concisely written. I must say I'm in the Chiang Mai/Rai camp, and also liked Mandalay. The final photos are great, as are so many throughout your blog.

Thanks again for taking us with you.

Chris...

Thanks so much for your wonderful blog. We will be visiting Thailand and Myanmar in March so it is very good timing for me! I have added all the eating places and the things you ordered to my trip notes...loved the food comments and detailed transportation directions.

Your pictures were great also! They helped me decide it the venue was doable for me.

We visited Kanchanaburi and Hellfire Pass on our first trip to Thailand in 2004. Rode the train with no A/C also! The memory of that experience will last a lifetime! We spent time at a beautiful resort like hotel near the Burma border and loved the area. My DH loves anything to do with WWII so I always look for place that will interest him...I can temple him out very fast!

Sartoric...

When we visited W Australia a few years ago, I found a mention of Terowie in a guide book. So we drove out into the middle of no where to visit the place where MacAuthur gave his famous "I Shall Return" speech. That is one of my husband favorite memories of that trip. He also enjoyed our visit to Darwin. The WWII sites are well done in town. We also visited some sites on the way to Litchfield that are all overgrown now. Your ANZAC day celebrations sounds like very nice.

A place that shouldn't be missed when visiting Hellfire Pass, but often is missed, is the 'Weary' Dunlop Museum. Details here...

http://www.cathyandgarystravelpages....lop_museum.htm

And in Kanchanaburi there are two JEATH Museums. One is far more authentic than the other, but unfortunately the wrong one seems to get the ost visitors.
Give the one practically next door to The Bridge over the River Kwai a miss.
The one you'll want to visit is a couple of miles south of town, about 4 miles from the Bridge It's a bit ramshackle and unashamedly low tech. For a bit of adventure get there from the Bridge by longtail boat, which could also take you on to the Chungkai War Cemetery, in a beautiful spot on the bend of the river. Chungkai is another place that is often missed because people are too busy being herded around on a guided tour.

LL-

I agree that the JEATH Museum did not captivate us but I had no idea there was another one!! Thanks for posting that info as I had said the one we visited I could have passed on as nothing much to it. I also didn't know about the W. Dunlop Museum. I did learn about how special a person he was, highly thought of so I would have tried to have seen this museum had I known about it. Thanks for alerting us to it for any future travelers to the area. I didn't know about the Chungkai War Cemetery either! That isn't the one we visited is it??

Chris- don't slow down. Keep going strong.