Kwai Bridge, Thailand

The Bridge over the River Kwai - darkometer rating : 2 - The real "Bridge on the River Kwai" in Thailand . Yes, it really exists. It may look less spectacular than the fictional one in the famous movie, but it makes up for it by being the genuine article – and you can still walk across it, or take the " Death Railway " over it. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: the bridge is a major tourist attraction these days – and of course that is largely due to the famous film "Bridge on the River Kwai" with Alec Guinness as the valiant British officer who maintained his stiff upper lip all through the atrocious treatment by the evil Japanese, but who still designed them a bridge much better than they could have done without great old British engineering expertise. Ah, good old Blighty, eh? A few things need to be put right here: One: the Japanese were well capable of the required engineering themselves. In fact the British had given up a similar plan earlier. But it was the Japanese who did pull it off – if only through the deadly exploitation of tens of thousands of POW s ( Australians , British and Dutch in the main, but also a small number of Americans ). Even more importantly, nearly 200,000 Asian workers were conscripted from occupied territories by the Japanese too (especially from Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia ). Two: the actual brutality of the Japanese towards their POWs and forced labourers was infinitely worse than what's depicted in the movie (that may be an obvious point). Three: the real heroism of the POWs who managed to survive this hell was of a very different nature to the stubbornly toff Englishness portrayed by Alec Guinness.