The last of my tour-based day trips around Bangkok took me to Erawan National Park, home to Erawan Falls, seven delicious tiers of waterfalls and pools. This was truly a day trip: I left home at 6:15 to get to the pickup spot for 7:00 departure and didn’t walk back into my apartment until 8:00 that evening.

I would definitely not have done this with Dorothy. I clocked over seven miles of hiking, which is well past her limit. While the path was okay, the ascents and descents were steps made of stones of variable height and pitch, which Dorothy would have hated. Plus, she doesn’t trust her joints enough to negotiate entry into the pools over wet, uneven rocks. All by myself I was free to frolic like drunken mountain goat, although I suspect I presented more as coked-up bear.

But before I got to enjoy that experience, I was subjected to a stop that made it clear that my lawn, all unbeknownst, extends all the way to Thailand. And those kids were stomping all over my rose bushes.

I’m sure that my invocations of Dyspepsia, Goddess of Bile, are amusing, but I don’t actually take pleasure in experiences that engender that response. The whole curmudgeon thing feels like a form of weakness, that I somehow lack the capacity to find joy in whatever situation I find myself in. But hear me out. I’m not sure joy was on the menu for this experience.

JEATH War Museum

So we have a tour group whose primary interest is hiking in the jungle and swimming in the pools under waterfalls. This activity alone, with transit time, is about nine hours. That’s a commitment. And you ask yourself, as a tour operator, “What can I add to that tour that will appeal to my ardent hiker/swimmer nature lovers?”

And you answer yourself, “Why, it’s obvious. A POW concentration camp museum! Genius!!!”

Weirdly, this is the standard tour. It doesn’t matter which tour operator you use, unless you hire a private car and driver to take you to the falls, your day in nature comes with a free side of concentration camp. Specifically, the camp the Japanese set up in Thailand to house British and Australian POWs forced to build, wait for it… The Bridge On The River Kwai. Or as it’s properly called in Thailand, Khwae Yai.

The museum is set up to simulate the housing for the POWs, and it includes exhibits and a video. There were photos, which I side-eyed because I couldn’t greet them face on, which looked like the liberation of Auschwitz, nothing but living ghosts.

When I was in high school, a history class showed Judgement at Nuremberg, which includes documentary footage from the liberation of the concentration camps. To which my response was, “You, yeah y’all totally need to watch this. It will be a character building experience for you. But I’m good.”

I know there’s a difference between bearing witness and misery porn, but I’m not sure I can actually tell them apart. I feel like I’m capable of understanding how fucked up humans can be without having my head held down and my nose rubbed in it. There’s a level of fact that just seems gratuitous.

I’m a big baby and a raw, throbbing nerve. I couldn’t watch the video. I spent the fifteen minutes of the video following this Majestic Beast:

I truly don’t understand the impulse. Is this their way of turning something horrific about their past into something positive? “That was bad, but at least we can charge tourists to see it.” Do they think we want to see? I had a driver in Kolkata who insisted on taking me to a colonial-era church because he wanted to show off the architecture. I stayed the minimum time necessary to avoid providing insult, but the space felt haunted by the brutality of the Raj. It made me nauseous, and it wasn’t even my own history. I don’t know how it was just architecture to my driver.

We had a driver in Cambodia who offered to take us to the Killing Fields. You can take tours in Vietnam of the guerrilla tunnels. I’ve also never been to Gettysburg. No. Just no. 

Here’s the deal. Every one of the yellow triangles on this map is a POW camp run by the Japanese with the Thai government’s forced acquiescence. “Nice country you got here…” It’s not really an offer you can refuse. And while there are protocols for housing prisoners of war, the Japanese couldn’t be bothered. Not when there was a train to be built and forced labor to build it.

This was the message given to the workers:

As befits my shallowness, my favorite display was this very Pugsley Addams recreation of the Allied bombing of the bridge.

Next stop: down the river to the infamous bridge itself. We could get there on the bus, or for a mere additional 150฿ we could take a boat down the lovely river.

My seat mate in the six-seat boat was a German tourist. When we landed at the dock by the bridge he informed me that there’s no way the bus could have beaten us there, as we were doing a brisk 40 km/h on the water. That is the most German thing ever. Lord knows how he snuck his sextant past me.

I figured once we were out of the faux POW camp I’d be fine, but the bridge had its own issues.

Its other side is where it’s problematic. First, there’s this:

But mostly, there’s this:

A POW-themed village, with food stalls and merch kiosks. And the same approach to verisimiltude as Hogan’s Heroes. Misery cosplay with a happy clown face donked on.

Thankfully, that concluded our Journey to the Past. Next stop: blessed immersion in the waters of life.

Erawan Falls

There isn’t actually a whole lot of incisive commentary available for this part of the journey. Jungle is swell, waterfalls are magic, and the water was… brisk. So, a little bit of travelogue for you. Enjoy the pictures.

These are the pre-falls. They don’t even merit an entire integer. Fall 0.5.

Fall #1.

And here it is, in action.

These guys were in all of the pools, and came in all different sizes. At first I thought they were just indifferent to my presence and comfortable swimming right into my legs. Then I realized these are the same fish they had in tanks all over Vietnam. Stick your feet in and they’ll eat the dead skin cells right off your legs, the world’s creepiest exfoliant. I was never tempted to try that, but those fish were at least tiny. These were fucking carp sized. I shudder to recall it.

Fall #2.

Fall #3.

More action.

Fall #3 was where I found a woman who apparently enjoyed the free spa treatment. She just stood there the entire time I was at 3, doing this:

The path up to fall #4 featured:

Fall #4 is called The Sea Ogress’s Breasts, because it features two large round rocks that the water falls over. And because everyone everywhere is twelve. It also features idiots. There’s one now, negotiating one of the ogress’s breasts. Oh, the stories he will tell his grandkids.

More beautiful half falls on the way to #5.

The walk from 4 to 5 was one of the longest, about 600 km, so I made 5 my personal peak. It definitely felt like I got the payoff.

And here it is, in all its glory.

Here, I think, was the real reason to stop. Would I be able to top the peak experience of seeing an influencer in her native habitat? Don’t be silly. Also, don’t make eye contact, and don’t extend your hand if you’re holding food.

On my way back down, this guy presented himself. Perfect ending. To a weird but, on balance, rewarding day.