Bridge over the River Kwai

The bridge that the world knows from the 1957 film spans the Khwae Yai about 4 km north-west of central Kanchanaburi, at a place called Tha Makham. It was the largest crossing on the Thailand-Burma Railway, the line the Japanese army forced prisoners of war and Asian labourers to build in 1942 and 1943, and it remains the symbol of that railway and the lives it cost.

At first glance it is a modest structure: grey steel trusses on concrete piers, a little over 300 m long. The arched spans at each end are the wartime originals, brought from Java and reassembled here; the two flat-topped spans in the middle replaced sections destroyed by Allied bombing in 1945. Trains still cross it a few times a day on the line to Nam Tok, and between trains you can walk across on the walkway beside the tracks, stepping into the small side platforms when a horn sounds.

The film and Pierre Boulle’s novel are fiction. Their bridge was wooden, and the river in this stretch was then the Mae Klong; Thailand renamed it Khwae Yai in the 1960s to match the story. The real history is told in the museums and cemeteries in town, and the bridge makes more sense after a visit to them.

The riverbank at the eastern end is busy with souvenir stalls, floating restaurants and tour groups, especially at weekends. Come early in the morning for a quieter crossing.

The bridge is about 4 km north of the town centre along Saeng Chuto and River Kwai roads; a bicycle, motorbike taxi or songthaew gets you there easily. River Kwai Bridge station sits at the eastern end, and trains between Kanchanaburi and Nam Tok cross the bridge, so you can also arrive by rail.

At Tha Makham, prisoners from nearby camps built a temporary wooden bridge first, finished in early 1943, then the steel and concrete bridge a short way downstream, completed by mid-1943. Its eleven curved steel spans had been shipped in from Java.

As a key link on the supply line to Burma, both bridges were obvious targets. British and American aircraft bombed them several times in 1945 and knocked out the central steel spans. After the war the steel bridge was repaired with the angular spans you see today, and the wooden bridge, which stood about 100 m away, disappeared. No trace of it remains.

The railway beyond Nam Tok was abandoned, but the section through Kanchanaburi stayed in use and still carries passenger trains. Each year in late November or early December, the River Kwai Bridge Week festival stages a sound-and-light show over the bridge that retells the wartime story.