Kanchanaburi is a town municipality in Mueang Kanchanaburi District, created on 25 March 1936 over Ban Nuea and Ban Tai subdistricts and enlarged in 1974 to 9.16 square kilometres, according to the municipality. The municipality lists the bridge over the Khwae River and an Allied war cemetery among its important places, and says it named 22 roads leading to the bridge after 22 nations in remembrance of the foreign labourers the Japanese army conscripted to build it.
Country
Thailand
Type
Town
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Worth the drive
Distances are straight-line, not driving time — mountain roads in this region are often twice as long as the map suggests.
Bridge · Tha Makham, Kanchanaburi
The River Kwai Bridge is the railway bridge over the Khwae Yai River in Tha Makham subdistrict, Kanchanaburi, built with prisoner-of-war labour for the Thailand–Burma railway in the Second World War and still used by trains.
Museum · Ban Tai, Kanchanaburi
The JEATH War Museum is a museum about the prisoners of war and the building of the Thailand–Burma 'Death Railway', in Ban Tai subdistrict of Mueang Kanchanaburi District, near Wat Chaichumphon Chanasongkhram.
Monument · Ban Nuea, Kanchanaburi
Kanchanaburi War Cemetery (Don Rak) is a cemetery for Allied prisoners of war who died building the Thailand–Burma railway, beside Saeng Chuto Road (Highway 323) in Ban Nuea subdistrict, Mueang Kanchanaburi District.
Museum · Ban Nuea, Kanchanaburi
The Thailand–Burma Railway Centre is a museum, information and research centre on the history of the Thailand–Burma railway, on Jaokannun Road beside Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, in Ban Nuea, Mueang Kanchanaburi District.
Archaeological site · Sing, Kanchanaburi
Mueang Sing Historical Park is the Fine Arts Department's park at the ancient walled town of Mueang Sing, with a Khmer-style sanctuary at its centre, in Sing subdistrict, Sai Yok District, Kanchanaburi Province.
Park · Tha Kradan, Kanchanaburi
Erawan National Park is a national park in Si Sawat District of Kanchanaburi Province, home of Erawan Falls.
Explore deeper
4 guides
The Burma–Thailand Railway was built for the Japanese army during the Second World War by Allied prisoners of war and Asian forced labourers, and tens of thousands died building it. This article sets out what commemorative bodies and official sources say about the railway, where their figures differ, and how the dead are remembered in Thailand today.
The places in and around Kanchanaburi that remember the Burma–Thailand Railway are looked after by different bodies: the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Australian Government, a private company, and bodies the sources XTOUR read do not name. This guide names each site, says who is responsible for it, and points to the page a visitor should read before going.
Mueang Sing Historical Park is a walled Khmer-period town with a laterite sanctuary at its centre, on the Khwae Noi river in Sai Yok district of Kanchanaburi Province. This guide explains what the Fine Arts Department's pages say it is, how it differs from Kanchanaburi's Second World War sites, and where the department's own Thai and English pages disagree about its age and its ancient name.
XTOUR plans Thailand around places you can stay in: the towns and cities of Bangkok, Ayutthaya, Sukhothai, Kanchanaburi, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Phuket Town and Krabi Town, and the islands of Phuket, Ko Samui and Ko Pha-ngan. This guide says what each base is for in XTOUR's coverage, which sites are reached from a base rather than inside it, and where XTOUR's detailed guides take over.
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