Up and early again as usual. I had a quick breakfast in the hotel and we were off. It was another long day on the bus. Today our Scholar Consultant was Dr. Charnvit Kasetsiri. He is a professor at Thammasat University. Thammasat University is 70 years old. Dr Charnvit is retired but teaches history still. In Thailand you are forced to retire at age 60. Born in 1941 the same year as Pearl Harbor. He lived and grew up by the bridge on the river Kwai His father was an interpreter for the Japanese during the war. He traveled as a retirement gift to himself to the USA and was there to see 9/11. The bridge on the River Kwai is about 2 hours from Bangkok. The movie was filmed in Shri Lanka in the late 1950s. There was a railroad built between Thailand and Burma. It is called the Death Railway. The Japanese who were imprisoned there called it Hell Fire. We stopped at the Death Railway Cemetery so that we could explore and take photos. We reboarded the bus but decided to stop at the Death Railway Museum. Of course we found lots of good buys there.

Thailand was invaded the same day as Pearl Harbor was bombed. Thammasat became a leader because it was the headquarters of the underground free Thai movement against the Japanese. The railway went from Thailand to Singapore. The Japanese put their troops in Dr. Charnvit's hometown and rebuilt the railway to Burma. The prisoners built it in 1 year. 100,000 Asians died building that railway. The place became popular after the movie. The movie won Oscars in 1956 or 1957. The railway was the main trafficker of gemstones, humans and drugs. This is where the influence of India came in.

One man who was imprisoned found hieroglyphics. He later went back to do an archeological dig and found an ancient civilization. Nakshon Panom Pagoda means First City. The Emperor brought in Buddhism and opened up Southeast Asia to Buddhism. He built the pagoda to atone for all of the killing. The local legend is that he killed his father so he needed to make merit to atone himself. He built the pagoda as tall as the doves fly. He (Dr. Charnvit) explained what I had seen the day before with the cloth coming down off of the Buddha and said the cloth is meant to make merit by wrapping it around the Buddha and yourself too.

We stopped at the pagoda, which holds the Guinness world record as the tallest Buddha. I was very tired so I stayed on the bus while the group looked at the tallest Buddha.

We then went on to Kanchanaburi. Dr. Charnvit said every November they light up the bridge and play the Bridge on the River Kwai music and reenact blowing up the bridge and it is so realistic that you think it is real. Japanese Comfort Women were captured and many stayed on in Thailand. This fact is not in the history books but they have to be rewritten to reflect this. There is still an old transportation railroad where Dr. Charnvit takes his students and he said some crazy tourists go as well.

He said we were starting to see the Burmese mountains here and that the railway runs all the way up to Tibet. There is a forest preserve by UNESCO. It is very lush and full of elephants and tigers. There is a push to ruin it by logging.

He said by experiencing the heat we can begin to feel and imagine a little bit of what the prisoners went though.

We arrived at the quiet little village and went straight to the restaurant. It was beautiful right on the river facing the bridge. Dr. Charnvit moved from table to table and finally settled at our table. He got his Ph.D. at Cornell University. I asked him if it was hard coming to America not knowing English. He told me they sent him off to UCLA to learn English first and the people there were very nice to him. In 1965 he participated in anti-Vietnam War Protests in Washington DC. He loved Peter, Paul, and Mary and the Beatles. He was so funny because he kept jumping up to take pictures of the bridge just like a tourist!

As we walked back to the bus it started to rain. We hurried and got to the bus just as it started to pour. On the way back we were to watch the movie Bridge on the River Kwai but we couldn't get a copy of it. We tried watching The Quiet American that was Scott's find but it wouldn't play in our machine. Dr. Charnvit had a copy of The October Student. It was a documentary with English subtitles. It was about the student uprising in Thailand in 1973 to kick out the government run by the military. It was very good and seemed to parallel what went on in America during the Vietnam War. After we viewed it we were told that Dr. Charnvit wrote the script. He said he was going to give all of us a copy and we have his permission to copy it as well. The 30 year anniversary of the movement just past. He returned from America in the 1970's just in time to participate in the government overthrow. He was one of the first hundred to sign the petition. Dr. Benedict Anderson of Cornell University did the translations for the English subtitles in The October Student. Dr. Charnvit reminded us of the plaque at the Death Railway Cemetery that says, "There is no future without remembrance." 500,000 marched out of Thammasat University on October 14th 1973. The military Government collapsed. The students got the support they needed from the King. In October 1976 the military came back and massacred people to retake control. They accused the students of communism with no respect of the Monarchy. He said now there is democracy in Thailand and it is not too bad. He himself said the student movement in Thailand was just like the student movements in America. They used "We Shall Overcome" from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights movement.

Dr. Charnvit said there is a cycle of student activism. He said there are 3 types if TV in Thailand, Government, Military and Private. Things are more controlled now. When asked about the original 14 who started the revolution he said many of them are still around. One of the students became a politician but has since dies. Another is a professor of sociology at Thammasat University. Others teach there as well. Many went to the jungles to hide out but they are back now.

In the late 1990s Dr. Charnvit put himself in a self-imposed exile. He went to Japan and then to the USA and taught at UC Berkeley and University of Santa Cruz. He said America puts an emphasis on the quality of education where Thailand puts an emphasis on quantity. The Mekong River is beginning to have problems with not enough water and therefore not enough fish. There are environmental problems with dumping and many companies are being shut down. Cheap Chinese products are flooding the market. This is bad for the ecology. There are studies going on into the Mekong River.

I was saddened to learn Marlin Brando died. I had been so out of the news loop. It was strange because the day Jerry mistakenly said Marlin Brando who died instead of Yul Brynner who had died was the actual day he died. How Ironic!