Hey, do you want to see the Bridge on the River Kwai?

The first week our family lived in Bangkok we were staying at the then-new Siam Intercontinental Hotel until we found a place to live. We were sitting near their swimming pool on Saturday, and I was reading an article in the newspaper (The Bangkok Post) about places to visit near Bangkok.

I turned and said to my wife, “would you like to see the bridge on the River Kwai?” She immediately replied, “I’ve seen it in San Francisco,” meaning that she’d seen the movie made about building the bridge. After I explained that the actual bridge was, in fact, in Thailand near the town of Kanchanaburi, she grudgingly agreed to this expedition, and we packed up and blasted off in our tiny car, piloted by our local driver.

We were crammed into the car, and even though I was seated in front, it was a little frightening, to say the least. Suffice to say we had no idea where we were going or what to expect once we arrived. Until this point, the only things we’d seen in Thailand was the Bangkok airport and the highway leading to our hotel.

Within a mile of the hotel, we were blasting along a highway at what seemed to be 90 miles an hour, dodging trucks, cars, and motor-scooter taxis that darted around like daredevils. During the ride, our driver said very little, so we were left on our own to try to figure out where we were. We had a useless map (it was written in the Thai language of course), so we looked out the window as the countryside literally flew by.

After about 3 hours of our rocket ride, we arrived at the town near the River Kwai. We were thrilled to get out of the car, and when we looked around, the first thing we saw was a small, very well-kept war Cemetery and parts of the original bridge that was built by the prisoners of war.

We were the only people there, and we stood in the sunshine trying to visualize how that all came about and what happened to all of the men who built the bridge. We saw grave markers stretching into the distance and later learned more than 7,000 prisoners were buried there.

At that moment, we realized we were looking at something very, very powerful and it was a long way away from the movie that played when we were at home.

For the first time, we all understood we were living in Thailand, half-way around the world from San Francisco and that we weren’t tourists in another country; we were in our new home, anxious, excited and ready for the adventures ahead.