Kanchanburi

Famous for The Bridge on the River Kwai, Kanchanaburi was established in the 1830s, and it’s a good base to visit national parks, sail down the Kwai River or travel to one of a number of waterfalls and caves.

Over the years, with the languid river providing a charming backdrop, the town has become one of Thailand’s biggest tourist destinations. Mae Nam Kwai Road is the main hangout for tourists where you’ll find a plethora of internet cafés, bars and food outlets, and is reminiscent of Khao San in Bangkok. Away from this area and you’ll find a variety of streets filled with markets, shop houses and memorials to those who died in the Second World War.

Apart from tourism, the province’s wealth is derived from gems mined at the Bo-Phloi mines, teak trading with Burma and sugar cane plantations. It was from here that the Japanese set Allied prisoners of war to work on the construction of the notorious ‘death railway’.