Erawan National Park, Kanchanaburi
Erawan National Park in Kanchanaburi is home to the best-known waterfall in Thailand and the reason most visitors go north-west from Kanchanaburi town. The park protects a stretch of forested valley where the seven-tiered waterfall, along with limestone caves and hiking trails, draws day-trippers and…
Erawan National Park, Kanchanaburi
Erawan is the best-known waterfall in Thailand and the reason most visitors go north-west from Kanchanaburi. It falls in seven distinct tiers over about two kilometres of forested valley, and because the water is heavy with dissolved limestone it deposits travertine as it goes - which is what gives the pools their opaque blue-green colour and their smooth rounded lips.
A path follows the stream from the park entrance to the top, getting rougher with each level; the lower tiers are an easy walk, the last two involve scrambling. Most of the pools are open for swimming and hold shoals of fish that will investigate anyone standing still. The seventh tier, the one named for the three-headed elephant Erawan whose shape the rock is said to resemble, takes a good hour and a half to reach.
The park is at its fullest after the rains and can slow to a trickle late in the dry season.
- Thailand-Burma Railway Centre — The Thailand-Burma Railway Centre in Kanchanaburi tells the story of the Death Railway through exhibits and research, next...
- The Bridge over the River Kwai, Kanchanaburi — The surviving steel bridge on the Burma Railway, built by prisoners of war and forced labourers in 1943.
- Wat Tham Sua, Kanchanaburi — A hilltop temple above the Mae Klong paddy fields, with a huge seated Buddha and a Chinese-style pagoda alongside.
- Hellfire Pass Memorial, Kanchanaburi — The deepest cutting on the Burma Railway, hacked through rock by hand, and the memorial museum above it.
- Kanchanaburi War Cemetery (Don Rak) — The main Allied cemetery of the Burma Railway, holding nearly seven thousand graves in the centre of Kanchanaburi.
- Sai Yok Noi Waterfall, Kanchanaburi — A wide limestone cascade beside the Death Railway terminus at Nam Tok.
