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The well-curated exhibits of the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre provide an excellent overview of the railway’s history and the brutal conditions suffered by the POWs and forced labourers who built it. Poignant personal accounts, photographs, artefacts, and videos illuminate this dark slice of history, from the Japanese invasion to the lives of some of the survivors after the war.

After absorbing all the museum exhibits, take a short stroll through the well-maintained Kanchanaburi War Cemetery across the street. Also known as Don-Rak War Cemetery, this is the final resting place of nearly 7,000 British, Dutch, and Australian prisoners who died during the construction of the Death Railway. Walking past the graves and reading the inscriptions can be an emotional experience, especially when you realize how young some of the prisoners were. Even more sobering is the fact that these graves represent only a small number of the prisoners who died toiling under unimaginably harsh conditions to construct the railway.