On dumping our kit our first act was to look for the market, for Wun Lun market had been almost legendarily famous, and before leaving Chungkai we’d been told which stalls used to keep the best hooch and where we ought to go to find this and that. To reach the market, one crossed a mud square to a plantation of Kapok trees, followed the road between them, and when one came to the old section of the Nip engineers’ camp by the river bank, one bore right and came straight among the stalls. But the market, which covered about 100 yards of a lane down to the river, was almost empty, since the camp only held 100 people and they hadn’t known we were coming. All the stalls, which were small shacks with lean-to atap roofs and a sort of bamboo counter, had been left untenanted and deserted, so that we had to see all the Thais we could and get them to spread the news round that there would be a big demand in Wun Lun market the next day.

On the whole Wun Lun was a good camp, though now it was better than it had ever been. Though we were a H.Q. party under a Lt Colonel, the Nip commander of the place was a 1st class Korean private, named Arri, who was one of the few Nips that invariably kept his word and was not out to be bloody-minded. He got on particularly well with one of the troop-commanding officers already in the camp, and consequently things went smoothly. In April the weather in Thailand was at its hottest, reaching up to 105° to 110° F in the shade, but one could just go and lie in the shallows of the river and prop one’s back up against the current, which wasn’t a bad way of escaping the heat.

The cookhouses were unfortunately more than a quarter of a mile from our huts, and were reached over a swaying plank bridge with one rail that crossed a steep gulley, and which in wet and muddy weather was devilishly slippery to cross. Consequently, the food generally arrived cold at the feeding point, but that was one of the few bad things about Wun Lun.

The kapok plantation was rather lovely. The trees, planted in rows and growing to a height of about 30 feet, grew stiffly upright, their branches stretching out rigidly and symmetrically every few feet up the silver coloured trunks. The foliage was of a delicate green colour, and the leaves grew only in little tufts at the ends of the twigs and branches. The kapok itself was contained in a pod like a small, horny, dark brown corn cob, filled with little white, compressed cottonwool- like seeds, arranged exactly like the seeds of sweet corn.