Chungkai was surrounded by a slender bamboo fence with a cleared path just inside it for exercise, and one turn round the whole perimeter took you a mile and a quarter. The camp was also divided into a Red, or fit half, and a Blue, or sick half; apart from these two districts, the hospital now consisted of about ten 100-metre huts crammed with really ill men. The river was still in bounds for bathing as before, but at more limited hours. The canteen, or the P.R.I. as it was called to distinguish it from the Nip controlled canteen that was now little more than a wholesale store, sold an incredible selection of goods, though their prices were fast going up and the quality of the goods was declining. You could buy omelettes, fried or boiled eggs, sugar discs, ginger or coffee ‘fudge’, various fruit cakes and tarts, and a particularly good shortbread; then there was the daily lunchtime ‘Special’, which might be a savoury curry or stew or soup; fruit was scarce, a few bananas only; and then there was the Dutch Sambal department – a sambal being a hot or spicy sort of Javanese sauce or side dish, made in many ways, and from such available material as peanuts, eggs, fish, chillies and vegetables. There were sambals as hot as fire, and sambals which were delicious; they were enormously popular.

We visited the Remedial P.T. centre, a railed off square under the mango trees, where limbs bent and deformed with illness or work on the railway were scientifically and gently exercised back to normality, generally with the aid of massage. At a later period of the day the health fanatics took over and, in the burning heat contorted and punished the bodies, often with astounding results. Next to this place was the Barber’s shop, where for 5c you awaited your turn on a stool under the trees for a shave or a haircut; an ex-Hollywood and Strand Palace barber being the presiding genius of the place, who came off his lofty perch to shave or cut the hair of only the elite or those who knew him.

Close to the barber’s shop was the football field, and there nightly matches were held. Then there was the theatre, another atap and bamboo erection but very superior indeed to the Takanun model, having wings, make-up room, office and wardrobe and a sloping auditorium from which 5,000 people sometimes saw a show. The camp was placarded with posters advertising coming events, and there was a booking office with a system of seat reservations in the normal theatre manner that brought them in revenue of about 80 dollars a week. Each week there were two shows, every Friday and Saturday.