It was a funny feeling just walking about on that padang. One edge of it bordered the town and had a few houses on it. That evening the whole field was packed with people. In the centre was a football match going on between a team of Javanese who were working on the railway and the local Thais. Everywhere were Thais, Chinese, Arabs, Indians, Malays, Javanese and Sundanese, a wonderfully bright and colourful picture. And everybody was so friendly and seemed so terrifically glad the Allies had won and the Nips would be going. The Thais, who could speak very little English, made differently accentuated ‘O.K.s’ speak volumes. I spoke with Javanese and Sundanese in the Malay ‘lingua franca’ and learnt how they’d been hi-jacked to work on the railway. Now, they only had one fear – would they be left behind in Thailand? Of course not, we told them. For some of them this was the first news that the war was over and they’d heard no news from their families in Java for over two years.

We came back into the camp at nine o’clock to hear the News. In the canteen now you could buy all sorts of things, but the prices were terribly high considering the state of our pockets. The value of the Thai Tikal was about 2d, so with the Nips having cut down our pay during the last six months to $20, we’d been receiving about 3/4d a month! You could buy lao, the local firewater, for $4 a bottle but the better Thai whiskeys cost from $20 to $30 and few could afford that. A cotton white shirt of moderate quality cost $50, and an indifferent towel $40. A tin of Kiwi cost $25, a comb $6, and a penny notebook $2.50! In Kamburi itself even a cup of coffee cost a dollar, and a piece of good soap $6 to $8. Eggs, which before the war cost 2 to 3 cents, now cost 20 cents; bananas were now 5 cents each instead of two for 1 cent. Pong’s prices were always the lowest, but even then our cash wouldn’t go far; but in a few days Pong offered to advance every officer up to 100 Tikals a day in return for I.O.U.s, and at the same time he began to redeem all those personal valuables he had advanced money against up country in the terrible days of more than two years before! This latter act strikes me as being almost incredible, and the thought of a modern European doing such a thing just doesn’t arise.

A letter came into the camp out of the blue from Nakom Niok, the new Officers Camp. They were nothing like so well off as we were, but it was very interesting to hear how the various Nips were behaving in the changed positions, and there was one very funny story.