Just before dusk, two husky young Thais were seen crossing the padang in the rain. They negotiated the bund and fences where they had once more fallen in, and came into our hut to look for Mick. It was interesting to see how Mick behaved with the Thais; his manners were perfect, and from the friendly way the Thais chattered to him in a mixture of Thai and English, it was quite obvious that they thought very highly of him. Mick came down to our bed. ‘John,’ he said ‘my Thai friends of the Kamburi Paper Factory have asked me to bring along some friends to a party. Would you and your Kongsi like to come?. ‘Would we!’ we replied.

Tawi, a stalwart, good-looking Thai who was our guide, said that the house we were going to was on the road that bordered the padang, so we would only be about 30 yards out of bounds, and knowing that we couldn’t get an extension of our nine p.m. pass at such short notice, we didn’t try, but just walked out past the British Officer Piquet and Nip sentries by the Guard Room and picked up our two Thais again in the middle of the padang where they were waiting for us with several of their friends. Then we all squelched off with old sacks over our shoulders to try and keep the rain off our patched and only clothes. As we picked our way over the marshy ground, we used our few words of Thai to form a sort of conversation, but it never got much beyond ‘Party di mak-mak’ (Party very good), and ‘Lao O.K.!’ and ‘this rain mi dee’ (no good).

We reached the edge of the padang and Tawi led us off down a lane flanked by little wooden houses with steep ladders running up to their balconies and with papaya and banana trees almost hiding them. From all sides came down ‘Sawat dee! Sawat dee!’ (Good day!) and as we plodded along in the mud, Thai children danced round us calling shrilly, ‘Sawat dee! sawat dee! O.K.! O.K.! O.K.!’ But though we had expected to find our house by the road, we walked on and on, past the high red stone walls of old Kanchanaburi, the City of Gold and, turning to our right at the bottom of a sort of padang near the Governor’s house, we came in sight of the river. Tawi pointed, ‘There!’ he said, ‘O.K.! Paper Factory Café!’