So back to Kamburi. After about 10 minutes going down the stream, the rain cleared away, and maddeningly fine sunshine appeared once more. Way over to the left, though we could see the rain still coming down hard, and it was too late to go back. As soon as we had sat down in Aroong’s café, and before I had had time to drink a polite swig of lao, the bus was upon us, and Pong announced that there was just time to go up to the old temple. So one more hurried photo (a group of people) and the rest of the bottle of lao as a present, and off we went once more. I had another three tins of Players with me, and these I surrendered gladly. Tawi was particularly insistent that I come back again for a longer trip, and I made a mental resolve that I’d certainly try to.

I’m not going to describe the journey home again, but will stay in the temple to say goodbye to Kamburi; this, not out of any spurious sentimentality, but because the journey home was uneventful, and given over to many reflections and thoughts of 3 odd years. Only one interesting thing happened, and that was when we stopped at a palm-wine tapper’s hut and drank some wine, or sugar, rather, from his bamboo container. I didn’t like it, for it was exceedingly sweet and tasted smoky to me. The man, incidentally, was now living in Siam, but was a Tamil from Malaya brought up by the Japanese to work on the railway in Burma. We compared notes in Malay.

To get back to the temple. It wasn’t a very beautiful temple, I know, but it had always been a shelter to us when we’d rested beneath the frangipani trees en route to Tamarkan when we were working on the Tamarkan Party. In the main temple a service was going on, two rows of yellow robed priests on either side of the altar were drawn up facing each other, and they were chanting some prayer to the punctuation of a great, deep gong. All that really mattered to me was that the frangipani trees were still there. And they were there, and the grass beneath them was still thick with the fallen blossoms. I picked a good handful of them, grinning as I remembered how we used to stuff them in our hats, (if we wore them) to keep away yet stronger smells . . .

A few more photographs, with rivalry between Pong and myself, and then we all climbed back into the bus, and in 3½ shattering hours, not conducive to thought, we were back in Bangkok.

June 8, 1947

APPENDIX TWO:

BBC SCRIPT FROM THE 1969 BBC DOCUMENTARY RETURN TO THE RIVER KWAI

From BBC Written Archives T56/203/1(File)

KEY:

LS = Long Shot, CS = Close-Up/Shot, VO = Voice Over, Mix To = Mix of voice over and visuals, FX = Effects, GV = General View, 2S = 2 shot

PROJECT NO: 5158/2148