Fodor's Expert Review Bridge on the River Kwai

Kanchanaburi is most famous as the location of this bridge, a section of the Thailand-Burma Railway immortalized in director David Lean's epic 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai. During World War II, the Japanese, with whom Thailand sided, forced about 16,000 prisoners of war and from 50,000 to 100,000 civilian slave laborers from neighboring countries to construct the railway, a supply route through the jungles of Thailand and Burma. Sure-footed visitors can walk across the bridge, whose arched portions are original. In December a big fair takes place with a sound-and-light show depicting the Allied bombing of the structure late in the war. Next to the bridge is a plaza with restaurants and souvenir shops.