Title: Explore Thailand 2017
Story: Hellfire Pass pt 1
Presenter: Trevor Cochrane

Today the crew are headed south along the Thai Burma Railway to the first stop on the journey, Hellfire Pass. Here the prisoners of War were made to cut their way through the hillside and jungle, an extremely dangerous and difficult task, as they had to do it all by hand.

• The name Hellfire Pass came because the soldiers, the POW's, were working phenomenal hours all through the day breaking this down and moving it out so at night it was lit by fires and it was said that it was just like fires of hell.

• Amongst the Australian and Allied POW's that were forced to cut the pass, there were many Burmese, Tamel, Javanese, Chinese and Malay people used as laborers working under the poorest of conditions for just a dollar a day.

• Building the Death Railway through Thailand and into Burma proved to be one of the most infamous times in Australian War time history. This was such a significant cost because these men cut their way through by hand the cost in lives was enormous.

• Hellfire Pass has been preserved so that you can experience just a little bit of what our forefathers went through. You can walk through parts of the Death Railway today and get a sense of the incredible hardships that the men building it would have endured. This is an incredible part of the whole experience.

• Located just above the now preserved Pass, the Hellfire Pass Museum houses many relics and reconstructions to illustrate how the railway was built. Opened in 1998, it prepared visitors for exploring the paths below.

For more information about this story or any other stories featured in this episode of Guru TV, visit Tourism Authority of Thailand, at www.au.tourismthailand.org.

The Explore TV flew to Thailand on Thai Airways. For more information about flights, visit Thai Airways, at www.thaiairways.com