Sound carries well over water, uphill, and during the early evening. These gifts combined perfectly for us in Sangkhlaburi last weekend. We sat in the middle of the long wooden bridge, nearly 200 meters above the river, listening to the arrival of nightfall.Cooking noises from the rafthouses below wafted our way. Grandmas shouted at boys to quit sliding down the riverbank before it got too dark to see. Girls on a dock laughed about a sarong trick—let it catch the air when you jump into the water, and it buoys you up just as well as an innertube would.
Somehow we hadn’t moved more than a stone’s throw from the bridge all day, even though we had been in town since lunchtime. Following the five-hour trip west from Bangkok, nobody felt like straying too far. It was good enough just to cross the bridge, photograph it, cross back over it, eat alongside it, and then finally to close our eyes and let the night noises mingle at the middle of it. Yet it is a truth universally acknowledged that a tourist town in possession of only a single attraction must be in want of a new way of life, so the next day we struck out in search of what else might be on offer over at Thailand’s western border. It seemed to us that we should at least check out the nearby entry point to Burma, known as Three Pagoda Pass, just to say we’d been there. I’d read about this place for years, and had expected giant stupas marking a dramatic cut in the mountains. Nothing of the kind! Baby pagodas! And no sign of a pass.
Likewise, nothing too special about a former temple that is under water during part of every year thanks to a dam several miles downstream of the bridge. The local coffee shops we dropped in on were OK, but maybe not worth a special trip out from the capital. Somebody said that mountain biking in the area was rewarding—maybe next trip. This time, for us it was enough to return to our favorite overlook and just eavesdrop on the evening.
