When in Sangkhlaburi, you may invest the trip of 25 km to this place. There you can see the three white pagodas but as far as I am concerned, they are not more than three white plastered concrete elements. There are some shops in the surrounding with Birmese furniture, jewelry and food. The border is heavily protected by police.

End of the road for most travelers. Can do some shopping for nice wood products. Border post here but as of this writing Non Thai's cant enter Burma from here.

Thought i was going to see some ancient pagodas and not some tarted up refurbished tiny stupas with awful modern tile.

We made the long journey to this 'must see' attraction by road. The scenery along the way was great with mountains and forests and lots of birds. My own expectations were high. I'd seen the pagodas on Doi Inthanon which were brilliant, so I thought that at such an important historical site would be awe-inspiring. How wrong I was!

We arrived around midday, passing by the town of Sangkla Buri to arrive at the border. This is the place where the Thai side of the Death Railway met the Burmese side, so surely there would be an impressive monument to the event? The Japanese made certain allied prisoners change into clean clothes for a photo call marking the joining of the two railway tracks and then made them change back into sackcloth. Such a cruel and demeaning act would be remembered for what it was?

We parked up in a dirt car park and looked around. There were three small white-painted stepped concrete pergodas in the middle of a grass island. My first thought was 'where are the pagodas?'....but these were indeed 'the' three pagodas. Okay, not up to the usual thai standard, but there must be something else to commemorate such an auspicious occasion? We found a four metre long piece of railway track outside a Thai-Japan border peace temple opened in 2002 and a time capsule to be opened in 2045. Unbelievably it was in the middle of the floor of some dirty cafe. I felt sad that more effort hadn't been made to remember the events of 1945.

We looked around, not seeing any other tourists and got ushered away from the border post by plain-clothed Burmese police even though we could enter a shop in Thailand and walk out the back into Burma. Bizarre. There were several market stalls that sold cheap trinkets and a furniture shop that sold hard-wood tables and chairs. I thought of the huge trees that had been felled and the forest cleared so that people could sit at shiny varnished tables. Not for me.

The border town itself was unremakable and I was relieved to be heading back out towards Kanchanaburi. We even looked around for a decent place to stay in Sangkla Buri but found nothing attractive and carried on south. I'm glad to have been there to see for myself but won't be going back. My personal feeling is that local authorities could have done a lot more to make this historical site special. But it felt like it had been forgotten.