However, the film was such an international success — it won seven Oscars — that tourists came flocking to Thailand searching for ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’. In 1960 the town of Kanchanaburi changed the name of the Mae Klong river in the vicinity of the bridge to the Kwae Yai (or Greater tributary).
Thus ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’ was created. The tune whistled by the POWs in the film, Colonel Bogey’s march, is played today by buskers on the bridge.
One hundred metres downstream there was a second bridge during World War II. This was a wooden bridge which could carry light diesel rail trucks transporting construction materials while the main bridge was being built.
Both bridges were regularly bombed by Allied aircraft from December 1944 to June 1945. Several spans of the steel bridge were destroyed. The wooden bridge, which could be more easily repaired, filled the gap to some extent.