Treat each guest honorably

December 30, 2022

Day 5 of Alternative Transportation

The night train to Bangkok

Dear little friends,

Oh, hi! It’s me again! I didn’t disappear, but Bruce has been fulfilling a goal of his to post to the journal every day and I’ve been fulfilling a goal of mine of taking naps and reading stuff and looking at maps and guesthouses down the road instead of writing.

Anyway. Here’s the scene: the Chiang Mai train station, waiting for our train after waving bye-bye to our bikes. Leaving them in what seemed like a garage full of teenagers and boxes didn’t really feel great, to be honest. They were not marked in any way. They could be shipped to Tanzania for all we knew. But we shouldered our Ortliebs and trudged off to the waiting area.

Ah, yes, the waiting area. Absolute and total bedlam. One train sat with its engine running loudly, drowning out the announcements of departures in Thai and English. Even if the engine had not been running they were muffled by very noisy groups of travelers who seemed to be moving in packs, loud feral packs. Everybody was so excited! Many selfies were taken in front of the “Chiang Mai” sign. It was great people watching.

I sat guard over the seven panniers, helmets, one daypack, and one handlebar bag, while Bruce roamed around looking for snacks and to see if our bikes were going where they should be going. He saw, wayyyyyy down the tracks, our bikes crossing into the other night train, the one with the freight car. 3/4ths of the noisy travelers stepped onto that train and it should have gotten quieter but nope.

The signboard said our train was leaving on track 4 but of course that was wrong, it was leaving on track 1. They put up a sign for our train and started letting people get on so we got on too. This was one long train, we walked and walked and walked and so did a large group of folks that were agitated and noisy. Great, they were all getting on our car.

It took a few trips to get all the panniers stashed in our little room, because we had to maneuver through this group of rowdies who were all shouting excitedly to each other in English and another language. “They’re out of fried chicken!” wailed a woman at 100 decibels. This might have been a catastrophe! Her friends read the menu, that we hadn’t gotten yet because we were still trying to elbow our way through the phalanx to our compartment.

Then everybody wanted to explore the bathrooms. This was one of the new fancy sleeping car trains where the bathrooms are nice and there is a shower (would you take a shower on the train? Maybe if I were going all the way to Singapore on it.)

It was a lot of fun, actually. It was a group of friends having a good time together and visiting each other’s rooms and cackling. Yes, maybe some of you have guessed it: they were Singaporeans. We enjoy folks from Singapore, they are happy campers and enjoy Thailand. This was a group of 13 friends having a fun trip together, and eventually everybody settled down and stayed in their own rooms.

Each room had a little sink that would be super cool if you were 9 but a little backbreaking to reach while toothbrushing unless you want toothpaste spray everywhere. Nonetheless, it was fun to have a sink.

Each room had two tv screens, one for the lower bunk and one for the upper bunk, they had channels that we didn’t bother looking at but had a constant display with location and the next station, and bathroom symbols that showed the urinal, the two toilets, and the shower were in use or not. Yes. At least two people took a shower on that train.

Nobody in the shower, here’s your big chance.

The train took off on the dot and it was time to break out the snacks. Road food!! We weren’t going to eat anything offered on the train, way overpriced and we’ve had bad experiences with train food.

Soon a no-nonsense matron was at our door to make the seating area into bunks with sheets and pillows and blankets. Our train would arrive in Bangkok at 7 am and she informed us she’d be by at 6 to wake us up and make the beds into seats again. It was dark by then which means Andrea was ready for bed. On into the night the train hurtled.

Let me be clear: I took a roundtrip to Montana on Amtrak from Portland last summer and it sucked, sucked, sucked. And trains we’ve taken in Myanmar have been epically horrible, worthy of story and song horrible. Thai trains are great in comparison! But I still didn’t sleep well on it. But at least I wasn’t crammed into an airplane seat, I could stretch out and read things. It was a little chilly! Next time I’ll pull out my sleeping bag. But it was fine, and 12 hours we were wending our way through the slums near Hua Lamphong station and the matron was starchily clearing out our sheets into a bundle while we waited out in the hallway.

Waiting for the beds to get dismantled. I was watching our friends’ plane land in their new country, safe and free.

At the station was more bedlam and once again I was standing guard over our pannier kingdom near the freight area while people in charge bemusedly did not know where our bikes were. Bruce went on walkabout looking for them in logical places. The train they were on arrived an hour before ours. Who is going to steal two blue circus bikes? But they weren’t there where they should have been. Bruce left again, obviously anxious and irritated. Then suddenly a guy was walking by wheeling my bike, and another guy behind him with Bruce’s. And all was well.

Loaded up for the long long ride of 100 meters to our hotel doorway, we swung out of the station through the bedlam and noise and taxi and tuk-tuk drivers that stand down when we come through on our own transportation. We wheeled them into the lobby, wheedled our way into a room, and plunked down 500 baht for the best breakfast buffet in the world, or at least, in our world.

Our bikes were treated honorably, with the other guests’ luggage.

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Rachael AndersonWhat a luxurious train ride. It reminds me of the overnight ferries we have taken.
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