February 9, 2019
Bangkok to Chumpon by train
This is our sixth visit to Bangkok and up until now we had always avoided its most popular tourist attraction - the Grand Palace. But today we had a lot of time on our hands because our train to Chumpon was scheduled to depart at 7:30 in the evening. So knowing full well that we had arrived in Thailand without clothing suited to visiting sacred places we set off to join the crowds. It is an easy walk to the Grand Palace from Phra Athit if one goes through the university campus. Just south of the campus is a ferry port with its attendant food vendors where we filled ourselves with delicious fruit and pork and duck on rice to see us through the day. Because our knees were exposed we had to buy long trousers before entering the palace (the baggy kind every second tourist to Thailand returns home with). We reasoned that we would need them again if we wanted to visit any temples later on in our journey. The Grand Palace is expensive and packed tight with tourists but I guess it is a must see. Thailand's most sacred Buddha is here - the tiny Emerald Buddha, cut from a block of jade - and most of the attractions are centered around the temples at the palace. In fact, the entire palace proper was off limits to tourists during our visit.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
After that we returned to the New Siam II and cooled off eating ice creams while we waited to cycle down to Hua Lamphong station for our train to Chumpon.
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
I managed to get us on the most awful route and we battled traffic for an hour before arriving at the station drenched in sweat. Booking the bicycles in as freight went quickly and easily. The freight office is on the western side of the platforms and they will issue you with a ticket for your bicycle, a copy of which you attach to the bicycle itself. You need to take your bicycle to the freight car (usually just behind the engine) to have it loaded. We've done this a few times before so we know the drill. However, there was a German couple who were most disgruntled that they couldn't just get there bikes loaded without going through the process and were rather miffed that they had to pay 90 THB for each bike. Why complain about 90 baht for a 500 kilometer train trip ?
We spent the next couple of hours waiting in the concourse chatting to a lovely young Sri Lankan couple who were in Thailand on honeymoon. Then it was into our hot and grubby non-air-conditioned carriage for the ride down to Chumpon.
Today's ride: 7 km (4 miles)
Total: 7 km (4 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 1 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |