The Midnight Express

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A large group of young monks in orange robes piled into the tiny Nong Khai train station in the afternoon accompanied by an older monk who was obviously an elder mentor of some sort as well as their guide or guardian. These young ones were tiny little creatures with shaven heads and wearing nothing but the bright orange sheets that they wrapped around their bodies with and their feet were either bare or are fitted with your run of the mill rubber slippers or sandals. They ranged from aged six to twelve. They wandered around the station like they’ve never seen one in their lives. They were doing this while the elder monk bought a ticket for himself or a bunch of tickets for this group of little squirts wandering around the train station, I think, although I’m not sure because it was unclear to me exactly what or how many tickets he was trying to book for, whether he was buying a ticket for himself or for the whole group. There they are, the little munchkins with shaven heads, orange robes, and sandals, wandering around the station, staring at every advertisement posters, gawking at ATMs, TV monitors, and empty boxcars parked on the rails a few yards away from the station. They were a well behaved bunch though. Some sat on the plastic chairs in the waiting area in front of me. Others walked up and down the station with that gaze and amazement of youth on their faces, as if they were in some sort of a park or zoo, and you could tell just from the curious expression on their faces that they were really enjoying this little field trip of theirs to the Nong Khai train station.

And just as quickly the field trip was over. The elder monk gathered up all the kids and told them that it was time to go. Actually I just assumed that that was what he said because the kids all lined up and walked out of the station in a single file. The elder monk, a man in his fifties, also with a shaven head wearing a wire rimmed glasses and an orange robe, had half his body covered in tattoos. If he wasn’t wearing an orange robe he could probably be mistaken for an ex-convict instead of a dignified Buddhist monk. He just had that certain look that outlaws have, a mean scowling face with many ridges and scars from too many drunken bar fights in some dark alley somewhere in some bad neighborhood in Bangkok. The many years he spent in the monastery however, have softened up some of his scars, so now he looks somewhat gentle and wise behind the mean veneer of his scowl. He led the young ones out of the train station and drove them away in a beat up and rusty beige colored Toyota pick up truck with all the kids piled up in the bed of the truck behind it. It was quite an unusual scene in my opinion.

All of a sudden there was only me and two other passengers waiting in the lounge at the Nong Khai train station. One was a young teenaged Thai girl of about sixteen or seventeen years old or so with deep dark brown skin and dyed blonde hair. The other was a bent down old Thai fella with no teeth. Neither spoke much English. I know because I tried to ask either one of them where the bathroom was and both responded in Thai, a language that I obviously do not understand. Then I realized that “bathroom” is less universally understood than “toilet”, and when I said that they both pointed to the back end of the station.

So that’s how interesting that first couple of hours were as I was waiting for the midnight train to Bangkok. The train is scheduled to depart at 1810 hours. That’s 6:10 pm for you civilians out there. It is now four o’clock in the afternoon. I sat there waiting for another fifteen minutes totally bored out of my skull before I decided that I could no longer tolerate the sheer boredom of it all, looking at walls full of Thai scripts which looks totally incomprehensible to me, just a bunch of circles and wavy lines, so I stood up, sling my backpack over my shoulder and dragged my other luggage in tow towards the food vendors across the street from the train station. There were six or seven other people in one of the food stalls. They were drinking, eating, smoking, and talking amongst themselves, so I didn’t bother them although I wanted to because I’ve always found talking to strangers, no matter the level of difficulty in communication, enlightening. I find that their point of views and opinions always differ from mine, and I’m fine with that. As a matter of fact I like it that way because there is nothing more boring than idle chit chat with someone who never disagrees with you. Every time I find myself in a conversation with someone who fundamentally has the same views and opinions as mine I will always go out of my way to disagree with everything he or she says just to make the conversation interesting. That’s how I roll with this idle chit chat business. To confront. The more confrontational, the better.

The proprietor hands me a menu and a plastic bottle of water. I point to a picture in the menu that looks a lot like Pad Thai. I also order a big bottle of Singha beer. The food and beer arrived in no less than ten minutes. Two barefooted toddlers, between the ages of four to six years old, were playing and squirting their water guns at people everywhere near the food stall. Their parents were yelling at them to stop. They kept squirting people with their guns anyway, including me. I was too busy with my food to care. Besides, a little squirt of water never hurt anyone. As a matter of fact it was a welcome respite from the heat and humidity of Southeast Asia. The teenaged girl with dyed blonde hair and the bent down old fella with no teeth were also at the eatery drinking coke, smoking cigarettes, and yapping away in their native Thai. The food wasn’t all that special. In retrospect I thought I should’ve ordered the pig’s knuckles instead but I didn’t know if that was available at that time because cooking pig’s knuckles involves a lot of time and effort. So I drank my Singha beer and soaked in the heat and humidity, wiping my forehead every few minutes while taking a bite out of my Pad Thai lunch. The two kids are still water fighting and water shooting innocent bystanders and having just a jolly old time.

It is now close to 5 pm but the sun is still high up in the sky and the temperature is still way up in the high 20s Celsius, somewhere around 29 to 31 degrees, I think, although I’m not sure actually because I am not used to estimating temperatures in degrees Celsius. I prefer Fahrenheit. I can estimate to within five degrees or so what the ambient temperature is based on how hot I feel, and I’m usually pretty good at it, if I may be so bold as to boast about this extraordinary and very rare talent indeed. Boasting is not one of the things that I’m good at because I am a fundamentally modest person. Other than being able to estimate ambient temperatures based on feel there is absolutely nothing special about me, about my life, and about the adventures that I’ve been writing about for the past couple of years. So why do I even bother wasting time writing about nonsense that no one else other than the gazillion dedicated followers of my critically acclaimed and award winning travelogue will read anyway you might ask and the answer is because I can, and because it fills a void in an otherwise empty moment in my life while I’m traveling. Traveling, as I’ve said before countless of times, is not always fun and exciting, and there will undoubtedly be moments during traveling where boredom kicks in and you have nothing better to do than twiddle your thumbs for two or more hours. I prefer not to twiddle my thumbs. Instead I pull out from my backpack this little notebook of mine which I carry around with me just for this very occasion and I write everything that comes to my mind, even about my extraordinary and very rare talent of being able to estimate ambient temperatures which many people probably find inane and utterly uninteresting. But that’s me and that’s what I do. I write about the inanities of traveling because it’s more interesting than writing about the usual “Oh my god what a great time we had tubing in Vang Vieng” kind of silly writing written by people who love to travel but are clueless when it comes to articulating their travel experiences in a meaningful, thoughtful, and entertaining way such that it will grab the readers’ attention, held on to them, and extract some kind of a reaction out of these very people who even bothered to read their story but who are just only peripherally curious about the place being written about because they are really more interested in a story about the place than the place itself, and cheat them out of the very purpose that even got them reading in the first place. And if that wasn’t the most confusing sentence you’ve ever read in your life then I have failed in my intention to write one of the most convoluted and circuitous sentence ever written by any human being on the face of this planet, which is a good thing because it keeps my quest alive and at the forefront of my mind every living day of my life. And it’s a good thing too that out of the gazillions of backpackers who pass through these parts of the world only a handful of them write about their trip because very few of them are any good at it.

The second class air conditioned boxcar that I was on wasn’t all that bad. Half the passengers were Thai and the other half were the backpacking sonovaguns looking grungy and tired with bloodshot eyes, messed up hair, dirty clothes, dirty feet, and smelling bad. Most of them have just gotten back from their Luang Prabang and Van Vieng itinerary. I recognized a few of them hanging around the Orchid Guesthouse in Wieng Chan (Vientiane) the other day while I was having breakfast at the guesthouse’s restaurant downstairs. One was a hefty lady of some type of European extraction who asked me while I was eating my rice porridge and drinking my black coffee with condensed milk if the guesthouse had any vacancy. She looked to be in her late twenties to early thirties although I’m not sure to be quite honest because she had a strained look on her face, the kind of look that travelers have after they’ve been on the road for a very uncomfortably long time which tends to distort their disposition and make them look much older than they really are. She could’ve been nineteen or twenty years old for all I know. Her other companion, just as hefty and with a facial expression that was as strenuously distorted as she, sat on her huge pack at the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the guesthouse smoking cigarettes and looking very impatient. I said that I have no idea if there are any vacancies here because I am not staying at this particular guesthouse. I’m only here to eat this wonderful rice porridge that they make so well and to drink this here black coffee that they make so strong. A few moments later the fella who seems to be some sort of caretaker of the guesthouse came out to greet the two hefty ladies. They argued and haggled, the two ladies conferring with one another in between arguing and haggling, and haggled some more. The other hefty lady sitting on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes was getting even more annoyed and impatient. They finally got a room after five minutes of arguing and haggling and conferring and haggling even more, and I don’t think the ladies won the haggling battle because they looked even more annoyed as they were handed the keys to their room. Just as they were about to walk upstairs they looked in my direction and gave me the meanest stare I have ever seen from any hefty lady who’ve ever stared at me. They had that look of murder on their faces. I’m not sure what I did. I did not do anything at all to deserve such mean stares. I wasn’t being rude to them. Perhaps they were just tired and upset and did not really intend to stare me down like I was a scum of the Earth. I didn’t take it personally but I did remember the mean glare on their faces when they came aboard the same second class sleeper that I was on. They sat down pretty close to where I was sitting, about two seats away from me. Thankfully, I don’t think they remembered me or even recognized me because as I passed them by to go to the bathroom they barely even looked at me. They gave me a quick kind of a gaze that people give to strangers where the gaze is held for less than a second for fear of offending the stranger for staring.

The carriage is about twenty to thirty five yards or so in length and seats about thirty to forty people. At night the seats are converted into bunk beds with extra cushions, clean white sheets, a comfortable blanket, big pillows and extra head and leg room. We departed Nong Khai before sundown. Much of the countryside was covered in an orange silhouette of the scattered villages around the plains as the sun dipped below the horizon. Our carriage wasn’t fully occupied when we departed and I was happy as a clam about that because it gave me more room. There was nobody sitting right across from me. A lady in an orange colored Aloha type shirt, a uniform of some sort obviously, was walking up and down the aisle to take orders of food and beverages from the passengers. I ordered a big bottle of Singha beer from the lady who was to be our train attendant for the remainder of this journey on the midnight train to Bangkok. Singha is not necessarily one of my favorite beers in the world but I always make a point of drinking the local brew of the particular country that I’m visiting. This is my way of supporting the local economy which I hope will benefit the local populace. It’s the least I can do for allowing me the pleasure to visit their country and allowing me the freedom to roam and observe and criticize and object and praise and do whatever the hell it is that I want to do as long as it’s not illegal, like smoking dope or trafficking in illicit drugs, because drug trafficking in these parts of the world is punishable by death! Many countries in Southeast Asia make this obvious from the very moment your plane starts to make its descent in preparation for landing when the flight attendants hands you a customs declaration form where at the very front written in bold red letters is the Warning: Drug trafficking is punishable by death! I don’t do drugs. I don’t need drugs. But I like my alcohol and when in Laos I drink Beer Lao. When in the Singapore, I drink Tiger Beer. When in Malaysia, I drink Anchor Beer. When in the Philippines, I drink San Miguel. When in Vietnam, I drink “33” Export. Now that I am in the kingdom of Thailand, I will drink Leo, Chang, or Singha Beer. As far as I can tell they all taste the same so I really have no preference, I just grab whatever’s available or the first one that I see. It is only when I am in the United States of America that I do not drink the domestic brew if I can help it. Budweiser maybe cheap but it tastes terrible.

The carriage attendant was converting half of the daytime seats into night time bunk beds as the train rolled along the countryside. I drank my beer in the comforts of the second class sleeper carriage while watching the sunset out of the train’s dirty and scratchy fiberglass window, which makes the image kind of fuzzy and out of focus. We pass by small villages and railroad crossings on dirt roads while motorbikes, tuk-tuks, and pickup trucks wait for the train to pass. As the sun dips lower over the horizon dusks sets in and suddenly the landscape is covered in darkness. Only the lights from the street side lamp posts and the lanterns from a group of huts in a little hamlet on the countryside are visible outside of my window. Just when I was starting to relax and enjoy myself the train slows down and stops for fifteen minutes at Udon Thani. People came on board. The seat across from mine is no longer unoccupied. It was taken by a fella with one burlap sack and a big plastic supersize me cup of Slurpee from your local 7-Eleven. I was apprehensive of his company at first as I always am of any stranger because I always feel like my privacy is being invaded, which makes me a hypocrite because I tend to make a habit of intruding on other people’s lives for my own amusement, especially when I travel. It’s okay if I disrupt their lives. Just stay away from mine. But he turned out to be an okay guy. He was a gentle Thai fella who was taller than your average Thai. He also dressed modestly in shorts and sandals like your ordinary average Thai and he spoke relatively good English. I was writing all of this down in this little notebook of mine that I keep to write random thoughts and events while on travel because it keeps my mind occupied and distracted. He has no idea that I’m writing about him. I didn’t feel too bad about it though because I haven’t written anything bad about him. The night is early yet. I asked him if this was the last stop till we get to Bangkok. To my disappointment he said no, we will make three more stops before we make a nonstop express run to Bangkok. Great, I thought. So the train makes three more stops as he said. More people came on board. Pretty soon the whole carriage is full. Every seat has been converted into bunks and every bunk is taken. It was still early in the evening, around ten o’clock, when the train finally speeded up nonstop on our way to Bangkok. There were luggage, sacks, and backpacks secured on the metal screen shelf in the aisle of the carriage. Some people changed into their pajamas and nightgowns in the bathroom before climbing into their bunks to sleep for the night. I was on the upper bunk and the curtains drawn for privacy didn’t shield the fluorescent lights on the ceiling, which was mildly annoying, but it didn’t deter me from getting a good night’s rest. I slept soundly for at least six hours.

When I woke up it was still four or five in the morning. Most of the passengers were still in their bunks sleeping. Some are snoring loudly. A couple of people, backpackers, were awake and sneaking puffs of cigarette breaks in one of the bathrooms. I can never understand people’s urge to light up in the morning immediately after they get out of bed. I can understand smoking a few puffs while drinking hard liquor somewhere in some two bit sleazy dive. Where else would you see desperate people smoking and drinking? After waiting for ten minutes I started knocking on the bathroom door. The smoker said something unintelligible. Five minutes later he came out. He said sorry. The bathroom reeked of urine and nicotine. It was one of those squat-down types of toilet. Nothing but a shrouded open hole about half a foot in diameter on the floor to pee or squat on. You dump your waste directly down to the gravel in between the railroad tracks. I did my business as fast as I could and got the hell out of there. Another smoking tourist was waiting to use the bathroom after me.

I went back to my bunk to try to get some sleep. I couldn’t. I was on the upper bunk. I could no longer ignore the fluorescent lights seeping through my privacy curtains, not to mention the loud snore of the passenger right next to me on the upper bunk. So I laid there with my eyes wide open and my hands in the back of my head staring at the ceiling. It amazed me that I could stay in this position for two whole hours. Normally I would toss and turn and do everything I can to pass away the time and restlessness. But this time I stayed still and did absolutely nothing. I could hear people moving and climbing out of their bunks as I laid there still. I heard the foot traffic of people walking up and down the aisle as they were fixing themselves up and getting ready for our arrival to our final destination. I climbed out of my bunk after being motionless for two hours to brush my teeth in the sink next to the bathroom. At least six or seven people were in line to use the bathroom or the sink. The train attendant was serving coffee and the carriage attendant was disassembling the bunks and converting them into ordinary seats. By 7 am all of the bunks had been converted into regular daytime seats. My bunkmate asked me what I plan to do in Bangkok. I told him didn’t really have any particular plan. I have a flight out of there to Bali in a couple of days so I thought I would do what I normally do, which is to walk around aimlessly and randomly and see where it takes me. That’s the part about traveling that I enjoy the most; to wander aimlessly. My bunkmate laughed when I told him that but he said that he wished he had the freedom to do that. He was on his way back to Bangkok, where he works. He is originally from a small village near Udon Thani. He went home for a week to visit and help his mother who was sick. Now that she was better he is going back to Bangkok with his family. I didn’t ask him what kind of work he did because quite frankly, I don’t care. Many people often voluntarily tell strangers like me what they do for a living without any kind of prompting. Perhaps many people feel their job is a very big part of who they are, it’s what defines them, which is too bad because there is so much more about us than what we do for a living. Luckily my bunkmate didn’t tell me anymore than what I needed or wanted to know, and that’s what I liked about this fella. He didn’t probe me about my personal life and he didn’t offer anything that I didn’t ask of him. He simply told me that life here in Thailand is a lot different than what the average tourist perceives it to be. I agreed with him. I could never understand how and why Thai’s are the way they are even if I spent the rest of my life living here and searching for that answer. There’s something in their hearts and minds that they hold so dearly and believe so truthfully of which I could never understand simply because I wasn’t brought up in their culture, and any outsider who believes otherwise is a fool.

The train made several stops as we approach the city of Bangkok. The old international airport, Don Muang, is now strictly for domestic flights. Old buildings which used to occupy the offices of travel agencies, airlines, rental cars, and such are abandoned and deserted. We pass by slum villages and hamlets along the way which is not normally visible by the transient tourist unless they take the train. Makeshift living quarters stood above puddles of untreated sewage of water which did not seem to have any outlet to flow and be disposed of. My bunkmate got off the train two stops after Don Muang. We kept chugging along towards central Bangkok. More shacks out in the open. Wood burning stoves are cooking breakfast and making tea. I see monks squatting by the side of the tracks. I’m not sure exactly what they’re doing. Meditating perhaps. I don’t see a bowl asking for alms. Further along the tracks two or three kids were huddled over a barbecue pit and some sort of meat was being cooked on it. We passed by old rusty mothballed boxcars which stood idly on a separate track as the railway forked into three separate paths. We were near the central station, Hualamphong. Old rickety looking boxcars are filled with passengers of all types, local Thais and backpacking tourists, going the other direction. I’m not really sure what to make of Bangkok. I’ve been here before, but that was several years ago, maybe fifteen or sixteen years ago, I think, although I’m not sure because it was such a long time ago that I’ve forgotten when the last time I was here. And a lot has changed then. I used to think Bangkok was a god-awful place. It was dirty and stinky and full of big fat German guys and perverted looking Japanese tourists hanging out at one of those girly bars not only in the red light districts but anywhere and everywhere where alcohol is served. I did not have a favorable opinion of Bangkok then. There were other places in Thailand that were better. But looking at the freeways and the roads as we approached Hualamphong I could tell that they’ve cleaned up the place a little bit and they’ve modernized a lot of their infrastructure.

Finally, we arrived at Hualamphong. I waited for the mob of people to clear the aisle and get off the train before I finally got my backpack and luggage and headed out into the platform. There were people everywhere. Some were my co-passengers who just disembarked from the midnight train. Others were waiting to get on board heading towards Laos in the opposite direction that we just came from. The station is almost like a market place. There are vendors selling all kinds of food and souvenirs everywhere, hawking and touting their wares and hoping to entice the tourists to buy their stuff. I ignored them all as they approached me. I was only interested in getting to my hotel and get a nice long shower and get refreshed. Outside of the station taxis, tuk-tuks, and other forms of transportation were parked and waiting for the many passengers that just got off the train. Naturally five or six touts came up to me and said “pssst… tuk-tuk… tuk-tuk sir, where you go” or words to that effect. I said Asia Hotel. The touts immediately said “150 Baht”, all of them. I looked at them all like they were out of their minds. Several of them walked away to find other saps to con for 150 Baht. Only one tout stayed to haggle with me. He said “Okay, how much you pay?” I said “50 Bath!” He said 100. I walked away. He said 90. I looked at him and said that it’s only two kilometers away from here and I’m not paying any more than 60 Baht. He said 80. I walked away again and never looked back. Out on the street backpackers and tourists alike were being cornered by taxi drivers and tuk-tuk operators. I saw a taxi driver leading a young American couple to his cab saying “yes, yes, Khao San… 50 Bath”, which sounds like a good deal except they weren’t going to be the only passengers in the cab. The driver was courting two other people for “50 Bath to Khao San” and the two strangers jumped at the deal only to find themselves sharing the cab ride to Khao San with two other strangers, the young American couple, and the look on their faces told me that they were annoyed at being bamboozled at having to share the ride and having to pay 50 Baht Each! These are the kinds of shenanigans that go on when traveling in Southeast Asia so you have to be on the lookout because the touts here, especially in Bangkok, are ruthless. Sometimes they’ll quote you 20 Baht but in the end you’ll end up paying 200 Baht. I have seen that happen also. I walked away from the crowd and ran into several more touts who offered 150 Baht to my destination. I ignored them all. As I got farther away from the station I finally got a better deal.

I approached a tuk-tuk driver who was doing nothing but just sitting on the seat of his motorcycle and sucking on a Popsicle. I said Asia Hotel. He said 150 Baht of course. I said no, 60 Baht. He said 100. I said no, 60 Baht. He said 80. I said no, 60 Baht. I wasn’t budging on 60 and he seemed too laid back to put up a fight, which was the main reason that I approached him in the first place. He didn’t approach me. He finally agreed to my 60 Baht bid for a ride to the Asia Hotel. After I loaded up my luggage in his tuk-tuk cab the driver sped away at 80 kilometers per hour on the streets of RAMA IV and then made several right and left turns in small streets and alleys underneath bridges and expressways while keeping the speed steady at a harrowing 80 kilometers per hour. I held onto the frame of the tuk-tuk cab for safety since these outfits aren’t rigged with seatbelts and other safety gadgets. Even this early in the morning, around eight o’clock, the traffic was already heavy but my tuk-tuk driver was neither discouraged nor deterred. He slipped in between cars, trucks, and minibuses; almost ran into a group of pedestrians; criss crossed his way through the heavy traffic on Phayathai; and almost ran through a red light on the Rama I intersection. He managed to speed through a yellow light and by the time it turned red we were in the middle of the intersection, the no man’s land where traffic is coming from our broadside and would have undoubtedly crushed us to pieces if my tuk-tuk driver’s driving ability had not been up to snuff.

We arrived at the Asia Hotel in no less than ten minutes. I had no reservation but I didn’t care. I took whatever they had available. I checked in to my room and dumped all of my dirty clothes into a plastic bag that the hotel provides for laundry service. I then called hotel service to pick my dirty laundry. I haven’t had my laundry done is three weeks and I was running out of clothes. I had one more clean underwear left, one pair of shorts, no clean socks, no clean pair of jeans, and if I hadn’t bought a touristy shirt from the hotel’s souvenir shop at the lobby, I would not have had a clean shirt to wear for the day while my laundry was being done. Thank god for creative thinking on my part. I took a nice long warm shower and cleaned myself up pretty good before I went downstairs to eat breakfast.

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Photos

Young Apprentice
A field trip for the little ones

Nong Khai Train Station
The kids stare in wonder

Train Platform
They walked around in amazement

Waiting Lounge
Some just sat and waited. They were all well behaved.

The lonely road
This area of Nong Khai is deserted

Nong Khai Train Station II
This is what it looks like

And away we go
We departed Nong Khai early in the evening

Railroad crossing
The countryside of Thailand

Express
speeding up

Near Bangkok
A monk walking on the tracks

Love Shack
Near Hualamphong train station

Hualamphong
Early morning arrival. The last stop of the midnight train to Bangkok.