Some Like It Hot... and some like to shout very loudly for no apparent reason

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Overnight train from Vientiane to Bangkok, 4-5 February

I've always loved the idea of overnight trains. The whole idea of waking up with the world rushing by and travelling through exotic lands while you sleep reminds me a bit of a fairytale. The last (and only) overnight train I've taken was in Egypt where my friend J and I were ridiculously excited about every little thing, from the train conductor's hat to the belly dancer who came to the 'entertainment' carriage. This time I was just as excited, perhaps even more so to see the look on C's face, my princess of a boyfriend who loves a bit of a luxury.

First of all, he couldn't fit into our cabin. He was too tall for the door frame so had to do a comical, John Cleese-style shimmy into the room. By the time he got in, he was practically outside again. It was that small. Within minutes, a very serious-looking Thai man appeared at our door and brandished a menu at us. "You choose dinner!" he barked.

This was all very unexpected but it turned out that in first class (where we were) you could have dinner brought to your cabin. We chose chicken fried rice – a dish that we both love – and then settled in for the ride. It was scheduled to take 12 and a half hours, leaving Nong Khai at 6pm and getting to Bangkok at 6.30am. We watched the world go by for awhile and sneaked a peek at Udon Thani when we stopped there for a few minutes. It looked a lot like Chiang Mai as all we could see from the train were brand name shops and lots of bright lights. After this, there was nothing to really see as it was dark and we didn't seem to be stopping again. We had our dinner, which was surprisingly really nice, and then the guy appeared again to convert our long chair into a double bunkbed. We cuddled up to watch DVDs and then fell asleep. It was a bit of a bumpy night as the driver seemed to like slamming on his brakes at inopportune moments but it still felt very warm and cosy.

The next morning we were woken up with a start by some banging and shouting.

"Bangkok, Bangkok!" We could hear the conductor hammering on our door. He then turned the handle and tried to come straight in. Luckily, we had locked it. He then went striding off down the corridor. We could hear him shouting all the way and knocking on people's doors.

I looked at C's watch. It was 6.15. We weren't due into Bangkok for another quarter of an hour so we started packing everything up to be ready for 6.30.

At 6.30, nothing happened. We asked the shouty guy what was happening.

"Bangkok!" He shouted. Then, "Half an hour!"

He then marched into our cabin and made the bed back into a chair and then marched off. At 7am, we stopped. As we went to climb out of the train, we were told that this was not, in fact, Bangkok and that we should get back on. We were apparently on the outskirts of the city.

What followed was something that can only happen in Thailand and was really a bit of a charade. It basically consisted of the shouty conductor telling everyone that we were just about to get to Bangkok so everyone queued up to get off, then we just didn't stop so everyone shuffled off back to their cabins. It was a bit like being part of a really bad slapstick film.

We then got stuck in 'traffic' on a train. It took two and a half hours to get from the outskirts of Bangkok to the central station as we just kept stopping for a really long time for no apparent reason. We eventually got off the train at 9.30am, had breakfast in the centre of Bangkok and then jumped on the Skytrain to the airport to catch our flight to Krabi. We caught a flight in the early afternoon, had a two-and-a-half hour drive via road and two passenger ferries (stunning landscape around Krabi) and arrived at Koh Lanta in the late evening. By this point, we were more than ready to live the island life.

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