Aclimatising & A Travelling Hotel

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Gonna cover 7th & 8th in one hit.

We are heading to Chaing Mai this evening on the overnight train so today is mainly spent scoping out the local area around our Hotel in Bangkok for our return next week. This translates to Scarlet wanting to visit all the shops and shopping centres within a 5 miles radius to make sure she wont miss anything.

The morning in Bangkok is hot already at 8am is is steadily getting hotter. A threat of rain in the air never materialises

All in all fairly ineventful day as we make our way to the railway station in readiness for our trip Northwards. We arrive ridiculously early and end up waiting 2 hours for our train.

We eagerly head toward our First Class cabin looking forward to the luxuries you would expect...
Spacious, Clean, Modern, Luxurious...None of these words would describe our mobile room for the night!
The room can best be described as cosy. There is a sink which "works" kind of but in reality the carriage has seen better days.

Checking out the facilities causes some additional concern, a shower was mentioned when we booked, it does exist, it is connected to the lavvy in common with a lot of WCs in middle eastern countries. Also, the toilet we find is essentially a hole in the floor with some foot holes.

To make things just that much better, some of out other "guests" in first class are already half cut and have stocked up with bottles and bottles of Beer! The first class carriage also seems to be carrying the cast of several movies. Austin Powers Fat Bastard passes at one point, I comment that maybe he's going to leave a 'floater' upon his return we notice that he more closely resembles a Samoan and wonder if a foot massage is on the menu. We collapse in a fit of the giggles but I guess you really had to be here.

Gonna be a long night....

The train leaves on time for Thailand (35 minutes late!) and soon as expected the dinner and breakfast menus are brought round.

Food is actually passable, served efficiently and we settle down for the night..... except we get wind that the restaurant car has a party which sounds like a bit of a laugh and to kill some time, we head on down..
This proves to be the Vehicular version of Dantes Inferno.

We move from the 1st level of hell being our carriage, through 2nd and 3rd levels (2nd and 3rd class respectively) then for the purposes of this analogy we descend direct to the lower bowels, being the restaurant car.

No Air Con, although no windows so you could argue loads of air con!
Blasting hi energy disco chosen by the train guard who does appear to be wearing a lot of make up...
Very smoky as this is the only carriage on the train that allows smoking.
A lot of now very drunk tourists obvously here for the night.
There is little room to move and it doesnt feel altogether safe so we manage a couple of drinks then climb back through the carriages by now with a majority of folks asleep and lock ourselves in for the night.
Mistake one, I have has some beers and now need to visit what I can only imagine to be an open sewer, the train is jumping all over the place....

That's enough there though.. It's a train, we pull in to Chaing Mai bang on time so no idea where we made up the time and it is time to get to our Residence for the next 6 nights. We have got in early but Raming Lodge check us in anyhow as our room is ready, we shower and hit the streets.

Still getting used to the weather which is still taking its toll though so we decide to get out of the afternoon sun for a bit and wait until dusk, heading straight for Anusarn Market.

This has grown substantially since we were last here and loads of new places to try, however we have an appointment with a large Tom Yam Goong and some Prawny delicacies that wont wait.

A quick wander round the night bazaar then time to head in for the night to get ready for Sunday Market.

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Photos

View from the back of the train
Fabulous health and safety dahlings!