All aboard... the night train!

---

The slowest tuk tuk in the world takes us to the station - at one point we are overtaken by a child on a push-bike. A huge billowing cloud of black smoke spills from the exhaust. The driver is about 112 years old and has one tooth, but still has a brilliant smile.

Board the 2nd class sleeper back to Bangkok, which leaves about 5pm, just as the sun sets through the window. Interesting mixture of passengers - mostly bored Thais who waste no time getting into their pyjamas and cracking open the whiskey (and are about 3 to a bed), and excited westerners running up and down the carriages with cameras and massive grins.

Almost as many staff as passengers, all in pressed cream uniforms, offering us food and drinks. The orange juice certainly does not contain orange. Paula gives hers to a child opposite, who within about 20 minutes has to be scraped off the ceiling, screaming.

We make a diplomatic exit and nip to the buffet car to have a drink, where we find a full-on party underway, involving awkward hands-in-the-air disco dancing by a group of tourists (and their parents) to a pounding euro techno soundtrack. We guess they are Eastern European.

We watch for a while then retire - Paula in the top bunk, me in the bottom. Nearly (but not quite) impossible to sleep - our heads rolling side to side as the train lurches and rumbles its way south. Manage not to fall out if bed into the aisle in my pants, which is a good thing.

Awkward brushing of teeth and washing about 7am as we rattle through the suburbs, then an hour later pull into Bangkok's huge Hualampong station (built in the 1890s and apparently modelled on Manchester stations).

---

Photos

Xan doing the photograhic equivalent
...of going back to a lit firework.

2nd class sleeper
bottom bunk before bedtime!

Comments

[Hev]

Cheapskates!
First class trains all the way while in Thailand!!!