Riding the Rails in Thailand

After 4 days of activity in Thailand's northern capital of Chiang Mai, Donielle and I decided to head to Bangkok to catch a mid morning flight to Cambodia. One of the more popular transportation methods to get from Chiang Mai to Bangkok is to take an overnight train. Sometimes transportation in a developing country doesn't work out quite like you expect it to.

I had assured Donielle from my trips to Europe that traveling in the 2nd class sleeper was fine (1st class was sold out) and that we would have no problems. Our first surprise was the 2nd class sleeper car was actually an open train compartment with sleeping bunks running parallel with the train compartment. This meant that any passenger on the train could walk by your bunk while you were sleeping and only a thin curtain separated you from the aisle. The second surprise was that the train agent had sold us tickets for bunk beds that were across from each other and not within the same compartment. The sleeping compartments folded out of the wall which meant that the passengers who sat in the lower bunk (which were not us) got to decide at what time we slept. Finally we were surprised to learn that the train was not kept in the most sanitary condition. Throughout the evening we would see little black things occasionally scurrying along the floor. Yup you guessed it....roaches on a train. (as a side note that might make a good sequel to Snakes on a Plane) These roaches were not scared of people and they had no problems walking on the floors and walls. I think the local Thai people found it amusing to watch us try to smash the roaches with our shoes, because the bugs didn't seem to bother them. Needless to say that Donielle and I were very thankful for our sleep sacks which we tightly wrapped around our us while we slept.

The next morning we awoke to find out our train was late. This wasn't really a big deal because we expected the train to be late (everything in Thailand is late...planes, buses, the list goes on and on). We actually planned on the train being late and factored in a 2 hour "cushion". Well, unfortunately, we didn't plan enough time because the train ended up arriving to Bangkok station at 10:10AM, which was over three hours late and our INTERNATIONAL flight to Cambodia was scheduled to leave at 11:30. Anyway to make a long story short we caught a cab from the train station at 10:30.....The cab driver hauled ass but we didn't get to the airport until 10:55. We ran to the ticket check-in counter....(a security guard was nice enough to take us to the front of the line) and the ticket agent didn't even scold us or seemed concerned. Thus at about a half hour before our international flight we were checked in. Hard to believe we made it.....but as I said before everything in Thailand is late......Everything.

~Jon