We finally arrived in Bangkok for the second time, very early in the morning after a fairly awful train journey. We got on the train in Chiang Mai, late afternoon and had pretty much settled into our comfy seats (which were to turn into beds later). We were about 3 hours into the 14 hour journey and I was very much looking forward to the three course meal that I had ordered, when the train pulled into a station and stopped. Nothing unusual about that, but we were still sat there 35 minutes later. A member of the train staff was walking around the train talking in Thai, which did not really help us an awful lot, as my Thai is not quite up to standard, but basically we realised that something was not quite right. We eventually worked out that we had to get off the train with all our luggage, as this train was not going any further. After standing around on the platform for a while, we found someone who spoke English and new what was going on, who informed us that a freight train that had been running in front of us, had de-railed in the mountains and that our train could not get through.
It turned out that we were going to be bused to another train station, about two hours away, so everyone piled onto buses and off we went. Two hours later we arrived at a very small station and waiting on the platform was a smallish number of coaches and no locomotive to pull them. Once on the train in soon became apparent that there were no sleeper coaches and that the train was made up totally of 3rd class hard seats, all bar the one coach of old second class soft seats, which we luckily managed to find. After about an hour of sitting around on the train, we finally pulled out of the station bound for Bangkok…we hoped!
After a very long, noisy and sleepless night we arrived in Bangkok, very surprisingly only 25 minutes late. Part of the time we lost sitting around, was made up on the bus. The bus got between the two stations far quicker than the train can when its going though the mountains. We had been told that we could get some form of a refund on our tickets, so went to the ticket office, where we were very pleased to get more than half of our money back…now that would never happen in the UK!
We eventually find somewhere to stay…arriving in Bangkok at 6.30 in the morning is not the best time to try and find a place to stay as people have not started checking out and everywhere is still full. We were going to stay in the Khao San Palace on the infamous Khao San road, but the woman on the reception had obviously had a very bad night as she was unbelievably rude to us and even had passers by stunned with her out burst. The lonely planet says that it is a very friendly place…personally the atmosphere and reception was the worst we had experienced on the trip so far and I have heard of a few others who have had the same reception. Still we found ourselves a great place just round the corner from Khao San road, that was not too expensive and had a swimming pool on the roof with a great view over the city.
The first day was spent lying and catching up on some much needed sleep by the pool in the morning. We then ventured across town in the afternoon, to Wat Po, the Grand Palace and the giant reclining gold Buddha, all of which were very impressive. The Grand Palace led to a little bit of amusement. Jeff was not suitably dressed and ended up having to go to the official clothing centre at the entrance and borrow (and even leave a deposit) for a nice pair of very baggy clown style over-trousers. It was worth coming to the Palace just to see him dressed like that! Feeling a bit tiered we decided that we would get a ride back to the hotel. We touted with a tuc-tuc driver outside Wat Po, who wanted a stupid amount of money. We ended up getting a taxi, the total price being less than what the tuc-tuc driver wanted per person. An enjoyable evening was had, eating some great food, drinking some good beer and watching a good film all whilst trying to avoid the attentions of a very over friendly lady-boy!
Our second day in Bangkok started with an early morning swim and a good breakfast. We then decided to take the local ferry down the river, taking in some of the sights of river life in Bangkok. We then hopped on the sky train, which zipped us across town above the streets of Bangkok to Siam Square. We then took a taxi across town to China town, where we wondered through the streets, which was an experience to say the least. Our final ride of the day was a trip back to Khao San road on a local bus, which was great fun. The bus was very small, with wooden floors and a little rickety. It’s a great way to get around town, traveling as the locals do, experiencing local life.
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