A Tedious Thai Train

Today we spent the whole day travelling. We got up at 6:45, packed our stuff and went down and had breakfast. We got a taxi around 7:35 under the guidance of the hostel reception. They told us it would take about 20 minutes and we needed to be there half an hour before. It took us about 5 minutes to get there. We found a bench and made ourselves comfortable as the train wasn't due to leave until 8:50am and it wasn't there yet. At 8am some chimes starting sounding and then everyone stood up, stood still and went silent for what we assume was the national anthem. We stood up to as we didn't want to offend anyone. Then the song finished and everyone carried on with their business like nothing had happened. The train turned up around 8:10am and we were able to get on board. We had reserved seats in a 2nd class carriage that had air conditioning. Some Thai trains also have a third class although I don't think there was on this train. At 8:50 exactly, right on time,  the train departed.

Soon after leaving the train hostess came round and asked me where we were going. I told her Bangkok and she gave me a free Thai custard filled bun. Lauren was asleep so the hostess gave hers to me too. At half 11 we were brought lunch. I was quite pleased to see it was Panang a curry and rice, but this soon changed when I almost died from how spicy it was. I could only eat about three mouthfuls and then had to stop. It tasted quite nice which was a shame. At some point during the afternoon we were also brought a pastry snack which neither of us ate. We had stocked up on our own snacks before we left.

The train journey was very long. The scenery was nice but nothing special; just fields and trees, the odd temple. I watched 4 episode of a show on Netflix that I'd downloaded to my phone and listened to my ipod to past the time.

We eventually arrived in Bangkok at 19:45, 20 minutes later than scheduled, and walked the very short distance to the hostel we had booked for the night. We had dinner in the hostel cafe and then repacked our bags in preparation for tomorrow.