16th January: Udon Thani, Thailand to Bangkok, Thailand
The wander to the station this morning was very comfortable under overcast skies. It’s nice to be able to just amble into a station and board a train without having to be an hour early for multi-level airline-style security checks! The train did arrive half an hour late, so I guess there are trade-offs against the ultra-efficient Chinese style. Thai trains are very organised though and much more friendly and human.
To our surprise, today’s train was effectively the sort of shuttler you get at home between Exmouth and Exeter. Not ideal for an eight-and-a-half-hour journey! Still, we had seats, research to do for the weeks ahead, and ever-changing scenery out of the windows. We ate the first of what would turn out to be three meals on board! Some simple granola and soy yoghurt we managed to find reduced in a shop last night, plus tasty banana bread. Unfortunately, no tea or coffee to go with it though!
After passing endless plains, interspersed with regular stops at beautiful little provincial stations, we spotted a giant gold statue. Seemingly in the middle of fields, it could be seen from miles around in all directions but we’re not exactly sure whether it was a Buddha or something else.
At about 10:30, the friendly conductor came and asked if we’d like any food. He produced a menu, but it was all meaty. With the help of a fellow passenger, we asked if there were any vegetarian options. They proceeded to order us two ‘Buddhist meals’, we paid 50 baht (£1.15) each and were told it would be about an hour. Sure enough, the train stopped just past a station at around 11:40 and two women came walking across the tracks with bags of takeaway containers. These were dished out around the train by the conductor before we carried on the journey. We’d been made two giant portions of egg fried rice with a bonus egg on top. The Thai railways are amazing!
Dusty plains gradually turned greener and slightly hillier as we headed south. Wind turbines jutted over the horizon and quarries, including seemingly of an entire mountain at one point, appeared to our west. We passed over the three famous viaducts on the fringes of Pasak Chonlasit lake at around 14:30, which excited the locals on board. The views were quite muted, but it definitely broke up the bum-numbing journey a little. At Kaeng Khoi, we came to the point where an elevated high-speed line is under construction using Chinese methods. This was intermittently the case all the way into Bangkok as sections of multi-track and stations began to take shape on the line which will eventually connect the Thai capital with Kunming in China.
The entry to Bangkok seemed to take an age as the sprawling city unfurled itself around us in the glow of sunset. It’s the largest place we’ve been in many weeks. After arrival at the new Krung Thep Aphiwat station, designed with future high-speed rail in mind, we bought tokens and got on our first metro since Kunming a month ago. Exhausted from the journey, the chance to stop for tea at the intermediate station was too much to turn down, especially as I was able to get an oat milk iced Thai tea. I’d been craving this all afternoon, and it was just as refreshing as I’d imagined! From here, a short hop on the Skytrain (literally just an elevated metro) took us over hectic looking evening rush hour traffic to our hotel. I popped out for a few supplies for our 6-night stay here and was overawed by the craziness of the streets around the hotel. We didn’t think we were that central, but I had to work my way through endless crowded markets and past massage parlours and weed shops on my hunt for a supermarket. There are so many shopping centres here but eventually, I tracked down what I was after and made the journey back through the still-hot evening air.