22nd January: Bangkok, Thailand to Sukhothai, Thailand
We’re leaving Bangkok today, although will be back for two more nights in around 10 days’ time. This is our late decision extra leg up to the northwest of the country. The journey to Chiang Mai takes 10 hours by train, so we are breaking the journey in each direction. There is also a sleeper train but we didn’t want to miss out on the views and, in any case, it was fully booked by the time we decided on this route. We took the Skytrain and then an ordinary metro (via an out of station connection, of course!) to the new Krung Thep Aphiwat station. The metros in Bangkok are expensive by Thai standards – around £1 per ride compared with the 38p it cost us to get the 80km or so to Ayutthaya yesterday on a standard train – and you have to pay for each line separately, meaning £2 each to get to the station. Therefore, for a usual journey to a town in the wider Bangkok area, it costs 5x as much to get to the train station from our hotel than the train journey itself! If only rail was this affordable in every country.
If yesterday’s departure station of Hua Lamphong is a homage to the history of train travel, the new terminal station is designed with the future of Thai rail in mind. Krung Thep Aphiwat means ‘prosperity of Bangkok’, aptly chosen for the terminus of the under construction high-speed line to China. It’s enormous, but unfortunately devoid of any of the character usually found in Thai stations. That also meant very limited food and drink options for our journey north as the usual stallholders were banished from the sterile interior.
The ‘Special Express’ which will take us up and down the country over the next 10 days is, amazingly, a three-carriage sprinter train. This is a little beyond the usual branch line journeys these trains are used for in the UK! We’re sat opposite each other today on what is effectively just a tourist train. I think these seats might’ve been the last two when we booked. This train is ‘2nd class air con only’ and should have all meals, snacks, and drinks included according all of the usual good sources of information such as Seat61 and ThaiTrainGuide, plus various blogs. That’s certainly one of the main reasons we paid the more expensive, although still only £9.50 fare, for today’s 4 hour journey. However, I read a very recent experience of somebody, whilst looking for something else yesterday, that this is no longer the case. After an extremely bumpy but pretty quick hour’s ride out of Bangkok, we got our answer. You have to pay for food and drinks to be delivered to the train. They’re still reasonably priced, and if our experience in the way down is anything to go by the portions are big and tasty, but the menu isn’t anywhere near as extensive. The biggest issue, they won’t have anything delivered today until 14:30, which is after we get off! So much for a free breakfast and lunch today. Regardless, the seats are comfy, and the train is much quicker than the alternatives, so we sat back and enjoyed the ride.
The scenery wasn’t overly interesting as flat plains disappeared into smog. Occasionally, the vague outline of hills could be made out. Further north, a few small standalone mountain ridges, topped with temples, popped up to our west. On one of these, a small wildfire burned just below a radar station. In the meantime, Kaja made friends with the woman sat next to her and was given a black sesame and peanut bao as a snack. I think it was the bounciest train journey I’ve ever been on. It genuinely felt like we might leave the track at times. Can you experience turbulence on a train?!
Getting from the train station in Phitsanulok to our hotel in the old town west of Sukhothai looked a little tricky and we definitely didn’t want to spend on a standard taxi. This was one of the missing links when booking this middle leg but we’d only realised yesterday that it was 70 odd kilometres! We thought we might be able to get a bus that passed through the area and, fortunately, this was the case. After a cheap local taxi to the bus station, we were able to buy a ticket for a bus that arrived 15 minutes later. The journey was pretty steady but still took about an hour and a half.
On arrival, Sukhothai old town seems amazing. Everywhere we looked, there were ancient ruins. As it takes a bit of effort to get here, it seems to be quiet enough to have a really good vibe but still have the [facilities]. We’ve got a couple of full days to explore, but the immediate priority was to finally find some food after the 9 hour journey. Even a below average pad Thai, noodles, and smoothies seemed good today.
Seemingly everybody was saying hello walking down the street to the hotel and the place we’re staying is lovely too. It’s great when a place gives such good vibes off the bat. It was nearly sunset, so I got my camera out for a little wander. Kaja’s legs had swollen up from sitting in the heat all day, so chilled in the room. I didn’t make it far before the sun dropped behind some hills but the town is spectacular! Our hotel provides free bikes to ride around the area and we can’t wait to do that tomorrow.
