Riding the Iron Horse

I couldn't wait for late noon of this Sunday to arrive. It had not only to do with my enthusiasm about the train ride: it was again so hot... but I guess everyone will be bored by now when the word "heat" appears...
So I took a Tuk-tuk to the station and waited for the train to depart. With open windows I enjoyed then again landscape, rice paddies, mountains and forests, the humid heat streaming in, towns and villages we were passing... I described train rides in Thailand already in one of the first posts, the tour from Bangkok to Nong Khai. This time we started at 14.50 h, so almost five hours we drove in daylight. I simply can't imagine travelling in a closed air-con carriage, with locked and insulated windows, with a temperature probably colder then moderate, as long as there are other possibilities...
We arrived in Bangkok early in the morning, it was dawning, the city wasn't fully awake yet. I hadn't slept a lot, because of course it was noisy with the windows open, but what the hell... I only hope that there are more opportunities for me in the future to ride one of these trains again...

If you would like to get a taste of it, you can find some magnificent books about train travels: Paul Theroux's "The old Patagonia Express", in which he describes his journey from his home town (Boston? Chicago? I don't remember...) down to Patagonia, most of it in trains. A very interesting account of meeting people and getting to know other countries... From the same author is " Riding the Iron Rooster", about travelling through China by train (this one I haven't read yet...). The dutch writer Cees Nooteboom describes a journey by train, in Senegal (or Gambia?), in his wonderful collection of short travel stories "Nootebooms Hotel". There are certainly more books and stories available... But the best still is to do it on his own, isn't it?

Sunday

There's a feeling which I almost forgot in the last three months: the tranquility of Sunday morning... I woke up early, after a very quiet night, to find that outside there was nothing going on. I got out of the guest house at around 8 o'clock and the streets were fairly deserted. It was Sunday, and in Thailand this day has some kind of meaning. I remembered Vietnams frenzy, where there was no rest at any hour, any day, and also in Laos and Cambodia Sunday was to a large extent a normal working day which started quite early...
I walked around a bit, found a restaurant that was open, where I had breakfast. After that I went back to my guest house, sat down in the courtyard and drank a few cappuccinos... it was instant stuff, but I didn't care. The atmosphere was too marvelous to worry about this minor issue... I simply sat there, reading a while, in between trying to catch the ambiance of the awakening quarter, and I have to admit that it wasn't a bad feeling at all. Very often in my life I worked on Sundays, but I always valued the fact that this day generally means some relaxation from the normal week days, less traffic, less people in the streets, a general tranquility floating over the city... after three months without real Sunday (okay, I didn't have to work, was on vacation, but you know what I want to say...) I really enjoyed this sensation again...

Countdown

The last days...
Saturday morning I crossed the Mekong. Stepping off the boat in Thailand marked the beginning of the last days... In the border town Chiang Khong I jumped on a bus to Chiang Rai, there another one to Chiang Mai was ready to depart, I managed to get on. Back in Thailand... things seem to flow, compared to Laos or Cambodia. I enjoyed it, without meaning to depreciate these other countries...
In Chiang Mai I thought of catching the next overnight train to Bangkok, but had to find out, that almost all these trains only have air-conditioned carriages, which I hate... The only exception being the one at 14.50 h, but for this I was too late. As I wanted to enjoy the trip back to Bangkok, I decided to stay one night in Chiang Mai. This was definitely not enough to catch a glimpse of the city, which in itself is a destination, where many people spend one week or even more. But anyway, you can't see everything in your life...
I found a terrific guest house, which made me forget the forced overnight stop. It was in one of those alleyways, which are so interesting and so much more typical, if one wants to get a glimpse of urban Thailand... and - most important - these alleyways are some really quiet oasis in the big, noisy Thai cities...