To Thailand by train
by prudence on 24-Nov-2012
Phew -- life hectic at the moment, so I'm a bit late posting this.
Got back a whole week ago from a fabulous little trip to Thailand.
We built it around trains, with a little help from The Man in Seat Sixty-One, and it went like this:
First, take the sleeper from KL to Hat Yai. Wake up in pretty Perlis, with the rising sun gilding the rice paddies and the karst outcrops and the flocks of morning birds. Get your last nasi lemak for a while from the buffet car for breakfast, and cross the border at Padang Besar. You have to get off at Hat Yai, and the train north doesn't go till the evening, so this is a good opportunity to bus over to the pleasant seaside town of Songkhla for the day.
Back on the night train to Hua Hin. Tumble off sleepily in the early morning, and roll across the road from the historic station to a row of eateries that will supply a welcome and good-value breakfast. (Be it noted here that Thai railway stations are a delight. Trim and spruce, they're enlivened with potted plants and/or whimsical little tableaux; they all have clean toilets and left-luggage facilities; and they have this wonderful bell, which is dinged when the station-master deems the train may start... This is how railways should be...)
Take at least two days in Hua Hin. (A good place to stay, offering a lot for the money, is the Royal Express.) You can spend the first day very pleasantly just strolling, eating seafood, and sitting on the beach in the cool of the evening. For the second, you can hire a little motorbike. Thus mounted, you can visit the delightfully airy beach palace just up the coast, and the scenically situated winery about 50 kms inland (the setting of which looks uncannily like a winery in NZ or Australia -- apart from the elephants).
By now you're embarking on Day 4, and it's time to take the train to Bangkok. (This is just a short leg of the journey, so the earliest you can buy the ticket is the previous day. All the other sectors you can book in advance.) In Bangkok, you can do whatever it is you like to do in Bangkok -- in our case, this was sight-see, meet up with friends, eat more fabulous Thai food, check out the malls, and watch the James Bond movie. I really like Bangkok. Always did. Nigel doesn't. Inexplicable.
On Day 7, the journey north resumes. The next train journey takes you to Phitsanulok. The ultimate destination is the Sukhothai Historical Park, so this part is a bit fiddly. You need a tuk-tuk from Phitsanulok railway station to the bus station, then a bus to New Sukhothai, then a conveyance from New Sukhothai bus station to the town centre, where you can hire another motorbike to complete the 12-km journey to Old Sukhothai. (We could have short-circuited some of this by renting a bike from a place just round the corner from New Sukhothai bus station -- but we didn't know that at the time.) But definitely, definitely, definitely, stay out at the park. (A good place is the Orchid Hibiscus Guesthouse, where Paolo will give you temple-visiting tips and a delicious breakfast.) By staying close by, you can take advantage of the atmospheric early morning and evening hours to view the ruins -- and at those times, you pretty much have them to yourself. This is a wonderful place, full of beauty, history, spirituality, and tranquillity. I loved this entire trip -- but this was the highlight.
On Day 9, move north again. This means retracing your motorbike-tuktuk-bus-tuktuk route back to Phitsanulok, but everything's cheaper because you're not caught up in a mass arrival frenzy. In Phitsanulok, you have just enough time for lunch and a stroll before picking up the Bangkok-Chiang Mai train where you left it two days ago. Many hours later, during which the rice-paddy landscape has given way to wooded mountains, and you've consumed another train-supplied meal and snack, you arrive in Chiang Mai.
Day 10 and half of Day 11 were spent wandering the wats of the old city. Such a pretty place. Loads of tourists flock here, of course, but somehow the city manages to absorb them. As did Hua Hin. So you end up with the best of both worlds -- you can chill at a modern cafe slurping good coffee and surfing the net, or you can get two breakfasts for the equivalent of less than 6 ringgit and walk sois that exude normal life and quiet, low-key beauty.
Finally, because life is brutal, and there's no time to train both ways, you fly back to KL. Efficient, quick -- and so lacking in the spirit of travel epitomized by long train journeys...
Thailand -- loved it all over again.
Got back a whole week ago from a fabulous little trip to Thailand.
We built it around trains, with a little help from The Man in Seat Sixty-One, and it went like this:
First, take the sleeper from KL to Hat Yai. Wake up in pretty Perlis, with the rising sun gilding the rice paddies and the karst outcrops and the flocks of morning birds. Get your last nasi lemak for a while from the buffet car for breakfast, and cross the border at Padang Besar. You have to get off at Hat Yai, and the train north doesn't go till the evening, so this is a good opportunity to bus over to the pleasant seaside town of Songkhla for the day.
Back on the night train to Hua Hin. Tumble off sleepily in the early morning, and roll across the road from the historic station to a row of eateries that will supply a welcome and good-value breakfast. (Be it noted here that Thai railway stations are a delight. Trim and spruce, they're enlivened with potted plants and/or whimsical little tableaux; they all have clean toilets and left-luggage facilities; and they have this wonderful bell, which is dinged when the station-master deems the train may start... This is how railways should be...)
Take at least two days in Hua Hin. (A good place to stay, offering a lot for the money, is the Royal Express.) You can spend the first day very pleasantly just strolling, eating seafood, and sitting on the beach in the cool of the evening. For the second, you can hire a little motorbike. Thus mounted, you can visit the delightfully airy beach palace just up the coast, and the scenically situated winery about 50 kms inland (the setting of which looks uncannily like a winery in NZ or Australia -- apart from the elephants).
By now you're embarking on Day 4, and it's time to take the train to Bangkok. (This is just a short leg of the journey, so the earliest you can buy the ticket is the previous day. All the other sectors you can book in advance.) In Bangkok, you can do whatever it is you like to do in Bangkok -- in our case, this was sight-see, meet up with friends, eat more fabulous Thai food, check out the malls, and watch the James Bond movie. I really like Bangkok. Always did. Nigel doesn't. Inexplicable.
On Day 7, the journey north resumes. The next train journey takes you to Phitsanulok. The ultimate destination is the Sukhothai Historical Park, so this part is a bit fiddly. You need a tuk-tuk from Phitsanulok railway station to the bus station, then a bus to New Sukhothai, then a conveyance from New Sukhothai bus station to the town centre, where you can hire another motorbike to complete the 12-km journey to Old Sukhothai. (We could have short-circuited some of this by renting a bike from a place just round the corner from New Sukhothai bus station -- but we didn't know that at the time.) But definitely, definitely, definitely, stay out at the park. (A good place is the Orchid Hibiscus Guesthouse, where Paolo will give you temple-visiting tips and a delicious breakfast.) By staying close by, you can take advantage of the atmospheric early morning and evening hours to view the ruins -- and at those times, you pretty much have them to yourself. This is a wonderful place, full of beauty, history, spirituality, and tranquillity. I loved this entire trip -- but this was the highlight.
On Day 9, move north again. This means retracing your motorbike-tuktuk-bus-tuktuk route back to Phitsanulok, but everything's cheaper because you're not caught up in a mass arrival frenzy. In Phitsanulok, you have just enough time for lunch and a stroll before picking up the Bangkok-Chiang Mai train where you left it two days ago. Many hours later, during which the rice-paddy landscape has given way to wooded mountains, and you've consumed another train-supplied meal and snack, you arrive in Chiang Mai.
Day 10 and half of Day 11 were spent wandering the wats of the old city. Such a pretty place. Loads of tourists flock here, of course, but somehow the city manages to absorb them. As did Hua Hin. So you end up with the best of both worlds -- you can chill at a modern cafe slurping good coffee and surfing the net, or you can get two breakfasts for the equivalent of less than 6 ringgit and walk sois that exude normal life and quiet, low-key beauty.
Finally, because life is brutal, and there's no time to train both ways, you fly back to KL. Efficient, quick -- and so lacking in the spirit of travel epitomized by long train journeys...
Thailand -- loved it all over again.