Bangkok to Chiang Mai, Sleeper Trains and China Town

Getting a sleeper train across Thailand sounded so romantic, I thought it would be like a black and white east-meets-western film. In reality, the romance wore off fairly quickly. It began with a hot, sticky day of sight seeing, from the enormous MBK shopping centre to the thick chaos of China town.

 

We arrived in Hua Lamphong train station, in Bangkok, early in the morning to drop off our backpacks for the day — it was well worth the small fee, as it freed us up to explore the surrounding areas. Within minutes of leaving the station, our plans to head straight to China Town were aborted after struggling to make our way across the enormous roundabout that guards Hua Lamphong’s entrance.

Sheepishly sitting on a metro to San Yam Metro station, we embraced the air conditioning. From Sukhumvit station, we dawdled passed a green bike-scheme unit — I hadn’t seen anyone riding these bikes so far, but hats off to those with the bottle– and the grand entrance to a university campus, before slipping into the shopping centre.

 

MBK is the Goliath of shopping centres and provided us with a brief window into the lives of the well-monied Thai people. That is, until we ascended further into its heady heights, where knock-off Mulberry bags, cheap make-up and rails of affordable clothes attract foreign bargain hunters. Of course, it was the food court that had Billy and I digging into our pockets.

There was a different stand for every conceivable type of Asian food, it was heaven. After purchasing our ‘tokens’, I picked the worst Thai green chicken curry I have ever had. It consisted of inedible parts of a boiled chicken, in a sweet, soupy green curry mix. The rice was nice. Billy on the other hand picked pork tom yum soup with crispy noodles. It was textured, fragrant and all in all, delicious.

 

We then wandered across what I thought was Siam square, but turned out to be the teeming junction of Phayathai Road and Rama1. The layers of infrastructure created a buzzing disconnetion that I struggled to capture with my point and press camera — it was the kind of criss-crossing Asian city-scape that I had always envisaged. We also found the Jim Thompson House, which provides a glimpse into olde Thai architecture and life: I was glad we found this leafy oasis, but you’re not missing anything if you choose to walk on by.

After hopping from a packed sky train to the metro, we were back at Hua Lamphong train station, ready to brave that roundabout. In hindsight, walking into China Town before boarding a sleeper train was a bit of a mistake. A consistent stream of traffic inched passed swarms of pedestrians, who disappeared in and out of the haze of bright lights and smoke from chains of street food stalls on either side. It was a feast for the senses that left you smelling like everything from exhaust pipes to roasted chicken and potent fish.

 

Hot and hungry, we buckled under the pressure and dove into an air conditioned  Chinese restaurant. I devoured dry noodles with dumplings while Billy pushed his goopy sweet and sticky soup around the bowl. The long day was starting to catch up with us so we muscled our way back through street food shoppers celebrating the end of Buddhist lent and past a mad squawking woman in a gawdy Chinese temple, who was attempting to pump up a rather flat crowd.

After attempting to change into comfy clothes in a Hua Lamphong station toilet, I returned to Billy white-faced with pee-stained flip-flops — it wasn’t mine — begging for hand sanitiser. If I’d felt dirty before, I felt filthy now. It was with relief that we finally slumped into our seats on the sleeper train. The ‘train keeper’ came around and made up our beds at lightening speed and we snuggled up on the bottom bunk sipping on bottles of Chang. Our initial giddiness soon wore off and we settled down as the train lurched and clattered clumsily into the darkness

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Sleep didn’t come easily for us that night, partly because we attempted to sleep on the same bunk which was a squish, also because the air-conditioning was fierce and the train far from smooth. After only 9 hours on the train, due to rail works, we stumbled out of our carriage at the crack of dawn, to discover we had missed our stop. A short truck ride later and we were in a bus station, waiting three and a half hours to make the final five hour bus ride to Chiang Mai…!

Squashed into the back row of a rickety bus with a bunch of American backpackers who were also too wide for their seats, I clung to Billy in order to fit our shoulders in and struggled to keep awake as a local man lay sprawled at our feet. Some people stood for most of the journey as the driver sped on like a dodgems rider on crack. By the time we made it to Chiang Mai we were knackered, ratty and hungry enough to eat in the dirty backyard kitchen of a woman with loose chickens clucking around and black rimmed finger nails. Little did we know that this would shape our time in Chiang Mai.