Haven't been able to get online in the last couple of days as I have been out of town. But of this later. First I want to write a little bit about the most fun I have had on a train, well, ever.
My ticket to Chiang Mai was at 22:00 as I wanted to go overnight in order not to miss a day so I left my friends place in Bangkok at around 8pm. As I came out of his place onto the main street I was greeted by a bumper to bumper traffic. After "thinking" a little bit I hollered a taxi bike and got on it with my big bag. If any of you know how big my backpack is you can imagine what that looked like. Lets just say it was one of those thing that you mark of as done and never do again. I would compare it to the rush that I got from jumping from an air plane, well almost. On the flip side I got to the train station in record breaking time.
I got on the train around 21:30. To describe it in as few words as possible would be to say it was an old ass, beat up, with the toilets being glorified holes in the bottom the the cart, something build sometimes in the 70's. I didn't count how many carts there were, but no more then 10. I did have a sleeper one with A/C, I believe it was first class. Big balla :) Because I got my ticket kind of late I could only get the the top bunk. Which is a small compartment that drops down from the ceiling. It sounds worse then it was, surprisingly it was pretty comfortable and the blinds gave plenty of privacy. Now to the ride itself. I've met the funnest most wonderful group of people on it. First there was this guy from London, he introduced himself as Dips. There were two girls from Manchester, Seanna and Danielle, two brothers from Whales, Robert and Jason - one of them an REF sniper - two guys from Bern, Dennis and Tice and two other couples whose names escape me. I believe they were from Holland. Everybody was super cool and inviting. I arrived on the train and sat down underneath my bank, Dips and I started talking about all kinds of things. The the two girls somehow joined in on the conversation and before I realized Sheanna pulled out a bottle of Rum and two cans of Coke. And this is where the craziness began. We sang, told stories, argued and tried to climb on top of the train to figure out how it is that James Bond does it so easily, but after getting yelled at by the train conductor quit that attempt. After being told by different people that we are going to get kicked out of the train and that they have called the police we figured it was a good time to go to sleep. Not before an older Brittish gentleman promised us to return the favor by singing really loudly at 6am, which is when he was planning on getting up. On other words it was a really fun ride. It all concluded on our arrival at Chiang Mai at 13:30 the next day.
On the day that we arrived to Chiang Mai we all went out again. First went to see some Thai Boxing. Nothing fancy like we see on TV. This was a rugged high school gym with a big boxing ring set up in the middle. The locals were coming in for free, we all, of course, had to pay. The fights varied in quality and the most intense fight was between these two 8 or 9 year old kids, who were beating the living crap out of each other. I can only imagine how good they are going to be when they grow up. Afterward we went to this place which was full of bars the name of the place that we sat down was called... wait for it...
"Marina Lady Boy Bar", one word, WOW. Some were pretty obvious but some, I have to admit, I would have never in a million years guessed that those were not women if I would just met one of them on the street back home in SF. Needless to say we got pretty tossed and ended up staying out until 4. I got to learn the changing out the guards ceremony from Rob, the REF sniper who gets to do it relatively often. Super interesting.
The next day the guys and I parted ways. They had something planned and I wanted to go explore the city a little bit. In the morning I rented a little 125cc moped and set out with a map to explore the area. It was more then I expected, seeing the stark contrast between the wealthy neighborhoods, and the people, who live not much worse then we do, perhaps even better in some sense and then not too far people living out of a two story cardboard houses really makes you think. After driving around for a little while i decided I needed to go get this Jeep excursion that my friend was heatedly advertising to me in BKK. The only problem was that in my musings I lost track of where I was going and I realized I had no idea where I was and couldn't locate the names of the streets on the map either. The signs, which many shops had written in English, disappeared and only Thai writing could be seen. Whoops! Luckily the next street that I looked up I found on the map and I was able to find my way back pretty fast.To sum it all up; Getting lost in Chain Main - check!
I'll write more later. My time online is running out and I'm tired of writing. Hope everyone is good back home!
