Hold It!
Trip Start
Jul 09, 2008
1
5
12
Trip End
Aug 19, 2008
Bangkok,
Thailand
Monday, July 14, 2008
After checking out of the Jolly Frog, we began a very hot walk up the road to the River Kwai bridge. The bridge, known by most as the subject of that movie, was part of the Death Railway that American and British POWs died in the thousands building for the Japanese to connect Thailand with India. The bridge itself and surrounding area were quite peaceful this morning, and after resisting the urge to photograph himself as the mock prisoner of a Japanese tourist standing nearby (exhibiting a surprising awareness of poor taste), Nick purchased some new sandals instead (the ones he brought to Asia having been lost on the plane).We decided we were too cheap to splurge on the floating River Kwai restaurant, figuring that the night before we had gotten intimate enough with the river. It was interesting to see that, in fact, most of the tourists to the bridge were Japanese. Susan doesn't remember seeing many Germans at Auschwitz and we don't imagine that Dresden or Nagasaki are huge American tourist destinations.
After a sweaty walk back, we stopped by the 7/11 (btw, they are almost more common here than stray dogs), and got frozen Cokes! It was fantastic. 7/11s are one of the only places here that have A/C, so we frequent them pretty much every time we see one, which is about every three minutes. We took a final meal at the Jolly Frog (which is truly a unique and awesome backpacker experience, with a great and affordable menu), and were on our way out when a Canadian foursome noticed Nick's Detroit Partnership shirt and asked if he was actually from Detroit. What resulted was a very long and enthusiastic conversation ranging from Thai beaches (Krabi is beautiful but risky for rain in August) to Muskoka lakes (who from the GTA doesn't know Lake of Boys?). We left with an even clearer picture of the rest of our trip and the enthusiasm provided from our transplanted teachers (enjoying their second stint in this part of the world) was enough to motivate us to get going to Chiang Mai.
We took an interesting motorcycle side-car to the bus station, where the ticket stand had three different prices, with descriptions all in Thai. We figured that the prices were, in ascending order, "Thai child," "Thai adult," and "Haha farang have to pay double." So, we were prepared to pay the highest price, and, of course, did. We then took the three hour bus ride back to Bangkok, followed by a dicey cab transfer over to the train station (Nick managed to get scammed by a luggage carrier for 50 baht), after which we camped out and waited for our overnight train to Chiang Mai. Entertained in the interlude by a movie crew clearing part of the train station for a late night filming session, Susan was disappointed that we had to leave before Edward Norton or Brad Pitt left his trailer for the set (in theory only). Nevertheless, our thoughts were not on Hollywood for long as we entered our train car for the ride north. We were alerted to the fact that CM was going to be farang centrale by the fact that there was a mass exodus as soon as the train was called. It was like the Great Migration; every single farang in the station started heading toward the tracks!
Fueled by her previous experiences in Europe and Turkey, Susan had expected at worst a decrepit or crowded compartment. What we were greeted with instead were what looked like military barracks. Bunk beds lined both sides of a narrow hallway, along with impossibly small racks to support our bags. What would follow was an epic battle between us and the train car for a good night's sleep. Susan, on the top bunk, was bereft of a window, and had to choose between the (relative) solace of the crappy ceiling fan cooling her or the (relative) privacy afforded by the dirty curtain that clung to the side of her bunk. She chose cool and slept with her bags so as not to risk theft, and after hours of struggling eventually found respite in sleep (thank you again, Korean Air sleep mask). Once again, she astounded everybody with her ability to sleep through anything, and didn't wake up until 9:30 or so, several hours after everyone else had been awoken by everyone else. Nick had the more comfortable and ventilated lower bunk, with the window supplying copious amounts of cool air, and was soon asleep. This rest was interrupted, however, throughout the night and early morning by the constant stopping of the train in seemingly random spots of rain forest to let other trains pass. This caused a lack of ventilation, true, but of greater issue was the hordes of Thai rainforest bugs that flew, crawled and scampered through the windows during these breaks of progress. By the morning, Nick's blankets looked like a kindergarten pinned-bug show-and-tell exhibit mixed with sweat. Luckily, though, he survived, as we had had a few close calls where he almost stuck his head out of the window, only to see a train whiz by three seconds later.
Oh, and did we mention the bathrooms? Nick had told Susan that the station bathrooms were gross, so she waited to go until getting on the train. Big mistake. As Bryan well knows, Susan doesn't even like camping bathrooms where you can "see stuff." Even drop toilets flush, or can be manually flushed, at least! These were toilets with a very low capacity - that did not flush, or even get let out on the tracks. They just, kind of, filled. She went at the beginning, thinking they'd be empty at that point. Wrong. It took her a good 15 minutes to recover from the experience and we both vowed to never go in them again. Susan almost busted out her pathetic German to save some young Germans from the point of no return - they were eating chicken wings and drinking beer! But, one of them had gone to the bathroom previously, so they must've been okay with it.
So the bathrooms, lying at the intersection of disgusting and unusuable, combined with a staff that held a grudge against us for refusing to purchase additional beverages the night before and as a result became unresponsive to our requests to have our bunks put up the following morning mere HOURS after everyone else had been serviced, and we had a recipe for a train ride not soon to be repeated. Until, like, the next overnight train in a week or so, seeing as we're too cheap to fly! Sure as the seasons, in the end, the train pulled into Chiang Mai a mere 90 minutes late and we were onto our next adventure . . . having held it for the whole time! A definite success.
