Day 2 (Part 1) - Slow Train To Ayutthaya

After seeing how long my day 1 post became, I'm going to try to keep the blogs shorter and more often instead of long posts only a couple of times a week. So days will probably often be broken into parts. I figure this is better than writing such monster-sized single postings. It should be easier on us all.
---Deni


Yay, another day of international transit geekiness. Yesterday it was SkyTrain and boat, today it would be subway and regular train.

We walked to the closest subway station, a little way down Sukhumvit Road. We turned right on to Sukhumvit from the lane that our hotel was on, which was the first time we walked that direction since we arrived. We gone to the left both when we walked around town after arriving and to go to the SkyTrain stop the next day. This area of Sukhumvit that were right around the corner from turned out to be what seemed like the big tourist area. Almost all of the lanes similar to ours going off of the main road were heavy with things to attract Westerners. We passed by lanes with Irish pubs, English pubs, Australian pubs (all three seemed to advertise fish and chips), restaurants with "American-style breakfast," custom tailors with prices listed in dollars or euros, and a ton of hotels both big and small, luxury and budget. Along the way guys standing in front of "custom made suits" stores kept trying to get me to come in to their shop.

There were, of course, more 7-11s. And lots of places offering Thai massage.


We got to the Sukhumvit subway station, where there is also a SkyTrain stop. Something they do on the subway in Bangkok that they don't do on the SkyTrain is a bag check at the entrance. Nothing too major, just a quick looksie in the bag by security guys standing at the top of the escalator. We bought our fare discs, little black plastic things about the size of a quarter but a little thicker. To go six stops the fare was 26 THB (almost a dollar) and you waved the disc in front of a sensor on the turnstile to get in then deposited it in the slot to exit.

We would've gotten some good pictures on the subway except that photos are not allowed, along with just about everything else it seemed:


Yes, Lisa did take a picture of the sign that tells you pictures are not allowed.

We took the subway to the end of the line, Hua Lamphong, the main Bangkok train station. The main hall of the train station had a stage set up with children singing as part of the month-long celebration leading up to the king's birthday. Really. These people are insane about their king. They actually celebrate for a month before his birthday.

Too bad, I could have gotten a better picture of the train station without all of the kids in yellow shirts in the way.


The train station does employ these wonderful people in baby blue uniforms to help out tourist trying to take the train. A young lady asked us where we were trying to go and she pointed us to the right window and told us how long it would take to get to Ayutthaya. Luckily for us we got there right on time and the next train was leaving in 10 minutes. We bought our tickets, and a third class seat on a train ride that would be about 3 hours cost 15 THB (50 cents) each, about half the cost, or even less, than every ride we took on the SkyTrain or subway in the city. Kind of fucked up if you asked me, and probably has a lot to do with why you see poor people taking motorbike taxis and crappy buses instead of the rail system.

We made our way to the front car of the train since those are usually the least crowded. The first car also happened to be the car that has the disabled/monk seating area. Of course we used this opportunity to take another stealth picture of a monk.


Third class cars in Thailand are the bare-bone, open window and overhead fan type. As someone who lives in America and has mostly taken the train here and in Europe (with one overnight train in Egypt as well) this is the first time I've been on a passenger train with open windows and fans that wasn't some amusement park or old-time excursion train. Those usually go in a small circle and include some sort of "train robbers" on horseback or some other hokey shit. The train at Stone Mountain Park in Georgia was like that.

No, this was a train that people actually rode to get someplace. Mostly local people. We were the only tourists in our car from what we could tell. Close in to the city there are a lot of people that live right next to the train tracks. Poor people that is. Lots of slapped together tin houses.



Pretty damn hot on the train for the ride up. Every window on the train was open, so it was hot and you got to get dust in your eyes. Fun. Actually it was really interesting to do. I imagine that, like commuter trains in the States, there are people that take this train every day.

For some reason there are a lot of brush fires by the tracks. At one point we passed by one and a bunch of flying ash flew inside our window and we were covered with it. The hazards of the open window cooling system. took a while to brush off, and my shirt pretty much smelled like most of my clothes did through my college years.

Finally we made it to Ayutthaya.


Next - Walking for miles in Ayutthaya and the previously promised sex tourist sighting (I promise).