Special: Train travel in Thailand

January 11th to 13th: Our journey from the north of Thailand to the narrowest point in the country far in the south to Prachuap Khiri Khan was a train journey experience. We started again with the night train from Chiang Mai at 5 p.m. This time it was a little more modern than the one we took from Trang to Bangkok. Here, too, our destination was Bangkok, where we were supposed to arrive at 6:30 a.m. We booked early and got two lower berths, also in the middle of the carriage, so we didn't have to lie against a rattling door again. It was quite quiet, which was certainly due to the better route and the somewhat more modern train.

There were no hawkers on the train and since I was still hungry, I ordered something from the waitress who went around with a card. That was so-so, my enthusiasm was, as expected, limited - the two pieces of pineapple were the best... Then the beds were made and everyone hid behind their curtains. It's great that my tolino e-reader is equipped with a light...

If you're hoping for a delay, of course it won't happen; we arrived in Bangkok on time at 6:30 a.m. As a precaution, we didn't book the direct connecting train, as we could expect a delay of 2 hours. And unfortunately there was no more space on the previous train. So we had a good 8 hour stay in Bangkok and after a quick coffee at the train station we took the metro and the river taxi and then passed the time in a café by the river.

For the train south we had booked 2nd class as normal (we had expected an air-conditioned carriage like on the trip to Sukhothai), but were a bit surprised to find ourselves in a wooden carriage with open windows... There were windows not, only wooden shutters and at least fans (which were not available in the 3rd class). The wagon had been retrofitted with very comfortable plastic seats. So we had a good 5 hour journey ahead of us at an outside temperature of 32 degrees... There wasn't much to look at at the beginning because the fellow travelers gradually closed the wooden shutters because of the wind and the sun. That changed again when the sun went down and I got a few nice snapshots of the sunset from the open window. There was a lot going on on the train, as hawkers were constantly getting on and off tout their wares.

We had arrived about 20 minutes late again and were slowly getting to our station with flat bottoms when suddenly a passenger who had just boarded told us that we were sitting in his seat... Relaxed, we showed our ticket and were immediately helped by someone who jumped in , English-speaking Thai explained that our station was the one we had just left.... The delay had been made up again and we hadn't noticed. Slightly confused, we looked at each other and discussed the options: We now had to drive an hour to the next station. The next train back was 4 hours later at around 1am. A taxi ride back in the middle of the night would be quite expensive and we were also pretty tired of traveling. So we decided to get a room in the next town and thanks to Booking.com, it was booked quickly. So we stood at the platform of the small town of Ban Krut at 9 p.m. pretty exhausted and exhausted. We were picked up by the extremely friendly and helpful hosts, given water and a quick meal, and then we were able to fall into bed dead tired.

The next morning the train was supposed to leave at 9 a.m., so I quickly had a Nescafé and the nice hostel father drove us to the train station again. This time 40 minutes late... We already knew the train experience, again with lots of flying moves. This time we had a very simple "regional train" that stopped in every town and sometimes in the middle of the route to let a few travelers get off. The first carriage in these trains is reserved for monks and novices as well as for the train staff and was pretty empty... At around half past twelve in the afternoon we finally arrived at our destination in Prachuap Khiri Khan - after about 45 hours of travel from Chiang Mai. ..