33 degrees 3rd Class

A minibus, a train, a local bus into the city and we had arrived in the Laos Capital, at Vientiane bus station to be precise.

The bus we needed to get to Thailand was practically next to us as we pulled in and a kind taxi driver showed us where we could buy tickets. There was no one in the queue ahead of us and as the woman was handing over our tickets I asked where we could change money…‘here’ she said – which solved the problem of what to do with our remaining Laos money, and the bigger problem of not having any Thai Bhat.

The border with Thailand was almost without stress, our bus conductor got a bit annoyed at us for how slowly we were finding pens that worked to fill in the immigration forms, he flitted between the three of us peering over our shoulders and pointing to the boxes we had t filled in yet, and then he disappeared! Probably to have a brief lie down – if I had thought about it at the time I could have given him some money to buy a load of pens to reduce his daily stress levels…

The immigration officers were thorough but quick and we were through, we got back on the bus, drove over the Friendship Bridge, and into Thailand!

As I sat back on the bus looking at the changes to the writing on the road side adverts and all the subtle signs that showed us we are in another country I felt grateful. We are nearly always last through every border crossing (…apart from the unfortunate man on the China Laos border who took a photo of the immigration entry signs – they were quite funny and I nearly did it myself – he was in the one marked ‘diplomat’, anyway he got dragged away by several armed men and was never seen again…or was it one irritated official and then he returned to the queue ten minutes later, with a very small sheepish grin? …so much has happened it’s hard to remember the exact details!) My meandering mind came back to the present where I was very grateful for the fact that so far(!) no bus, minibus or train has left without us…

We’d made it to Thailand…another huge part of all pre trip planning. From the very beginning we were determined to find a way to include Chiang Mai in our route. We have cousins who live here and we love them dearly. They have been incredibly supportive of our trip and their five year old twins were just learning to walk the last time we saw them as a family – and of course we’ve never visited them in their home…this was precious!

Chiang Mai is in the North of Thailand, almost directly west from Luang Prabang but the jungle and really big river meant that we had to go South to go North and our first stop on the way was Udon Thani. We were staying in a hotel recommended by a dear friend who loves Thailand and whose daughter was born in the city. Before we headed off to our hotel though we needed to book tickets for tomorrow’s journey.

The choices were not great ones, a thirteen and a half hour overnight bus journey, or two trains, one seven and a half hours long and the other eleven and a half hours, overnight. The trains heading further south before we could go north again. It hadn’t taken much for me and Rosa to think ‘the mountains and jungle preventing the train travelling west would be be the very windy, steep, treacherous route the bus took’… Rosa and I are still a bit bus phobic after our Georgian minibus experiences and following extensive research on ‘the worlds worst drivers’  I can report that of the five articles I read, Thailand is in the top fifteen of four of them (interestingly Georgia don’t appear at all which I didn’t find reassuring!) Despite my research the reality is a bus would get us there quicker (if it arrived at all, mutter, mutter), and it would be cheaper, so Theo was of the opinion we should at least look. We were in the bus station when we arrived so we went straight to the counter only to discover all the buses were full for the next two days, clearly someone wants to go on them…(crazy risk taking thrill seekers!)

It was a five minute walk to the train station where our internet trawlings from the day before were confirmed. The only possible train bookings were for third class.

We really wanted to get to Chiang Mai, no more delays, so we booked the tickets, we hadn’t travelled third class before and for many people it’s their only option so now we would get to find out what’s it like. It was pretty cheap as train tickets go – £13 each for both trains but I was left with a niggling worry, why hadn’t the ticket man asked me if we wanted upper or lower bunks for the second journey? What is third class on an overnight train…? I guessed we would find out tomorrow…for now it was time to go to our cheap little hotel on the outskirts of Udon Thani.

This time I was fully on board with getting a tuk-tuk taxi straight away…(about flippin time cried my family) but the tuk-tuk drivers had never heard of the hotel. They couldn’t understand the map on my phone and seemed quite happy not to take us anywhere. We walked to the next little group of drivers who didn’t seem to know where it was either – one of them eventually claimed to know where the hotel was and reluctantly offered to take us for what we thought was an inflated price (…it turned out to be quite reasonable once I’d reread the text from the hotel owner telling me how much a taxi from the station was to his hotel – that didn’t go down too well when I eventually confessed – although I did time it really well so I wasn’t immediately pushed into the path of an oncoming bus!)

We started to walk. The map seemed to show we would be coming to a main road in five minutes… We didn’t see another tuk-tuk, or in fact any other vehicles for 25 minutes, the route our map had chosen led us down a dark alley next to a canal for most of the way.

…an alley with no street lights, where all we heard was the rustling of dry leaves and the occasional low throated growl. The glint of eyes in the dark may have only  only been dogs, but we managed to freak ourselves right out.

We speeded up along that alley, sweat pouring of us, we stopped short of hysterical (probably because our rucksacks were too heavy) and finally emerged onto a road, with lights and cars and everything!

We stopped for a few seconds to wipe our faces and for my family to scowl at me, how was this my fault?! (…I hadn’t read the text by this point) …after another minute or so we saw a tuk-tuk – but, with less than a kilometre to go we didn’t bother, we’d spend the money we’d just saved on ice cream.

Rosa spotted the hotel, which was a relief because clearly not many people knew where it was, and we found that this cheap little place on the edge of town had a swimming pool, and a restaurant, score!

We had a wonderful swim, met the lovely owner – Joe, ate fried rice and went to bed. Joe kindly arranged a taxi to come and pick us up at 7.00 o’clock the next morning, when we would discover what third class means in Thailand.

The taxi driver spoke excellent English, and after teaching us how to say thank you (which in Thailand is different for a man and a woman with the one for men sounding a bit like ‘Kop Khun, Krap’. I asked her to repeat it about five times and each time it sounded like ‘krap’ to me – fabulous fun :- ) …She told us she’d left her stressful job in Bangkok to come home for a gentler pace of life. It was a lovely way to start the day and we were optimistic as we thanked her (‘Kop khun ka’ for a woman apparently) and headed into the station.

On our ticket it told us which coach to get in and on the train platform there were numbers corresponding to the coaches on the train so that the passengers knew where to stand, it was the same in China and stopped the platform chaos that we’ve encountered in other countries. Our coach was number one so I headed down the platform to look for it, only to discover that the coach numbers ended at two, as did the platform. The third class citizens of the country were expected to walk out onto a piece of concrete and board the train off the edge of the platform, I felt the beginnings of righteous indignation coming on…

Just before the train arrived, one of the station guards came hurrying down to our precarious position on the concrete, and called us all back to stand in the middle of the platform, it was a smaller train apparently and after the slight chaos caused by this change for half the people getting on the train had resolved into stillness, we all clambered in.

The seats were made of brown plastic and the whole carriage had a drab dismal feel to it – we shoved our rucksacks up on to the luggage racks and noticed that the fan next to our seats was broken. We were sat facing each other though which meant we’d be able to share the beauty we would undoubtedly see. We discovered the windows opened which would act as air conditioning in the absence of the fan, and then the train started to move.

Something in the train itself was grating and vibrating, just behind my seat, it was so loud we couldn’t hear what each other was saying and whilst I thought it was really funny at first …it stopped being funny after about a minute and a half.

Luckily the noise only really happened when we were speeding up and slowing down so we did get to talk to each other occasionally and point out the storks and egrets in the rivers and fields by the side of the train. Rosa saw a kingfisher streak alongside us and It was great to have an opening window. We worked out the sweet spot where we could have the window open and the metal blind down to give some relief from the sun without being sandblasted by the wind from the open window.

We knew it was going to get hotter the further south we went and here was a perfect opportunity to get some training in…I wondered how much hotter Indonesia and Australia would be, but luckily that didn’t last long, it was hard to think about anything beyond ‘jbgzggbgzfrjzfkjgzgsklfzhzjjgzzfhbb’, the joyful grating sound the train made as we trundled our way through the countryside. We endured, and it was only seven and a half hours.

We arrived on time in Ayutthaya, no additional hours with numb bums, sweat pouring down from under my bra strap and my brain going to mush through my ear plugs. Time for a nice  six hour wait on the platform before our overnighter.

We went in search of food and found a café on the platform that had Wi-Fi, fried rice and tea and we managed to eek out our food and drinks until it closed.

I paced up and down the platform after the cafe closed, watching a rugby match because the cafe hadn’t turned off their WiFi, it was a bit surreal but I caught up on England’s women’s rugby team playing in the new WXV competition and got my steps in…

There were no delays for our train, and our coach was number six for this one, right in the middle of the platform (slight climb down of the righteous indignation…) I could see beds in the first few carriages and moved with a slightly lighter step towards the train.

There were a few people ahead of us as we waited to climb up into the train but we could already see through the window that there were no beds in the third class carriage, on the plus side the plastic seats were blue which did make the carriage feel slightly more cheery and it looked like our fan was working.

Enough with the positivity – it was still really hot despite being 9.00 at night. We had eleven and a half hours with no bed on bum curdling hard plastic seats with no chance to lie down between the seats or in the aisle because the train was packed.

I spent the first couple of hours completing my assessment of who travelled in third class, the grandma next to us with her granddaughter, the army guys in full uniform, the small family with lots of luggage, the westerners who were either roughing it or weren’t able to book until the last minute…no one looked like they were there on principle and most of them looked like they were used to travelling like this. I felt humbled watching the grandma sitting on the edge of her seat and then the floor so her granddaughter could sleep. No one complained or looked grumpy…time to get on with it! My ingenuity kicked in at that point and Rosa and I swapped an hour each of standing up so the other could lie down with their feet up…it wasn’t comfortable but at 1.30 in the morning when I got to lie down it felt pretty blissful 🙂

Theo managed fitful sleep sitting upright and our working fan meant we didn’t melt. I wouldn’t rush to do it again but I can do it if I need too and my heart is with the people who don’t have a choice. It definitely wasn’t the easy option but for some people it was the only option, and I suspect for some it wasn’t an option at all…

As the dawn began to appear through the grimy windows my thoughts turned towards Chiang Mai and my cousins, both inspirational people I love, to the twins and getting to know them, and it felt different to every other journey end we’ve had so far, apart from the first one where we stayed with my cousin Tim. Family feels like home, and each of us in our own way, needed a bit of home. For Rosa that’s her beloved cat and her room…for Theo putting the kettle on and the chance to chat with neighbours and friends…and for me? …my bed and my daily walks each morning along our little lane to my favourite oak tree – it would be good to come home and Chiang Mai felt like home.