Thailand: A little tropical adventure story

Flag & map of Thailand








16:30hrs, 18 August 2012, on Train 169 from Bangkok to Pan Buri
As soon as I stepped out of the station and looked out along Platform 9 toward the rear end of Train 169, I was surprised by the downpour. It hadn’t been raining when I arrived at the station 2½ hours earlier and I had stayed inside ever since enjoying a leisurely Thai lunch and ambling through a photo display of the Thai king and queen in the central part of the station. Right now, the small roof on the platform just barely provided protection from the torrent. And for one of the first times on my 37-day-old journey from Denver, I was struck with a “feeling” when I saw the string of faded cars that were probably as old as me. It was an adventurous feeling associated with my impending departure on an old train headed out into a rainy tropical afternoon but I can’t really describe the feeling. How do you describe a feeling in words? Great authors do it masterfully, but no matter how well they describe their feeling, and how strong a feeling they invoke in the reader, it’s not the same feeling that one experiences by actually being there.


Veggies with peanut curry lunch and pineapple smoothie at the Bangkok railway station.
Sorry to say that I had difficulty finding vegetarian meals during most of my time in Thailand.

The Thai king’s portrait seems to be everywhere.I decided he must be a cool guy

when I learned that he used to play a mean jazz saxophone and once jammed

with Benny Goodman’s band. When asked about the King’s musical abilities,

Goodman said something like, “I know the King has an important day job

but if he ever tires of it, I’ll hire him!”

I walked up the platform to the single diesel-electric locomotive that was about to carry the 15 or so cars toward Malaysia. After snapping a couple photos of the locomotive and trailing passenger cars, I climbed aboard and found my naugahide-covered seat in the old wood-paneled, second-class car with no air conditioning. I had been a little pissed off this morning when I went on line to book my ticket and found nothing available in 1^st class or 2^ndclass with air conditioning. I also realized I was really lucky as I got the last seat left in un-air conditioned second class. As far as I knew 3^rdclass had wooden seats which would have made for a miserable 5-hour journey.

Train 169 ready for its journey to the south of Thailand.

It was warm and stuffy in the car but with six circulating ceiling fans at work and the steady rain cooling the afternoon heat of Bangkok, I realized it would be pleasant in the car once we got moving. I also saw a definite plus to the un-air conditioned car: the windows were open (although some on the right side had the louvered coverings pulled up to keep out the driving rain). Now I remembered one reason I so appreciated the South African trains I had ridden when I was doing free lance photojournalism there more than 25 years ago during the waning days of apartheid. Because one could open the windows, there was contact with the world through which one was passing. No hermetically sealed experience like travelling by air, Amtrak, modern bus, or air conditioned automobile. This would be similar to being on the outside deck of a ferry with a mist of salt spray enhancing the ride.

I had an aisle seat next to a middle-aged Thai woman whose clothes gave evidence of her modest economic circumstances and I noticed the cracked skin on her weary feet when she took off her sandals. The seats may have been faded and a bit lumpy but I was immediately pleased by the abundant leg room. It was probably close to 3 feet from the front of my seat to the back of the seat in front of me and there was a metal footrest. Shit, this would be better than scoring the emergency exit row on my flight from Honolulu to Fiji. “You know, I could actually write in relative comfort with my little laptop sitting on my comfortable knees,” I pondered optimistically. Only about half the seats were taken. The reason I got the last seat was probably because the car would be full at some point in my journey, but for now I was able to snag two empty seats on the right side of the train next to my assigned seat to the left of the aisle. Thus, I now had as much room as an air traveler in business class. And all this comfort for a lousy 201 baht (less than US$7.00).

The train pulled out right on time at 15:35 and as we started moving, the feeling I was unable to describe above became more intense. This was an “experience” and unlike most events in my life which have become routine after too many days, months, and years of the same old stuff. Not that life has been bad, as least not in recent years, but I get caught up in the monotony. Setting off on a train trip in Bangkok in car of mostly Asian faces with the tropical rain falling is not monotonous, at least not for me.

The interior of my car was cooled with fans and open windows.

Poor old Earnest Hemingway (hey, how did he get into this story?). I recall that in the last years of his life, Hemingway reached a point where he felt he couldn’t write. He was old (although younger than I am now), fat, and not living the kinds of experiences he’d been exposed to years earlier when he wrote his great novels like Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. He should have gotten off his comfortable ass in Sun Valley, Idaho and headed out for more of life. Instead, he shot himself. As Senator Lloyd Benson might have said (remember his vice-presidential debate with Dan Quayle in 1988), “Will, you’re no Hemingway.” I couldn’t agree more but taking this noisy, bumpy train south along the Gulf of Thailand sure is a hoot.

We soon took on more passengers as the train stopped at several suburban Bangkok stations before heading out into the countryside interrupted by occasional small towns. Still, no one claimed the two seats I was hanging out in. I soon scampered back to my assigned seat when the uniformed conductor, packing a side arm, appeared in the car. I was a little nervous that he might not approve of the print out of my ticket that Thai Railways provided on line. I had folded up the letter-size sheet so that only the ticket showed. He unfolded it, then refolded it applying his ticket puncher all the way through the four folded sections. I said, “thanks”, when he handed it back feeling relief that I wasn’t going to get booted off the train for an improper ticket. I know…I’m too paranoid sometimes.

However, the disheveled guy seated in front of me who periodically mumbled to himself in Thai (I assume), was not so lucky. The conductor reappeared, presumably after having checked all the tickets. He started giving the disheveled guy a ration of shit. The guy seemed a bit drunk or maybe just nuts and I assumed he didn’t have a ticket. It was obvious that the conductor wanted the guy to get up but he was slow to respond so the conductor’s voice became firmer reminding a bit of my army drill sergeant’s tone of voice (without the South Carolina drawl) way back in 1968. The guy slowly got to his feet and the conductor quickly hustled him out the rear door of the car to what fate I will never know.

Typical of tropical rains, the aforementioned storm didn’t last long and I was able to lower the louvered cover allowing the wind to mess with my hair. Lines of motorbikes, cars, and buses waited behind crossing gates as we zoomed by. Smells of smoke, rotting stuff, wetlands, and the occasional cigarette from a car vestibule wafted into the car along with the cooling breeze. Not very pleasant smells to be sure but that’s what was there. You pays you 201 baht and you don’t get to choose the atmospherics. There was a steady stream of food vendors parading through the car peddling wrapped meals, fruit, sweets, and Buddha-knows-what. I had purchased two pastries (one stuffed with spinach, the other with mushrooms) not knowing what might be available on the train. I gave the beer guy a miss the first couple times he passed through but on his third trip I decided it was Chang Classic-time (the Thai equivalent of Miller Time, I suppose, only better). He tried to sell me two but being a one-beer man except on the most festive occasions, I handed him a 50 baht note and started off the cocktail hour with my Chang Classic and a bag of peanuts I had saved from the flight to Bangkok yesterday. With each pass through the car, he tried to sell me another but my temperate spirit won out.

By seven, dusk had settled but I still could make out the succession of rice paddy and sugar cane fields, and forest, as well as distant rounded mountain peaks on the western horizon. I had one nagging worry. What if I arrived at the Pan Buri station and there were no taxis? I had booked a room at a small hotel near the beach but it was a good 10 kilometers from the station. Nothing like a crap shoot for entertainment.

Addendum

I’m now finishing this story in early October in the comfortable seat of a RENFE (Spanish National Railways) diesel rail car train from Granada to Algeceras in Andalucia. It’s a cloudy (sometimes foggy), cool autumn morning as we pass through cropland, olive groves, and small towns with forested mountains in the distance. The windows on this modern train are sealed. There are no vendors, no smells, no disheveled passengers and the only exotic part of the experience are the station names like Bobadilla where we have just stopped. I’ve paid 28 Euro (US$36) for the 4-hour trip and my hotel is a short walk from the Algeceras station. I’m content and happy to see some new countryside but there is none of the “feeling” I described earlier in the story.

But back to the story: From what I had been able to figure out from the time table, the Pan Buri station should have been the next one after Hua Hin, a small city where we stopped around 8:00PM. However, when we arrived at the next station, I didn’t see a sign on the platform and the conductor was nowhere to be found. Suddenly, I grabbed my stuff and panicked. I started yelling out the window to a few people on the platform “Pranburi?” “Pranburi?” One guy pointed in the direction from which we had come. Another pointed down the line where we were headed. Another motioned for me to get off which I did just as the train starting moving away from the platform. They probably hadn’t understood my urgent question because in my haste I asked for “Pranburi” not “Pan Buri”. The extra “r” and my accent probably threw them off. The station master came up and greeted me in broken English. To my dismay, I learned that Pan Buri was the next station and from what I could see around the station in the dark, I was in the middle of Butt-Fuck Nowhere. Not to worry. The Thais typically try to be helpful especially when there are a few baht to be earned. There was a young couple at the practically deserted- station with a pick-up truck and they could drive me to my hotel for 500 baht (about US$17). Yikes, that was 2½ times the price of my train ticket. I got them to drop the price to 400 and we headed in the direction of the beach.

However, they had never heard of the Front Beach Hotel and had to ask several times for directions. Turned out, the hotel was way down at the southern end of the resort area (I’d planned it that way). We finally found it but the trip certainly took longer than the driver had expected. The owners of the small hotel spoke almost no English but it was obvious they were pleased that I’d arrived. So was I, and I gave the driver the 500 baht he had originally asked for feeling guilty that I had diverted him and his female companion from whatever fun they might have planned for a Friday night.

For my efforts I was rewarded with three days at a clean, quiet and cheap out-of-the-way hotel with a room looking out at the Gulf of Thailand. Fortunately, the owners’ rotund, 20-something son (“Boy”, they called him) spoke fair English and stopped by the hotel once in a while to help me with my plans. He arranged for a man to drive me south about 30km for a day in the awesome Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park. My next installment will feature photos of the limestone pillars, caves, and beaches at the park.



My room at the Front Beach Hotel was the one on the top floor with the balcony.