Chiang Mai, Thailand
May 11, 2014
The train to Chiang Mai merits an entry to itself here on my blog. Not because it’s a particularly long entry or jam-packed with action and amazing tales but just because it was such a memorable trip.
We made the train by ten minutes which was cool and we had long enough to sort some bits n bobs out although we did forget alcohol so it was a bit of a bummer in the drinking department. Once on board and at our bunks I was impressed with the train. It was really clean, had aircon and had a nice feel about it. We shared our set of 4 bunks with a couple from China who were traveling through Thailand as a two-week holiday. Their English was better than our Chinese…but not by much. They were a really nice couple though and we all tried our best to chat for a while before I took a wander off down the carriages to see what was what.
A few carriages up I wandered into the restaurant car and parked up for a beer and cigarette. It was pretty empty as we hadn’t even moved off yet with only myself, one Thai lad and five staff hanging around. Eventually we got underway and my large Chang was emptied. I went back to our cabin to get Dani and we ordered some food there and another couple of beers to wash it down with. While we ate the place slowly filled up with a handful of locals and an array of travelers. The volume on the TV above the bar was cranked up and some kind of female greatest pop songs DVD was thrown on as Madonna, Kylie and Celine Dione started blaring in my ear, It was funny though and about once an hour something half decent like the Cranberries came on as they played yet more discs.
Several beers in we actually asked how much they were costing us as the food was reasonable but there were no prices on the beers. Ouch £3 a pop for a large Chang was painful. I went to see the Thai lady at the counter who seemed to be the Godmother of the operation as she had already sorted us out with some cigarettes from her under the counter carrier bag shop. So what else was in the under counter bag? Was there any drink that wouldn’t hurt our wallet too much? Whiskey for £12 a bottle, hmm a lot pricier than the shops but hey a bottle of whiskey to share between us or two beers each. I’m siding with the whiskey on this one so sure enough the Godmother made a few Bhatt out of yours truly and I was a happy man with a bottle of whiskey and two free mixers. We told some Irish girls opposite us what the craic was and soon enough we had started a whiskey frenzy off in the restaurant car. It was everywhere. All the tables in there with the exceptions of the Thais got a bottle in and started to work their way through it. And this was the error of my ways.
As the whiskey word spread round the train more travelers turned up. In particular one group of Americans. I can comfortably say Americans and not be prejudice as they are the only nation I know that have men who woop like small girls. They wooped and they wooped and they wooped some more. Between LMFAO, Nicki Minge and the wooping whiskey crew the place had turned into Arizona bar in Sunderland being taken over by an American college football team. We sat chuckling away almost embarrassed as the locals looked at us and shrugged in disbelief at the team of Woopers who were now chanting ‘beer, beer, beer’ I though I was on the set of ‘The Frat party chronicles:Part 17’ Now the Thais like a good party as much as the next person but they are much quieter people than ourselves in the West and they rarely raise their voices, it’s just a part of their culture and how they act as people. I think the restaurant car was an experience for the local folks who had popped in for a drink. To be fair I think they found it just as comical as we did. I only thought these people existed in teenage college films but they are out there in real life. Wooping from behind immaculate shaped eye brows and mascara and demanding 24hr beer pong. More designer facial hair than this years Eurovision winner, it’s an impressive yet hilarious sight to hear grown lads on steroids shrieking like school girls. I thought I had seen my fill of that in Phi Phi but the over night train to Chiang Mai was in a different league. In the early hours the chants for ‘beer, beer, beer’ had taken their toll and the whiskey was running low so we wobbled back to our bunks and slipped off into a drunken slumber for the rest of the night.
The next morning we woke early and headed straight back to the restaurant car for some coffee and breakfast with bad repetitive pop music still ringing in my ears. It was early still, something like 7am but we made the effort to get up and attempt to wake ourselves with coffee as the views outside were beautiful. The train weaved its way through Jungle and forest. Passed tiny little individual huts. Not even villages just one-off huts where random hill dwellers lived. The jungle was lush and green and alive with birds floating through it and most likely a whole host of other wildlife that hid from the noise of our metal contraption. An hour after breakfast and we had dozed off again in our bunks still struggling from the night before. Eventually I was woken by the carriage guard who asked us to pack up our bedding and get ready with our bags. We rolled into Chiang Mai weary and bleary eyed.
