Sunday October 3 I flew AirAsia (US$90) from Phuket to Chiang Mai – good 2 hour flight. I stayed with friends Eric, Fiona, Russell and Stacey. What fantastic hospitality – many thanks to Eric and Fiona. It was interesting sleeping in a large bed that did not move, for the first time in four months. For some reason I did not sleep particularly well the first night. Russell, waiting to start University next year, was a great tour guide.
We did the tourist thing of visiting Markets, a Wat (Temple) some shops then found a beer, chilled out and watched the world go by – very pleasant. The following day we did pretty much the same except near a lake where we kicked a rugby ball around, had a good lunch and a few beers while watching the world go by. The fast train (Sprinter) from Chiang Mai to Bangkok cost US$20 took 13 hours. While waiting at the train station the stately “Eastern & Orient Express” rolled into Chiang Mai. Now that would be travelling in style of a bygone era.
In the 3 car (Sprinter) train it was very pleasant sitting back and listening to the Clickity Clack of the wheels as it rolled through the towns, villages, plantations, rainforests and mountains of urban and rural Thailand. The train went through tunnels and passed dense, verdant green vegetation. We passed quaint, immaculate train stations with manual track switching and signalling gear – not much in the way of electronics other than lights. At one of the stations it was fascinating watching the station master frantically pull on large leavers to change tracks and signals. It was an interesting and pleasant journey with the train only stopping at a few stations or waiting for a train to pass coming the other way. When the train had descended from the mountains we entered the flat lands where there was rice paddy after rice paddy. I think there was more water around than normal after some heavy rains in Vietnam.
