Monday, November 22, 2004 (Train from Surat Thani to Bangkok -
Thailand)
So long, for now at least, to Khao Lak. The
broken glass incident. A nasty surprise waiting for me when the Bangkok Air web
site finally started working again. Another 'fun' ride across country. Not much
happening in Phun Phin. The AOK for the laptop repair. The slow, night train
back to Bangkok.
Day 259 (69). We said goodbye to Khao Lak this
morning but who knows for how long. We still fancy the Surin Islands diving
live-aboard so we may yet return here. Our repeat customer discount at Sea
Dragon may mean that Khao Lak will be the place for us to return to, even if we
could find a live-aboard operator a little farther North for the same
trip.
It was a restful night and my
soar throat is finally abating. I did, however, accidentally knock en empty
water glass off my nightstand during the night and we both distinctly heard it
break into several pieces as it shattered through the still of the night. Rather
than try to crawl around the floor looking for all the pieces whilst still
mostly asleep, I told Sandy that we would just leave it there and deal with it
in the morning. One of us must have forgotten this little agreement and I
received quite an earful in the morning for my troubles. Our last breakfast was
much as it has been over the past couple of days, save for the tension that was
now in the air over the broken glass incident. Once again, however, I somehow
managed to survive the incident with most of my limbs
intact.
Whilst we waited for out
minivan to collect us and whisk us off to Phun Phin, I fired up the Internet
computer in reception for a spot of browsing in the meantime. As luck would have
it, the Bangkok Air web site was now fully functional again so I was quite
pleased about that. I was a little less than pleased to say the least when I
examined the airfares more closely again. When I had checked the airfares
previously, when we were back in Bangkok a few weeks ago, I had noted a one-way
fare for two people to be 5,200B (€100), which I had halved to get the
2,600B (€50) per person rate. The Bangkok Air web site, however, turns out
to be quite cheeky and shows the per person rate regardless of how many
passengers you specify. So, even though it returns a page that confirms
‘two passengers’ in huge, bold letters at the top of the page, the
rate displayed below is still the per person rate. This now means that a return
airfare for the two of us from Bangkok to Siem Reep in Cambodia will cost a
whopping €400. This is a significant amount of money and it’s
suddenly not quite so straightforward any more as regards to how we are going to
get to Siem Reep.
Our air-conditioned
minivan was to pick us up sometime between nine-thirty and nine-forty-five. We
finished breakfast by nine and checked out. Our three days of pampering in a
nicer than nice resort cost us a total of 5,648B (€108,61). Since we did
very little else whilst here, we ended up staying within our budget range after
all. Bonus!
We were still a bit early
after checking out and ended up waiting outside in the piercingly hot sun for
about twenty minutes before our ride finally showed up. There were only a couple
of other passengers already in the van and we managed to grab the nicer seats in
the front row, just behind the driver. After stopping at a couple of other
resorts, the van was soon full, all but one seat, and we set off for what turned
out to be a two and a half our thrill ride across the country’s Southern
peninsula to the East coast. Each time we get into a passenger vehicle, we end
up getting that one driver that seems hell bent on pushing the envelope as far
as possible and breaking all the previous records set by other lunatic speed
drivers. You become numb after a while even to the instantly recognisable sound
of near bald tires screeching around hairpin bends on steep inclines. At the end
of the day, there’s not much you can do but sit back, hold tight and hope
you have your will in order.
There
was a brief stop about two hours in but when we did finally arrive in Phun Phin,
we pried our fingernails out of the seat backs in front of us and stumbled out
of the vehicle. With a jolly ‘see, you’re still alive’ sort of
smile, our driver hopped back in and sped away to drop the remainder passengers
off in Surat Thani. I wonder if they made
it.
He had dropped us off right in
front of the train station and it took all of a minute or two to buy our
tickets. We booked passage on the very next departing air-conditioned sleeper
with one upper and one lower bunk for the combined price of 1,068B
(€20,54) – not bad for a twelve-hour sleeper train journey in an
air-conditioned carriage. The next departure wasn’t until about five in
the evening so this left us with several hours to kill. For just 10B
(€0,20) per bag, we left our backpacks at the luggage depot in the train
station and I consulted the guidebook about what there was to see and do in both
Phun Phin and Surat Thani - alas, absolutely
nothing.
We wandered around the small
town quite aimlessly for half an hour or so and I noted one or two Internet
cafés that might help soak up an a bit of time later. As this is the only
train station for miles around, it follows that there are Western tourists that
file through here from time to time and there was a scattering of travel agents
and dinettes dotted around the place to service this trade. We struck up a brief
conversation with one of the dinette workers and made a mental note to go back
there for a bite to eat later
on.
With little else to keep us
occupied, we escaped the heat in one of the Internet cafés but it took
quite a while before we could find a terminal that wasn’t so badly
afflicted by viruses and other malware that it was practically unusable. The
owner didn’t speak a word of English and his method of fixing the problem
each time was to switch on another dormant terminal and to direct us to that
one. After four or five terminals, we finally found one stable enough to use and
he started the 60B (€1,15) per hour clock running. I’m so glad I
have a Mac.
Sticking it out for a
functional computer was worth the wait in the end as I received an e-mail from
the Apple repair centre in Melbourne confirming that they had successfully
validated my laptop warranty and I was now free to make an appointment to bring
it in to be repaired. Yippee!
With
the taste of this small but very important victory still sweet in my mouth, we
went back to the dinette we stumbled into earlier to get a bite to eat. They had
a nice range of things on offer and the two of us and a good meal with drinks
for the grand sum of 180B (€3,46). For the next hour or so, we sat and
went through the guidebook some more to look for inspiration for how to spend
the rest of our time here in Thailand when we return from our jaunt over to
Cambodia. We are still waitlisted for a slightly later flight over to Sydney so
we may yet have time to pop into Laos and still have enough time to visit some
more of Thailand in addition to coming back down South for that Surin Island
live-aboard. Time will tell.
The
hands on the dinette wall clock slowly stretched farther towards our
train’s arrival and departure time and we moseyed over to the small train
station just across the road, collected our bags and went to find a spot on the
platform near where we expected our carriage to come to a
halt.
Our carriage is pretty much
identical to the one that brought us from Bangkok to Chumphon nearly three weeks
ago but this time we have a lower and upper bunk as opposed to two lower bunks.
Our train was quite a bit later departing than was planned and there were
several workmen trying to fix something under the train immediately beneath our
window. There must have been nearly a dozen men at one moment, all standing
around and looking extremely thoughtfully at whatever the problem was. It
didn’t give me a lot of comfort knowing that whatever it was, it was on
our carriage and right beneath where we were both going to be sleeping. If we
crash and this is the final log entry in this blog, you’ll know it was
something serious with the train.
Posted: Mon - November 22, 2004 at 07:40 PM