Thursday, December 9, 2004 (Train from Surat Thani to Bangkok -
Thailand)
How do you explain the difference between soft
and hard boiled eggs using nothing but sign language? What kind of a bus will it
be today? Tempting fate with the overnight journey back to Bangkok. So very
close to achieving our original goal of travelling. The hunters moving in for
the kill.
Day 276 (86). Indeed I also had a peaceful
night and was able to swing into action at my own pace this morning with Sandy
leaving me to my own devices, other than reminding me of the time and our
impending need to vacate our room. We took our time packing before going down to
the dining area to enjoy one last breakfast on the house. We had a long bus ride
ahead of us later this morning and I thought I’d try my luck at fixing
myself some hard-boiled egg sandwiches whilst at breakfast. I’ve had
intermittent luck with the kitchen staff understanding the concept of
hard-boiled eggs and they’ve now taken to asking me how many minutes
instead. It’s difficult to make sandwiches with soft-boiled eggs so told
the cook to boil three eggs for five whole minutes. They came out and I tried
the first egg but it was still very runny inside so I took the other two back
and asked to have them boiled for an additional three minutes. After a while,
two more eggs appeared but once again both were very runny. I think they must
have dumped the previous eggs and boiled another two for just three minutes.
Either way, breakfast (and lunch for that matter) was now a complete right off,
thanks to the ever-present communications barrier. Most people here appear to
understand English but a lot of the time it’s nothing more than an outward
appearance. After a while, you start to realise that many of the Thai people
will nod and say yes when they really didn’t understand what you said to
begin with. In some cases, they will start to answer with ‘yes’ and
a nod regardless of the question that’s posed. It can be frustrating and
at times, like today, it can result in simply having to give up and cutting your
loses.
We checked out and waited for
our taxi to arrive. The very helpful young woman at one of the travel agent
outlets in town had arranged for us to be collected and brought to the bus stop
this morning. True to her word, a taxi showed up precisely on time and for 60B
(€1,15), drove us the half a kilometre or so up the hill and into town.
The travel agent woman was a bit hazy on the precise time we should expect the
bus and the best we could muster from her after several attempts was sometime
between having just missed it to later on this afternoon. We waited for probably
about an hour out in the heat of the day and after four different buses had
passed without stopping, I was starting to get worried. It wasn’t clear
what sort of bus it was that we were supposed to flag down. The public buses
range in size and quality and the price you pay for a given journey usually
depends on how comfortable the ride is. The public bus that brought us here this
time around was a dilapidated rattletrap that was falling apart at the seams. We
only paid 80B (€1,54) each for the three and a half hour trip on that
contraption and I was expecting something similar this time. The bus that
eventually stopped, however, was a much nicer one that was completely air tight
and with a functional air-conditioning system. Our fare on this bus was 120B
(€2,31) each but we were happy to part with that for the more comfortable
ride. The three and a half hour trip over to Surat Thani on the East coast was
otherwise uneventful and rather
boring.
Southern Thailand boasts just
one railway line that runs the length of the Southern peninsular and it only
runs down the East coast. Surat Thani is the most conveniently located town with
a train station to Khao Lak and we were taking a bit of a risk by just heading
out East in the hope of being able to book a couple of overnight berths on one
of the several night trains that traverse the Southern half of the country each
day. We’re well into December and it’s now officially high season
here so it is anyone’s guess as to whether we will be able to book passage
on the train or not. Luckily, there were just a couple of sleeper berths left on
the nine forty-five train but even these were not close to each other. Beggars
can’t be choosers, however, so I booked the two seats quickly. I should be
thankful that we got tickets at all but it’s still very annoying that we
will have to hang around for seven hours before our train departed. There was a
possible silver lining in that the ticket clerk told us to come back in an hour
or so to see if there were any cancellations on one of the earlier departures.
If so, we might be able to switch to an earlier train and stave off the boring
wait here in Surat Thani. In the meantime, Sandy had bought an international
phone card a week or so ago but we’ve not yet had the chance to try it
out. With plenty of time on our hands, I found a payphone and tried to call
Ree-Ree in Australia. The phone card worked a treat with just one little snag. I
could hear them on the other end of the line but they couldn’t hear me. I
thought it might be a problem with the mouthpiece on the public phone I was
using so I tried another, and then another, and another and another. It was the
same story on all the phones at the train station and by now, Ree-Ree must have
been wondering what on earth was going on with all these calls and nobody on the
line. All the phones I tried to use the phone card from were from the same
company and I had a sneaky suspicion that these phones were somehow fixed so
that you couldn’t use phone calling cards from them – perhaps a ploy
to encourage people to buy a specific type of calling card. Not content to allow
myself to be beaten by this ploy, I set out into town to try to find another
type of payphone. My suspicions were confirmed when I finally found a
nondescript payphone and was able to make a good connection without any problems
at all. Nobody puts one over on Uncle Chris for very
long!
Although I tried my best to
keep my composure, inside I was ecstatic to speak with Ree-Ree at last. The
whole reason behind this trip was a deep-rooted desire to get out to Australia
to visit her to begin with. Our travel ambitions kept growing and growing after
we initially started to research the trip and it has grown exponentially into
the huge epic journey that it has become. Still, I’ve not lost sight of
why we are here to begin with and we are now tantalisingly close to achieving
our original goal of visiting my beloved second cousin in Melbourne, not to
mention finally seeing Australia. Ree-Ree lived with us for several years when I
was young and in my mind, I still think of her as a big sister. In some ways, it
almost feels like we are going home, even though neither of us has been to this
part of the world before. I dare say it will be a very emotional meeting when
the time comes. I’m welling up now just thinking about
it.
With the calling card working so
well at this other payphone, I also took the opportunity to call a few relatives
back home in England. It was the first time I spoke to Mother since departing
from England several months ago and I was particularly pleased to hear that both
her and Dad were doing very well and that they were in high spirits. When we
left the UK, I had a distinct desire to get out and see the world without being
tethered to our former lives by means of constantly remaining in touch with
everybody back home. Indeed I used to frown at Sandy each time she wanted to
call back home herself. I still think it a good thing to be travelling without
clinging to our former lives but I have to admit it was nice to speak with Mum
and Dad again, even if for just
briefly.
In an attempt to try to kill
some more time, I wandered around the markets of Surat Thani for a while and
bumped into Sandy who had apparently been looking for me for the past ten
minutes. It turns out that there was a cancellation on one of the earlier
departures after all and we had to go back to the station to exchange our
tickets. For an additional 50B (€0,96) per ticket, we could switch to the
five-forty departure with an estimated arrival time in Bangkok of six-fifteen
tomorrow morning. I handed over a 100B note and we ended up paying a grand total
of 1,192B (€22,93) for our two sleeper berths on the twelve-hour,
overnight journey into Bangkok.
For
some unknown reason, I've quite taken to pot noodles since we arrive here in
Thailand. For someone with a self-professed disliking for pasta, I can’t
really explain this but I popped over to the nearby supermarket to stock up on
some for the trip.
Shortly before our
train arrived, another pulled in and several backpackers disembarked. We were
sitting in the waiting area when they passed through and I got a real kick out
of observing all the taxi and travel agent touts latching onto them with
lightning speed. A couple of them were tag-teaming against a couple of female
backpackers and it felt very much like watching a natural history program where
the hunter would single out the weakest of the herd and move in for the kill.
This time, however, the backpacking girls were having none of it and the touts
were sent on their merry way without making the kill. Perhaps they will capture
their prey on the next arriving train
instead.
We’ve been sitting on
the train now for a few hours already and I’ve nearly depleted my first
laptop battery by playing games and writing up my journal. I received an e-mail
from Lisa, probably the most devout follower of my writing, the other day and
she was light-heartedly complaining about me writing too much and the fact that
she is backlogged by a couple of weeks. I’m very tempted to lay the laptop
to rest for the three weeks or so over the Christmas and New Year period that we
will be spending with Ree-Ree. Technically, we won’t be travelling during
that period so this is definitely something I will be giving some serious
consideration to. The downside is that I will miss out on putting down in words
our first impressions of the country after our arrival. I’m still
undecided.
Posted: Thu - December
9, 2004 at 12:14 PM