I woke up at 9am feeling very tired and worn out, I’d caught a bit of heat stroke which explained my exhaustion yesterday, or was it the stress of the markets? (I do hate markets). I needed food fast, I decided to eat in the hotel and paid 130 baht for the buffet breakfast. JOOK! Congee was available! For those unaware of this Asian breakfast item, it’s like a savoury rice pudding, but without the milk and using a stock instead, very more-ish and very tasty. I pretty much devoured the entire buffet selection and felt A LOT better for it.

I had 7 hours to kill before my train to Chiang Mai, so I decided to drop my bags off at the reception and headed off towards the malls of Silom. I was convinced that today would be the day for shopping!

4 hours later…

NOPE! I still hadn’t bought a single thing!

3 hours to go and maybe I could still catch a visit to the Grand Palace, so I jumped on a Sky train to the pier in order to catch the Orange Express boat for 15 baht. I thought I’d save some money by buying an all day ticket for 150baht, that way I didn’t have to think about buying another ticket for the return journey and I could jump on and off at any pier. With my crisp 500 baht note in hand, I approached a little old lady selling tickets. I seems that you didn’t have a choice of what ticket you could buy and the ever growingly peeved senior citizen gave me a look of discontent and issued me with a 15 baht ticket and a hell of a lot of change! Tail between my legs, I sat on the stone benches and waited for the boat to arrive.

Fun Fact of the Day: Did you know that the Grand Palace closes its doors at 4pm?

I arrived Grand Palace pier at 4.05pm. I was a little too late too see Bangkok’s biggest tourist attraction, but with time to kill and made the best of a bad situation and decided to walk the perimeter wall like a Chinese intelligence spy, taking photos of the outer walls and looking for a weakness in to the sacred realm, here’s an example…

30 sweaty minutes later, mission complete and I was back on the boat making my escape.

I got to Hua Lamphong train station at 6pm and I had an hour and a half wait until my train arrived. So I sat on the floor in the middle of the station along with all the other backpackers. A small Thai toddler was roaming the floor, needlessly interacting with every other baby and… me apparently. Children under the age of 7 seem to naturally gravitate towards and as uncomfortable as it can be I’m unable to ignore them. This particular child was apparently interested in my reading material, manga, it was a little embarrassing at the time so I put it away… But it was too late… I was on her list and should would… not… leave… me ALONE! Eventually she got the message and went back to interfering with the other kids of her ‘own age’.

7pm and I decided to head to the platform. They were changing the sign to say ‘Chiang Mai, 7.35’… Oh how that sign lied!

If it wasn’t for m…

NOSE BLEED ALERT!!!! (on writing this entry whilst on the train, my nose decided to play its part in my ‘single traveller amongst many groups’ journey) Evidence below…

Anyway, the train ended up being 2.5 hours late and it was at that point that I’d realised that sweatiness was the general norm around these parts and there was no point in trying to stay dry and fresh.

During my long long wait I managed to chat to a couple of randoms, but mostly just to clarify the situation. There was a creepy man who seemed to be a regular traveller to Chiang Mai, he was friendly, but very weird too, in that ‘you’re way to old to be still doing this kind of stuff’ kind of way.

Eventually the right train arrived and I managed to board it with no issue, only to find that I was surrounded by French, Chinese and German voices… where… were… the English in this country???!

Did I mention that this was a sleeper train? Yep, it was a 13/15 hour journey to northern Thailand and I was alone in a carriage with no one to talk to. But I did discover one good thing, the bed fitted! The bad thing?.. no sleep could ever be achieved on a rickety train, unless the soothing vibrations of a moderate earthquake is what you’d consider calming, then it was a delightful snooze.

I got very little sleep, but guess who ordered congee for breakfast??? Yummy stuff again.

As with most train bathroom facilities, number twos were a no-go, It was definitely number 1 territory only. To help strengthen the stereotype, the Chinese group had awoken early and were brushing their teeth. They seemed strangely obsessed with teeth brushing, I didn’t bother to ask them why.

9am and this was the point that I had my nose bleed, I had no idea where it came from (my nose obviously) but after 10 minutes it finally managed to subside. By this point I really need to get off the train and in to Chiang Mai and have a shower… Wet wiping my armpits just didn’t have that same refreshing effect as mint scented shower gel.