Night Train

Robert and Kate and Ian and I arrived in Bangkok this morning at 7:00am, twelve hours after stepping onto the night train in Lampang. Without a doubt, Thailand's second-class sleeper trains are the best second-class sleeper trains in the world. When you first get on the train, you find pairs of seats facing each other on either side of a center aisle. To make things a little interesting when walking down a lurching train car, interspersed from side to side in the aisle are luggage racks with two shelves, one close to the floor and one high up, at the level of the soon-to-appear upper bunks. After you've shared your two large Singha beers (pronounced, surprisingly, Sing, although the water bottled by the same company is pronounced Sing-ha, just like you'd expect) with your friends, the friendly train man comes down the aisle to you and asks if you'd like your beds made up. You nod, say /kap kun ka/ (if you're me or Kate), and step out of the way. The friendly train man proceeds to lift and snap various bits of your seat into place so most of it forms a bed and two parts form shelves, one on each end. Under one shelf, formerly the head rest of a seat, appears your own private reading light, which works. He then proceeds to unhook from the ceiling what hitherto appeared to be merely the curvy shape of the train, and turn it into a top bunk. From the bunk he takes a rolled foam pad and unrolls it onto the lower bunk, at the same time flourishing a crisp, clean white sheet over and around it to form the lower part of a comfortable bed. He then flourishes an equally crisp and clean pillow case aroung a pillow retrieved from the top bunk, and places a soft, lofty white blanket--still sealed in its cleaner bag--in the center of the bed. Lastly, he unfolds a long curtain and hooks it, six inches by six inches, onto a narrow curtain rail at the edge of the top bunk. Voila; bed. I slept six hours without waking once, or even changing my position. That's actually much better than I can say for general life in my bed in Seattle.