I had to set the alarm to wake me up at 10:00, breakfast closed at 10:30 and I didn't want to miss it, you never know when your next meal is gonna be so I always make sure to start the day with a strong breakfast.
With a full stomach and sleeping well problems tend to look more like challenges rather than real problems.
Today, or rather tonight I'll be catching the night train to Chiang Mai and this time I'll be travelling in first class!
First class you may be wondering.
I can almost hear you thinking, What does a budget concious person like myself travelling First class?
Well...not my choice I must admit, it was the only class available for today (and I bought the ticket on the internet a week ago).
But fear not my dear reader, on the way back I'll be travelling in second class...with the people and for the people! :-)
I'll try to make a full report on travelling first class vs second class in Thailand. Who knows, someone may find it useful.
Anyway, as I promised yesterday, the pictures from the hotel roof showing the swimming pool and the gym.
I'd wish I could just chill out here for a little bit but a,s I had a late start today, I needed to find something to do until it was time to head for the night train so I decided to go for a short walk nearby and to pay a visit to to the closes shopping centre.
I know, it sounds a bit like a waste of time when I could be visiting the temples for example but...
1.- It is too hot and humid to be outside, if you need to do any activity during the day (like tourism) you ought to do it firt thing in the morning.
2.- I need to get a portable keyboard because the one I'm using is a, total pain in the butt, it takes twice as long to write anything.
3.- I also needed to find a place to have lunch.
You can alway opt in for the "street cuissine"
Although that's probably the easiest way to spend a couple of days in bed, or not...it's like the lottery you need to play to win it ;-)
There is a wide range of foods available from fruits, hot dogs, some thai curries all the way to fried ants, grass hoppers and the like (I kid you not).
I caught the sky train at Nana (the closest station)
It reminds me of the DLR in London.
The shopping centre turned out to be an interesting place. There was a thai group playing and judging by the number of teenage girls among the public together with a bunch of reporters taking photos like there is no tomorrow, they must have been quite famous.
and this is how they sounded
They even had an ice ring
what they did not have though was a portable keyboard. :-( so it looks like I'm gonna be stuck with this one for a while...
I took the below picture for those of you who have never seen written thai and are curious about it.
That's the reason why when you give a taxi driver a piece of paper with the address (in english) of the place you wanna go to, they sometimes, tell you they can't read it and that picture above is the reason why. It's not iliteracy it's simply that they have a *very* different alphabet.
When it was time to go to the train station I went back to the hotel and asked them to keep the larger rucksack for me until the 15th when I'll be back.
That way I'll only need to carry the smaller rucksack to Chiang Mai.
In order to get to the railways station I had to take the sky train and then the underground.
I think is worth mentioning this. Make sure you always have a jumper at hand when you walk about because shopping centres, cinemas, over and under ground trains, stations and, in general any enclosed space is always FREZZING. If you were to die in one of those places your body would be preserved for months. Let me say it again...Absolutely FREZZING...
Finally I made it to the Hua Lumphong railways train station.
The carriage car is small and cousy as you can see below,
That's first class... they do provide bed linen once the train starts, no need to carry a sleeping bag with you. It's first class after all... :-)
The only problem is that they bought the trains from Japan. How do I know that? well... it seems they have forgotten to translate all the instructions up on the wall.
All modern cons included,
Plus of course the air-con at full blast for better body preservation in case of premature death!
I was warmer in Sweden at -20C!
It looks like the only difference between 1st and 2nd class is that on 2nd you don't have your own private room. You get to share it with a bunch of extrangers... I just hope they don't snore!
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