6:20 AM arrives very early it seems. I roll out, shower, and get ready to go. T calls me at about 6:55 telling me that she is leaving her house in the taxi, and just 10 minutes later they have arrived. I get my things downstairs, check-out and leave two bags with the hotel, and by 7:25 or so we are on our way. The traffic is medium, which is very light for BK. Yes, even at 7:30 on a Saturday morning there is still significant traffic. We arrive at the central BK train station. From the sign we can see that our train will leave from Track 10. However, the train has not yet arrived. I have not had anything to eat or any coffee yet, so I find a Dunkin Donuts and get a coffee and chocolate donut. I save the donut for later, but the coffee sure hits the spot. I also find a convenience store where I get copies of the two BK english language papers--the Bangkok Post, and The Nation. As I am walking out of the store it is 8:00 AM, and the PA system of the train station is playing the Thai national anthem. All persons, workers and customers alike, have stopped in their tracks and stand at attention while the anthem is being played. I also stand and wait.
I go back outside and find T. There are many people waiting for our train to Chiang Mai. The train station has lots of other trains heading in different directions to other parts of Thailand. The cost of my ticket to Chiang Mai is only 511B. This will include breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack, and the semi-reclining seat in an air conditioned car for the nearly 500 mile ride to Chiang Mai. The train is a diesel train--there are no power lines overhead. This train is called a "sprinter" train. I guess that is another word for express. It does not make all stops possible. However, it does make a lot of stops.
At about 8:20 the train arrives and we board. We have assigned seats, 43 and 44, in car 3. The seating is the usual 2 and 2, and each seat reclines partially, and there is a tray in the seat back on front of you. My only difficulty is that I am 6 ft tall, and the seats are a bit closer together than I would have liked. When the lady in the seat in front of me reclines her seat, I have to quickly move my legs out of the way!
The train makes several stops as it heads north out of BK, including a stop at the BK airport. That is certainly a good idea--to make it easy to connect between plane and train. At about 9:00 we are served breakfast. It is Thai food--no western eggs and toast here. But I am able to get some more coffee, and the meal serves its purpose. Gradually we get out of the exended city, but it takes quite a while.
The train makes pretty good time. Sometimes we are running parallel to a roadway, and I can see that we are going faster than the cars. The track is a bit bumpy, and my occasional visit to the toilet are an adventure, both in getting there, and using it. It is much different than the train travel I experienced in Japan and Korea, where the trains were electric, and the tracks were seamless.
By 12:10 we have made it to Nakhon Sawan; 1:20 to Phiuchit; 2:00 to Phitsanulok; and 3:00 to Uttaradit. So far so good, but then things start to slow down quite a bit. We are now going uphill, and the track bends its way up the hills. Instead ot perhaps the 100 kmh we were doing before, we are now doing 35 kmh. So, at 3:50 we have made it to Long Den Chai; 6:00 PM to Lampang; 7:50 to Lamphun; and finally we arrive in Chiang Mai at 8:05 PM, about 20 minutes late.
This is the end of the line and so everyone gets off. We walk into the main train terminal, where T finds a taxi, actually a so-called minibus, to take us and our stuff to our hotel. The ride takes about 15 minutes. Our hotel, the aptly named Downtown Inn, is just two blocks off the main market street. After dropping out stuff in our rooms we walk over to the main drag and find a restaurant for dinner. I am quite hungry. It has been a long time since lunch, which was served on the train at about 11:30 AM! While we are eating T is on her cellphone talking with some of her friends who are here in Chiang Mai for the weekend.
Soon after we finish our meal we walk out to the street and find that her friends in the car directly in front of us. So we get in the car, and I meet D and T who are from BK, and D who is a nurse here in Chiang Mai. They want to go to a bar, but we find out that most bars are closed because they cannot serve alcohol until 6:00 PM tomorrow. It is election day for mayor tomorrow, and so the town is dry until the polls are closed. We end up at the River Garden, the outdoor restaurant area of a hotel on the river. It was very pretty, and we sat and talked and drank soda and ate fruit. A band was playing but no one was dancing. Later when we left I waved to the band and gave them a thumbs-up. They were really pretty good, even if they were being ignored.
We got back to the hotel by about 11:00. I was pretty tired by now so I went to my room, watched a few minutes of TV, and then went to bed.
Had breakfast at hotel buffet-pretty good. Picked up by B, a customer of T, who has a weekend home here in CM. She was driving her full size pick-up truck with a back seat. She had with her 3 of her staff members, all youngish men around 30. B works in the HR dept. of an insurance company that is part of a larger comglomerate. B is a petite active woman nearing 60. She is a really nice person but it is difficult to ride in her car. She constantly accelerates and decelerates, no steady speed. But she seems to drive safely, and her truck is bigger than most other cars on the road.
We first go to Ban Ta Wai, a handicrafts bazaar that runs 3 or 4 blocks. Most of the items are made of wood. Lots of stuff, and very interesting. Nearby there was a funeral, and the funeral procession slowly walked thru the market area. The mourners were all wearing black, and they pulled a Buddhist shrine that was on a cart.
Afterwards we went to a hot springs. CM has several of them in the area. This one has pools for relaxing, a stream for dipping your feet into, and small pools to boil an egg if you like. They also have a couple geysers that run constantly, gushing perhaps 30 ft into the air, or more. They even have tents for overnite stays. We had lunch there.
We then went to B's weekend retreat in Mae On. She has a cute little house set on the side of a hill. Her brother also has a small house next door, and we went and met him and his wife also. B is having another larger house built in the CM area, and she plans to retire here soon. This seems to be a common plan of many folks in BK.
The 3 staff members are getting ready to head back to BK, and they give us a ride back to the hotel. B and her brother will drive back to BK tomorrow (Monday).
At 7:30 we are picked up by S and B. S is the sister of my friend P in Miami, and also the cousin of T. We go to a Kantoke dinner and dance show, which is presented at a cultural center.Kantoke is the customary northern Thailand style food and dance.. We are seated at a table, but many are sitting on the ground (with mats and pillows). Dinner is several dishes which are replenished as needed. It is all you can eat. The show is quite nice, and near the end they draft volunteers from the crowd to dance with them. I am drafted by one of the dancers and join perhaps 20 or more audience members as we try to imitate the moves of our hostess.
At the end of this show there is another, free, show of northern hill tribe dances in a nearby performance area of the center. As you go towards that area you pass several booths selling hill tribe artifacts, and also cute young children dressed up in customary hill tribe clothing. They are very cute. You can take a photo of/with them for 20B, and so I get a photo with a group of kids. Later, after the actual show, I get a photo with a 7 yr old boy who was sitting by himself for photos. No one had given him any attention. With the help of B I asked him his name and age, tried to get him to smile, and after the photo got him to give me 5. He seemed to loosen up a little. The actual dance show was rather subdued and short.
Afterwards S and B bring us back to the hotel, and S and T agree that S will come in the morning to take us to some other places.
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