After standing for the National Anthem at 8am, and once again alone, I brought a magazine (Closer Magazine does get delivered to Thailand, in case you were wondering), and a hazelnut iced coffee from the cafe, and sat and read. This felt like a real treat, a link to remind me that the western world still existed.
At about 10am, I went to an internet cafe and booked the hotel for Koh Samui, although at this point I didn’t think I would ever get there. When I returned to the station all the seats were taken so I set up camp on the floor, and actually had a pretty decent kip.
I got on the train at 12.45pm, disheartened by the fact that this sleeper train was nowhere near as nice as the first one I had travelled on. At 1pm, I was excited to see the back of Bangkok Station. Until I learnt there would be an hour’s delay.
By this point I was past getting disappointed or shocked. In fact if the train had of left on time, it wouldn’t have felt right.
Twelve hours after arriving at the station, I finally pulled away at about 2pm. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten since about 4pm the previous day, where I had popcorn at the cinema in Ho Chi Ming City. So I indulged myself and tucked into my picnic.
My seat wasn’t made into a bed until about 7pm, so for five hours I sat upright while I napped and read. All this interrupted of course by a local walking past every 10 minutes or so with a basket of questionable food or drink, pushing it under my noise, presumably trying to sell it to me.
I was in heaven when the man came to make my bunk up, and even though it was too bright to sleep at first, it felt lovely to have my very own bed and space to lie on, having been about 35 hours since I had been in my last hotel bed.
I woke up at midnight, after eventually drifting off, in a state of panic- what if I had missed my stop. The delay had thrown me off, and now I had no clue what time I was suppose to get off. Luckily for me, the guard was on the ball, and shook my bunk just as we pulled into my stop at 1.30am.
I had arrived in a ghost town. As an atheist I don’t generally pray, but I did that night as I hoped to God there would be a hotel open at that time in the morning. Either God was up too, and heard me, or it was just handy that the Queen Hotel was open all night, either way I didn’t care. I made my way there and at 350BT for an air conditioned double room I was a happy bloody camper.
Shortly after entering the room, I soon realised this was overpriced. The bed was like a metal box, with grotty, old, worn sheets, the toilet had no seat, was filthy and didn’t flush and the sink had one manky tap that leaked yellow water, while the shower consisted of a hose pipe, with cold water coming out of it. Since I hadn’t showered for nearly two days though, I bitted the bullet and had a rinse down.
I had never experienced bed bugs before, or even been that concerned about them, but that night I lay awake imagining tiny bugs crawling all over my body. I did use my sleeping bag liner, but that didn’t ease my paranoia.