Heading South
Poorly Toes!!!!Monday 16 October
We slept well last night, back in proper beds in an air-conditioned environment and woke feeling refreshed. We planned to do nothing very energetic today, so strolled to breakfast around 09.00 (reminiscent of the hours we kept on Koh Samui), and spent a leisurely hour enjoying some good food and reading the newspaper over several cups of tea.
The first task of the day was to redress my toes! I wasn’t looking forward to doing this, but setting out our pharmacy on the desk – bandages, gauze dressings, alcohol (only to clean the toes, not the yummy stuff), cotton buds, micropore tape and anti-infection pills - I gritted my teeth, and set to work removing the bandages. One toe was doing quite well (the left one that had been turquoise), but the other is very inflamed and still quite sore. The dressings and bandages were much easier to apply than I had thought (all my training with the Red Cross when I was at school came in useful).
The second task was to see if we could publish the blogs - a major mission as the entries were mounting up now (about five covering our time in Chiang Mai and the jungle) and it takes quite a while to issue each one – but we were in luck, and with a lot of patience, we managed to get all five on the blog.
We then repacked our cases (I think we will look for jobs as professional case packers when we get back if we need to earn a few scheckels, as we have done this so many times in the past three months - although getting everything in is still requires major organisation) and then booked out of our room by midday. Now it was time then to see if our laundry was ready at the computer games shop up the street – we were not leaving the hotel until 16.00 so had a bit of leeway, but I hoped it wasn’t still hanging on the line to dry. I needn’t have worried – it was all packed in our carrier bag on the counter for a cost of 490 bahts – about 40 items for 7 GBP. Some of the grime from the trek and the river still stained a couple of my pale coloured Tshirts, but that was only to be expected – they had been filthy, wet and smelly – but everything was flat packed, which we were able to put straight into the already bulging cases – I don’t know how we are going to get through Singapore Airport, but that’s still a couple of weeks away.
How to pass the next three and a half hours – firstly sit round the pool and do the competitions in the Bangkok Post and watch Warren in the pool (sadly I cannot swim at the moment as I mustn’t get my toes wet – but I want them to be better by the time we go ‘tubing’ in a couple of days) and then eat a substantial lunch, as we are traveling on yet another train tonight. We chose the Princess Café in the hotel so I didn’t have far to walk, and where we had eaten on our last visit. Colin chose a cheese burger, with chips and salad, while I had shrimp (like our large tiger prawns) and tuna salad with chips. We both had ‘tarts’ for desserts, almond for Colin and walnut for me. Finishing with cappuccinos and tea, we felt completely ‘stuffed’ – which is a good job, as we get off the train around 05.30 tomorrow morning and still have another couple of hours traveling before we get breakfast.
There was just enough time to write three very important postcards to the grandchildren, before our allotted meeting time with the group. Tim, Simone and Warren had been on a quick tour of Bangkok this morning, on the canals (where they saw the King’s barge being towed along), and around the Grand Palace and Wat Po Temple – all in less than four hours! Linda, Jill and Phil had been to the MBK shopping centre again, this time purchasing jewellery and MP3 players. Nok arrived promptly at 16.00 with taxis in tow, to take us to the railway station – had all our griping about using tut-tuts everywhere last night made an impression? The first four taxis (out of five) arrived about the same time at the station, but the fifth containing Tim and Simone didn’t. Nok was on her phone trying to trace the taxi, getting really quite concerned – less than half an hour into the journey, as she had lost two of her team! She needn’t have worried though, about ten minutes later (our journeys took less than fifteen minutes), they rolled up in their taxi, having been taken by the scenic route.
The bad news was that the train to Surat Thani would be late (how unusual is that for Thai trains!) and would not even arrive at the station until around 18.00 – the time now was 16.30! We wandered round the station while Nok looked after all the luggage, but there is not a lot to do on Bangkok station and no seats available (all the locals just squat on the floor), so we had to resort to sitting on the bases of trolleys. A little girl aged about 4 years old came and befriended us, chatting away in Thai and singing to us – she thought it very funny that we couldn’t understand what she said or reply to her questions. She was also quite entranced by the beads on my Tshirt and we were fascinated by her painted nails – each weeny nail was painted in quarters – red, blue, green and yellow. We later noticed that her granny also had her nails painted in this fashion.
Eventually our train rolled into the station about 18.30 – it was supposed to leave at 18.20, and we clambered aboard with all the luggage. This train was the same style as the train we traveled to Chiang Mai on, with luggage racks down the sides of the seats, but in much poorer condition and it looked very uninviting. It was already dark outside and with the top bunks already down, each section seemed like a condemned man’s cell! But soon after we were all on the train, the carriage attendant came along and raised the top bunks and the lights in the central corridor lit the compartments. We all settled into our seats with our luggage securely tied to the racks, by the time the train left Bangkok about 18.50. The carriage was open plan, with seat/sleeping areas along the sides of the train, not across – and not sectioned off in compartments as with the Berlin trains. It did mean that we could all still chat together along the journey (although unfortunately these seats were not too far from the loos – both of which were the smelly squat version). The start of the journey was very slow – stop / start / stop / start – for about an hour, sometimes stopping at a small station to collect some other passengers, sometimes just in the middle of nowhere. We ate only a few crisps before our beds were turned down and we all retired for the night. Later the train speeded up considerably, and we were fairly bumping along the rails, bouncing up and down in our beds and I wondered if we would be able to say on the track. It seemed a very long night – I didn’t sleep that well and alternatively read for a while, and listened to my MP4 player to pass the time. Our last train journey of this tour will be from Kuala Lumpar to Singapore, so let’s hope the train is more modern.
We slept well last night, back in proper beds in an air-conditioned environment and woke feeling refreshed. We planned to do nothing very energetic today, so strolled to breakfast around 09.00 (reminiscent of the hours we kept on Koh Samui), and spent a leisurely hour enjoying some good food and reading the newspaper over several cups of tea.
The first task of the day was to redress my toes! I wasn’t looking forward to doing this, but setting out our pharmacy on the desk – bandages, gauze dressings, alcohol (only to clean the toes, not the yummy stuff), cotton buds, micropore tape and anti-infection pills - I gritted my teeth, and set to work removing the bandages. One toe was doing quite well (the left one that had been turquoise), but the other is very inflamed and still quite sore. The dressings and bandages were much easier to apply than I had thought (all my training with the Red Cross when I was at school came in useful).
The second task was to see if we could publish the blogs - a major mission as the entries were mounting up now (about five covering our time in Chiang Mai and the jungle) and it takes quite a while to issue each one – but we were in luck, and with a lot of patience, we managed to get all five on the blog.
We then repacked our cases (I think we will look for jobs as professional case packers when we get back if we need to earn a few scheckels, as we have done this so many times in the past three months - although getting everything in is still requires major organisation) and then booked out of our room by midday. Now it was time then to see if our laundry was ready at the computer games shop up the street – we were not leaving the hotel until 16.00 so had a bit of leeway, but I hoped it wasn’t still hanging on the line to dry. I needn’t have worried – it was all packed in our carrier bag on the counter for a cost of 490 bahts – about 40 items for 7 GBP. Some of the grime from the trek and the river still stained a couple of my pale coloured Tshirts, but that was only to be expected – they had been filthy, wet and smelly – but everything was flat packed, which we were able to put straight into the already bulging cases – I don’t know how we are going to get through Singapore Airport, but that’s still a couple of weeks away.
How to pass the next three and a half hours – firstly sit round the pool and do the competitions in the Bangkok Post and watch Warren in the pool (sadly I cannot swim at the moment as I mustn’t get my toes wet – but I want them to be better by the time we go ‘tubing’ in a couple of days) and then eat a substantial lunch, as we are traveling on yet another train tonight. We chose the Princess Café in the hotel so I didn’t have far to walk, and where we had eaten on our last visit. Colin chose a cheese burger, with chips and salad, while I had shrimp (like our large tiger prawns) and tuna salad with chips. We both had ‘tarts’ for desserts, almond for Colin and walnut for me. Finishing with cappuccinos and tea, we felt completely ‘stuffed’ – which is a good job, as we get off the train around 05.30 tomorrow morning and still have another couple of hours traveling before we get breakfast.
There was just enough time to write three very important postcards to the grandchildren, before our allotted meeting time with the group. Tim, Simone and Warren had been on a quick tour of Bangkok this morning, on the canals (where they saw the King’s barge being towed along), and around the Grand Palace and Wat Po Temple – all in less than four hours! Linda, Jill and Phil had been to the MBK shopping centre again, this time purchasing jewellery and MP3 players. Nok arrived promptly at 16.00 with taxis in tow, to take us to the railway station – had all our griping about using tut-tuts everywhere last night made an impression? The first four taxis (out of five) arrived about the same time at the station, but the fifth containing Tim and Simone didn’t. Nok was on her phone trying to trace the taxi, getting really quite concerned – less than half an hour into the journey, as she had lost two of her team! She needn’t have worried though, about ten minutes later (our journeys took less than fifteen minutes), they rolled up in their taxi, having been taken by the scenic route.
The bad news was that the train to Surat Thani would be late (how unusual is that for Thai trains!) and would not even arrive at the station until around 18.00 – the time now was 16.30! We wandered round the station while Nok looked after all the luggage, but there is not a lot to do on Bangkok station and no seats available (all the locals just squat on the floor), so we had to resort to sitting on the bases of trolleys. A little girl aged about 4 years old came and befriended us, chatting away in Thai and singing to us – she thought it very funny that we couldn’t understand what she said or reply to her questions. She was also quite entranced by the beads on my Tshirt and we were fascinated by her painted nails – each weeny nail was painted in quarters – red, blue, green and yellow. We later noticed that her granny also had her nails painted in this fashion.
Eventually our train rolled into the station about 18.30 – it was supposed to leave at 18.20, and we clambered aboard with all the luggage. This train was the same style as the train we traveled to Chiang Mai on, with luggage racks down the sides of the seats, but in much poorer condition and it looked very uninviting. It was already dark outside and with the top bunks already down, each section seemed like a condemned man’s cell! But soon after we were all on the train, the carriage attendant came along and raised the top bunks and the lights in the central corridor lit the compartments. We all settled into our seats with our luggage securely tied to the racks, by the time the train left Bangkok about 18.50. The carriage was open plan, with seat/sleeping areas along the sides of the train, not across – and not sectioned off in compartments as with the Berlin trains. It did mean that we could all still chat together along the journey (although unfortunately these seats were not too far from the loos – both of which were the smelly squat version). The start of the journey was very slow – stop / start / stop / start – for about an hour, sometimes stopping at a small station to collect some other passengers, sometimes just in the middle of nowhere. We ate only a few crisps before our beds were turned down and we all retired for the night. Later the train speeded up considerably, and we were fairly bumping along the rails, bouncing up and down in our beds and I wondered if we would be able to say on the track. It seemed a very long night – I didn’t sleep that well and alternatively read for a while, and listened to my MP4 player to pass the time. Our last train journey of this tour will be from Kuala Lumpar to Singapore, so let’s hope the train is more modern.
posted by steffiontour @ 7:42 AM
0 comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home