We decided after our stay in Chiang Mai that we should head south towards some of the island areas along the western coast of the Gulf of Thailand. We booked our ticket at the Chiang Mai station and went with the expert guidance that is available through the blog at http://www.seat61.com . If you want to know anything about train travel throughout the globe you have to visit this blog.
We booked an over night trip leaving at 400 PM with a scheduled arrival in Bangkok at 630 Am. The train left promptly at 4 and arrived only 15 minutes past it’s scheduled arrival time.
I have taken some photos of the various facilities throughout the train and the different classes of tickets and their amenities. The sinks above are the ones available for the second and I believe third class as well.
We ended up booking a first class fare and actually taking two singles with an adjoining door. We left our booking until the day of travel which wasn’t the wisest of things to do. We had to pay a bit more than we would have had to for a double however we got on the train that we wanted to be on.
The above bunk room set up is for second class if it has a door and third class if it doesn’t. The train attendant comes by in the evening and prepares the bed for sleeping with clean linen.
After we returned from the dining room ( I’ll try and post a video of the bar/dining room later as this is something that one must experience – it made the evening ) rooms were already made up for us. Actual sleeping was a bit tough if you are a light sleeper as the rails are not smooth at all and is quite hard to get a good nights sleep.
The above ticket shows the particular of our over night trip. The below shows the train that we took in the morning to travel to Hua Hin. It was 4 hour train ride and only cost us 44 Bhat or $1.50 Canadian each. Extremely cheap and a excellent way to travel.
Below is a picture of the commuter train from Bangkok to Hua Hin. Limited amenities, no AC, open windows and bathrooms that are a bit be desired both in cleanliness and in their ability to protect the environment if you know what I mean – no holding tanks. There were numerous vendors that continuously tried to sell their wares, food and drinks so there is ample opportunity to have lunch and snacks while inboard.
Nice article. I will travel on train from Singapore to Bangkok next month, including the Jungle Railway through east Malaysia! 😮 http://backpackerlee.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/lions-and-tigers-and-bears-oh-chiang-mai/