The Long Train + Monk Smack
So our time in Chiang Mai has come to an end. After much umm-ing and err-ing, rather than stay in Chiang Mai and pay to extend our visas, find more home-swaps and face mounting hotel prices due to the combined Yi Peng (sky lantern) and Loy Krathong (light) festivals, we have decided to bring our plans forward and hot-foot it straight to Vietnam.
Ever since we visited for the first time last year, taking in Ho Chi Minh, Nha Trang, Hoi An, Hanoi and (briefly) Da Nang, we always knew that we desperately wanted to return to Vietnam, and that it would be the magnet of this whole journey, drawing us there through Thailand, with possibly Malaysia, Cambodia or Laos before. Well, the pull was too strong, so whilst still in Chiang Mai we applied for our 90-day visas, putting ourselves through a stressful few hours navigating the Vietnam state’s visa application website, sweatily and swearily crossing every ’t’ and dotting every ‘i’, sometimes with not a little risk to myself and R’s marriage (“But we didn’t write it like that on the last one! They have to be identical!” “It’s just a fucking comma! Surely they won’t give two shits about a comma?!”), and they were submitted. Just to give further illumination on this, the first time we tried we got halfway through (with the aid of YouTube vids and asking for help from the AI overlords) and the website crashed, then we switched to a different browser, which helped…. Until we did mine, the last one. I think we went through mine half a dozen times, each time getting right up to the end/payment section before the site decided to go fuck-up… Still, seventh time’s the charm.
The next step was to make our way to Bangkok, as as soon as our visas came through (fingers being very much constantly subconsciously crossed) we would book flights and get outta there - no disrespect to Thailand…
To get from the country’s second city of Chiang Mai (which we had really enjoyed; it’s got an ‘ocean’ vibe despite being nowhere near the coast) to the capital of Bangkok (not enjoyed so much; mega-busy), we booked a 13-hour train ride, leaving Chiang Mai station at 6:30 in the morning and arriving in Bangkok at 7:30 in the evening. Seeing as we booked the train tickets on the late-side (the day before), we didn’t have much choice with regards to the seats, so we were split into pairs. As is our custom we boarded, lugged our big bags up onto the luggage shelf and settled-down, only to then be told that we were in fact in the wrong carriage (but it said ‘3’ on the outside! On the outside!). So then we re-lugged our bags down three carriages, and a very kind young man (I feel like my nan saying that) kindly moved so that we could - for the time being, at least - sit together.
I feel that there is much to say about the train ride and yet little. It was a test in patience and increasing encroachments into personal space, and just as always happens when faced with a long journey in a single space, time became loose and unconnected to anything, like we were travelling through a black hole, rather than the Thai countryside. Before too long we had been on there for six hours; simultaneously seeming like we’d just left and at the same time that we had spent our whole lives in this carriage. When the 8-hour mark came and went I found it weird to note that we’d spent a whole working-day on there, and because of the early hour of the departing it was still only mid-afternoon.
I was looking forward to sitting on the roof…
Quite an interesting incident happened in the last ‘quadrant’ of the journey. There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just state exactly what happened: I saw a monk smack a guy round the head.
I’m not sure exactly when they got on - I may have either been dozing, reading or deeply inside my mental album collection at this point - but at some point I looked up and my mind registered that only a couple of rows in front of me sat a monk, maybe in his sixties or seventies, in traditional orange robes. On the floor in front of him was a slightly younger guy, almost leaning on his legs. Initially I thought that the sitting guy might have been there to accompany the monk, but after on reflection I think it was most likely the other way round. The issue began when the younger guy habitually stretched out a hand to admonish a young foursome in the set of seats opposite them. It happened a few times over a half-hour period or so, where he would frantically ‘tap’ one of the people over from them - a young woman in her late teens or early twenties - I’m guessing because he thought they were being loud, or generally disrespectful? Not sure if either is true, seeing as the train was generally not a pin-drop quiet environment anyway, but after the third or fourth time, the monk had had enough and, in a smooth and impressively timed movement, arced his hand up and brought it round on the side of the guy’s head. Hard. What a monk.
Shortly after a train guard came and escorted the young guy away, and a woman sitting next to us bought some food (from one of the vendors that frequently made their way up and down the carriages, their hard-practiced voices cutting through the train-noise so that all knew that various rice-and-egg dishes were available to purchase, as well as water and soft drinks) and sent it to the monk, along with a Fanta. Monks love Fanta - fact.
And before too long, we pulled into the very busy, the very hectic, Krung Thep Aphiwat train station, to begin our time in limbo, waiting on our visas.