the International Express to Butterworth

Travel Truth #6: Don't trust the hype, whether good or bad. 

One of the things that's always bedeviled my travels is the tendency of other travelers to twitter with needless positiveness about things that really gargle balls. 

The Man in Seat 61 asserts that you've no need to reserve a first-class sleeper on the Thai-Malaysia train, 'cause the second-class sleepers are excellent and serviceable. It was definitely the latter, but not the former. I had a comfy seat in the daytime, and delicious train food, but my upper berth had barely enough room to roll over. If you do decide to travel second-class on the run from Bangkok to Butterworth, make sure to get a spacious lower berth with a window. That's all I'm going to say. 

On Sunday, July 27, I awoke at 8, showered, breakfasted, exchanged two hundred dollars for 634 Malaysian ringgit, and was set to go by 9:30 a.m. I lazed around until 11:45, reading Dune and chatting with Miss H, relishing the air conditioning and putting off the moment when I'd have to set foot in that hot, humid hell outside the hostel as long as possible. I checked out at noon, got my $10 security deposit back, and hired a tuk-tuk to take me to Hua Lamphong Station for 100 baht—once again beating back my burgeoning bargaining skills. 

I spent a couple of hours lounging around Hua Lamphong's massive lobby, staring at inscrutable commercials on Jumbotrons and portraits of the king and hearing cheesy food court music. The latter made me hungry, so I hauled my heavy pack into the stuffy, sweltering food court and ate a last delicious plate of pad thai for 40 baht. At two o'clock, I went to platform five, car two, seat thirty-one. 

The attendant came by with the dinner and breakfast menu. I ordered fried veggies with shrimp for my repast, and made a few notes in my journal. 

There were two things I thought I should mention about Thailand before I left it. First, unlike the Vietnamese or Cambodians, the Thais drive on the left side of the road, like the Brits or Japanese do. Second, even the poorest Thais—including the ones in the slums which the train chugged past on its way south out of Bangkok—could afford brass birdcages with mynah birds in them. I'd been seeing these birds—renowned for centuries as clever mimics, on par with parrots—since Phnom Penh, both in the wild and kept as pets. 

The attendant made up the beds at 7:30, and I lost my comfy seat by the window. By that time it was too dark to see anything anyway. Everyone from Kipling to Conrad has written about the swiftness of the equatorial sunset, but I'd never seen it put into practice before. I was a long time in getting to sleep, rolling around uncomfortably in my sardine can of an upper berth. This was way more awkward and unpleasant than my upper berth on the Reunification Express in Vietnam had been. I almost wished I was back there, prayer-chanting old ladies and squalling infants notwithstanding. 

I passed a hot, aching, bumpy, noisy night, and woke when dawn was just beginning to tinge the eastern horizon a neon tangerine. I had breakfast in my bunk, as my lower berth-mate hadn't deigned to wake yet. Two hours later, bored and cramped and antsy from missing what was surely a stupendous sunrise, I leaped down into the corridor and peeked through the curtain. The bastard was awake in there, playing games on his iPad with his smartphone serving as a mobile hotspot. That got my dander up. No way the bugger would monopolize that space while I scrunched and squozed around up top. So I knocked quite loudly on the partition and caught his eye through the gap between the curtains. He jumped up apologetically and fetched the attendant, who folded up the beds and took away the bedding. Both of us were installed in our rightful seats again by 7:30 a.m. sharp. 

Ten minutes later the train rolled into Hat Yai, the last major Thai stop. My lousy seatmate got off here—just how long was he intending to loaf around in bed, anyway? I got a new seatmate, a middle-aged but not unattractive woman whose nationality—Malay or Thai—I couldn't discern. 

We reached the border town of Pedang Besar at 9:30 a.m. I was one of the first off the train and through immigration. Piece of cake—a quick glance at my passport and a tourist stamp. The customs inspector had a quick look inside my bag, but zipped it up again and handed it back to me with no questions asked. Why can't all border crossings be this easy?

And at 1:00 local time (12:00 Bangkok time) we rolled into Butterworth. But I'll tell you all about that in the next post.