I arrived in Chiang Mai, Thailand about 9:30 this a.m. after about 26 hours straight of travel. Air Asia did not impress, and I've had a few unique travel hiccups to go along with the usual delays and annoyances. I had a few hours between my flight to Bangkok and my train out, which I planned to spend exploring around the train station, but I got lost looking for Chinatown instead of getting lost in Chinatown, which is the usual point. My ATM card isn't working in Thailand for some reason, so I've had to dip into my plans C and D for cash.
I had a second-class sleeping berth, upper. Once the beds are made up, these are in the style of sleeper cars you see in old Hollywood movies like "Some Like It Hot." I don't believe they used real cars for those scenes, though, unless Jack Lemmon is under 5'9". What is it about me and the rail systems of Southeast Asia that I can't stretch out in my bunk? The transvestite who was our attendant must really suffer. She was 6'3" easy.
Before the beds are made up, the bottom bunk is two bench seats facing each other, and I was seated with a Belgian massage therapist who spent the last two months snorkling around peninsular Thailand, getting tattoes based on her own drawings of lotus flowers and meeting some really great people. I wasn't one of them, apparently, because once the train was moving, she wanted me to take an empty seat so she could fold down her bunk early.
Most of the train trip was in the dark, but the last few hours were after dawn, and it was nice seeing the countryside, though it is awfully dry. Chiang Mai is in the foothills of the mountain frontier with Burma, so we were climbing low hills through a lot of it. In the morning I talked to a couple from Holland while we watched the scenery, and they congratulated me on Obama finally signing in universal health-care coverage. I had to break it to them that it wasn't quite that yet.
I'm at a guest house run by . . . well, this was going to be the third story in a row about a northern European! I better cut it out. Let's just say that there are a lot of signs tacked up at this guest house. I have all the information I need in order to do the right thing.
More about Chiang Mai when I've caught up on sleep and formed a proper impression. Pictures are going to have to wait until I get back to Saigon.
-Robert
