Day 2/3: Butterworth to Bangkok by train

Wake up late this morning, my alarm clock failed to go off… it’s 11am (guess I really needed to catch up on some sleep) and I have to pick up my train ticket to Bangkok before 12 in Butterworth…

After getting dressed in a hurry I need to look for an ATM to get to money to pay for my ticket. I pick up some delicious Nasi Padang on my way to the port and enjoy my Malay breakfast on the ferry from Penang to Butterworth. Once on the other side, I have 5 minutes left to the train station and collect my ticket. Make a mental note to buy a cheap alarm clock at the airport in Bangkok as a backup for the alarm on my phone.

Leaving Penang by ferry

As my train is scheduled to leave at 14.20, I have about 2 hours left before I need to board. I decide to take a quick look around Butterworth. It turns out to be a very industrial town with several refineries and a sizable port. Georgetown (main city on the Penang peninsula) is much prettier, am glad I stayed there last night.

Get back to the train station with about 30 minutes left; spend my last Malaysian Ringits on supplies (provisions for a 22 hour train trip: two big bottles of water, a box of Pringles and some take-away Mee Goreng) and wait for my train to be announced.

Get up to go to my train when I hear the announcement in Malay. Am already to the door of the waiting area when the English announcement informs me my train has not yet arrived and will be delayed by 30 minutes… walk back to my seat (am sure I provided some amusement for the Malay waiting with me at the station)

My train to Bangkok ready for departure

Have a nice seat on the train (coach 10, seat 18), although backward facing an even seat number means I’ll have the bottom bed, which is very much preferable over the top one as it is about twice as wide. Luckily, the train has power sockets and I’m able to charge both my laptop and my phone. Once my laptop starts working again, I start working on my pictures and gather some thoughts for my next blog update.

I am about one hour into the journey when it becomes apparent that the two seats I assumed were for two people are actually supposed to accommodate four. The train ride becomes quite cozy for the next three hours.

My cabin on the train

Have a little chat with to girls who join take up the two seats opposite me. They’re on their way to university for their last semester before graduation. Take some time to tell them about my trip and show them on the map where exactly Holland is located. We find some common ground, as they’re both business admin students. Neither has ever left Malaysia (although their university is only 15 minutes from the Thai border). Nevertheless, they’re quite proficient in English so the conversation is quite lively.

After the students get off the train right before the border, the train is almost empty. The steward drops by to hand us our immigration forms and notifies us we’re about 10 minutes away from the border. After some inquiry, I find out the train is normally packed but with the recent troubles in Bangkok there’s a lot fewer people traveling there now. (the Friday train even got cancelled, guess I have to be lucky mine’s running as scheduled).

View from the train in Malaysia

Immigration on the Malaysia side is a bit tricky as I didn’t get a stamp while leaving Singapore, takes about 5 minutes to make the officer understand what happened. Thai immigration is a breeze, and less than 10 minutes after getting off the train at the border, I’m back in my seat, a cold big bottle of Chang beer waiting for me…

After enjoying a quick dinner (vegetable fried rice), I have a very pleasant conversation with three fellow travelers: a German student who has just finished an 8 month backpack adventure in Asia, a Mongolian foreign official who has been seconded to the Bangkok UNESCO office, and an American musicology scholar from New York who has lived in Malaysia for the last six years researching local song and dance of maritime tribes on the border between Malaysia and Thailand.

We talk a bit about his research and his travels in the region over the last 24 years (his first trip to Malaysia was in 1986) He tells me his research is centered around a (nearly) deaf violinist by the name of Abu Qasim who was responsible for spreading a certain type of Malay music (originating from Penang in the 1930’s) all the way up to Phuket in Thailand. (if you ever win a game of trivial pursuit with this little fact, please send me an email…)

Go to bed around 11pm, finish reading the National Geographic I bought in Singapore (this month’s edition has a wonderful feature on Greenland) and go to sleep around 11.30pm. The bed is quite comfortable, at least 1.20m wide and exactly 1.93m tall (measured against my 1.94m …)

Wake up around 7am in the morning, set my clock to Thai time and figure out it’s actually 6am… spend an hour or so looking out of the window, watching the Thai landscape flash by as the sun is slowly rising. Guess the locals also rise at 6am as every village we pass is more lively than the last.

View from my cabin as I wake up...

It’s around 8am when I get dressed, collapse the bed into two benches and take my seat for the remaining 3 hours of the journey. I spend some time experimenting with my camera’s sequential shooting ability, taking 240 pictures of the scenery flashing by at a 1 second interval, which I intend to process into a short movie once at the airport.

The interval movie

Around 11am the train pulls into Bangkok’s central train station. It’s an old building, neither ugly nor beautiful, that could definitely use some renovation effort. The station itself, as well as the surrounding area is swarming with people. I’m quite used to Bangkok’s crowded streets by now and it feels refreshing to be in a big city after spending 22 hours on the train.

Me in my cabin...

Make my way to the airport around 12, only to find out that my 4.35pm flight to Kolkata has been delayed until 23.50pm due to a strike at the Kolkata International Airport. I’m a little frustrated I’ll have to spend so much time at the airport today, at the same time relieved the flight didn’t get cancelled as I would have missed my train to Raxaul tomorrow.

Still four hours to go before I can check in and go through customs as I receive an email from my hotel in Kolkata informing me they’ve kindly given my reservation away to another guest… guess I will have 

to go look for another hotel when I get to Kolkata at 1am in the morning. There’s nothing like a good challenge I guess… ;)

Sawatdi from a rather boring Bangkok Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Steven

UPDATE: will be spending the night in Hotel The Sojourn in Salt Lake City... (I'm not kidding, that's actually a neighborhood in Kolkata :)

What's on my iPod today? Bob Marley: Don’t worry, be happy

Journey totals: distance (%) - time (km/h)

Train:    1946 km  (09.75%) -      36 hours    (54 km/h)

Taxi:         40 km  (00.25%) -         45 min    (67 km/h)

Ferry:          2 km  (00.01%) -         30 min      (4 km/h)

Car:             0 km  (00.00%) -        0 hours      (0 km/h)

Plane:          0 km  (00.00%) -        0 hours      (0 km/h)

Total:  01988 km   (10.00%) -  0037 hours (53.5 km/h)

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