The Morning Ride

Images of the Train Ride from Bangkok to Chiang Mai

It’s morning now, and Lampang has disappeared into Lamphun as we cross the Thai countryside.  The seats around me have filled with a few German backpackers, as we stopped during the night in Mae Something and Nakhon Nowhere.

We’ll be pulling into Chiang Mai within the next half hour or so, and I’ll start taking some pictures as we get closer to town. The countryside has already changed from rice paddies and water buffalo to wooded hills and birds.  Here and there, leaves are turning yellow as if they think autumn might come to Thailand sometime. Now we’re going through a tunnel – was there a tunnel back then? Does anyone remember going through a tunnel just before we got to Chiang Mai? There’s even a spirit house guarding the gate as we emerge at some tiny station named Khuntan where mangy dogs and a rooster stand guard at the platform.

Later we stop at Sala Maetha and Tha Chompu.  Wouldn’t that mean pink waterfall?  The train is now a good fifteen minutes past our scheduled arrival and we don’t look to be on the outskirts of Chiang Mai yet, so I would guess we will be about an hour late.

Still, fourteen (or even fifteen) hours on the train doesn’t seem so long as it did 25 years ago. It could be my attention span, or it could be the laptop and dvd collection that I’ve managed to acquire in the last quarter century.

Today is Friday, so I’ll be headed over to the Chiang Mai University campus to get some pictures of how it looks before the students all take off for break.  (The “winter” term ends today).  Gosh, I wonder if we were interfering with the Thai students studying for finals way back then.

I’ll let you know more once I get into town, get cleaned up and have a chance to head over to campus. Tonight, maybe a trip to the gargantuan tourist edifice that we once knew as the Night Bazaar.

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