The China Airlines flight out of LAX was about thirty minutes late in departure, but the pilot made up the difference en route to our layover in Taipei.
Before our departure, I had raved to Jen about China Airlines — how on a previous trip the planes had been spotless, each seat had its own entertainment system, the cabin crew were all neat and attractive, the service was efficient and delivered with a smile. In effect, how China Airlines was the exact opposite of the miserable thing that travel on US airlines has become. Well, this flight was a little short of the previous flights I had taken — still good, but not as good. I’ll chock it up to use of older 747 aircraft. But, hey…the beer was still free, and we didn’t get charged for our baggage.
The flight from LAX to Taipei was about fourteen hours. We managed five hours of sleep, thanks to ambien.
The layover in Taipei was a little over an hour and uneventful.
The flight from Taipei to Bangkok was about three hours, during which I won the 2011 International Barfbag Gin Tournament (so named for the use of a barfbag as the score sheet).
At Bangkok, getting through customs was quick and uneventful. The lady who checked our passports had the personality of a Styrofoam cup, but at least she wasn’t an obstruction.
Out at the baggage carousel, we repacked or backpacks; merging the gear in our carry-on day packs with our main packs.
From there, we snagged a metered taxi for a ride to the main train terminal in Bangkok. This was about an hour-long trip into the city.
The Bangkok train station is not an upscale joint – just a big open space with a ticket booth area on one side, and various food and concession operations along the other sides. As I had read elsewhere, there were touts with bullshit, official-looking badges trying to get our attention before we hit the ticket counter. We bypassed the scam and bought two second class sleeper car tickets for Lampang.
We had wanted a first class sleeper car ride to Lampang, which would have given us our own private cabin for an overnight ride, and put us into Lampang at a reasonable hour in the morning. Unfortunately, that would have meant waiting around the train station for another seven hours, and the Bangkok train station doesn’t make for a good hangout.
Instead, we got second class sleeper car tickets on the first available departure (no air conditioning, open sleeping arrangements on drop-down racks), which would put us into Lampang at the god-awful hour of 0230 – a deferral of pain now for pain later.
While we waited, we grabbed some food and a couple beers. Well, I grabbed a few beers… which, combined with the lack of sleep put me into the the category of slightly inebriated by the time we got aboard. Jen was in the ready-to-go-unconscious category after half a beer.
Once the train pulled out, we decided to bail at Lopburi, which is only three hours out of Bangkok. We had only gotten about five hours of sleep in forty, and we badly needed rest.
The train ride was through mostly agricultural flat lands, with occasional stops at towns along the way. You can hear some of the sounds from the train ride 
by clicking here.
Our co-travelers included a helpful guy who spoke some English, a girl who kept her ear in a cell phone and seemed to generally hate life (and was not impressed with the animated and inebriated foreigner that I had become), and a geriatric expatriate guy with his twenty-something Thai girl in tow (who spent a lot of time rubbing his aged feet while holding an expression that seemed to say, “What the f@&k am I doing with my life?”).
Of note for us Westerners, the toilets on the train are the Eastern squat style affairs. Using them on a moving train can be a challenge.
At Lopburi, we exited the train and snagged a ride from an opportunistic taxi driver (private pickup owner seeing a chance to make a buck), who dropped us at the Lop Buri Inn, located about four kilometers from the train station (you can read a review of the Lop Buri Inn by clicking here).
Since about all we saw of Lopburi was the inside of our eyelids, I can’t tell you much about the town. There is a troupe of monkeys running roughshod over the area near the train station, as well as a park with some ruins directly across from the station. That’s about all we saw.
Next morning, we ate the included breakfast at the hotel, had the hotel give us a ride back to the train station, got tickets to Phitsanulok, checked out the ruins in the park nearby, and then waited for a train that was forty minutes late.
We had decided to bag going all the way to Lampang in one shot, instead opting for a stay at Sukhothai to see the ruins there. This meant taking a train to Phitsanulok, and from there a bus to New Sukhothai.
While waiting on a bench near the tracks, we got to watch an old man pick lice from the hair of an old woman, and another old woman do some self-removal of her own little buddies. These were not moneyed people for the most part. The lady getting preened had a large bandage on her leg that was seeping blood, and another older gent who walked by had a serious limp from an old leg injury. Lots of dirty and aged clothing. Of course, not everyone was in this state, but there was more of a poor rural feel here than we had run into previously.
The train car we loaded was air conditioned with airline-style seats (although a bit run down). There was a young, uniformed Thai girl who played the role of stewardess, including service of a prepackaged meal of rice and vegetable/chicken/fish mix (not much good for us, unfortunately).
A monk was in front of us, wearing the standard saffron monk garb. Other than eating the provided lunch, he slept most of the way.
At Phitsanulok, we bypassed the touts trying to suck us into overpriced taxi rides to the bus station, and started walking to what I thought was the main bus terminal -about 400 meters. At least, that’s how I interpreted the map, which was a wrong interpretation. It turned out that this was just the main bus stop – not station – and that the bus station was a couple kilometers away. To get there, we snagged a ride from a toothless old dude driving a motorized, three-wheeled, flat cart (these are everywhere). He got us to the bus terminal, the two of us perched like human bumpers on the leading edge of the cart as he drove through traffic. Initially, I understood him to say 5 baht for the ride, which made him my hero; turns out he meant 50 baht for the ride, which took him from hero status to just plain good guy.
The bus ride to New Sukhothai was advertised as a two hour trip, but actually took about 90 minutes. The bus was air conditioned, uncrowded, and comfortable – save for the lack of an on-board bathroom. Overall – given the lesser cost, comfort, and competitive travel time of buses – we are starting to wonder if this isn’t the preferred mode of transportation. Save for the bathroom issue, of course. More to follow on this topic.
At New Sukhothai, we gaffed the touts that swarmed us with offers of over-priced rides to hotels, and I called the Ruean Thai Hotel for the advertised free ride from the bus station (with help from a local guy who got me through the hurdle of using a Thai pay phone, and even went out of his way to bring over change the phone had spit out after I completed the call and walked away). The ride came as promised.
I gotta say that I am becoming a little bit irritated with the touts that aggressively descend upon us at every transportation node. They don’t readily take no for an answer. It is becoming a personal goal to stiff arm them whenever possible. The following rule is very valid: If someone approaches you to offer help, it’s a scam.
The Reuan Thai Hotel has a theme, and that is the 1970s music duo The Carpenters. Music videos of The Carpenters, complete with follow-along text of the lyrics, are played on the drop-down TV screen in the hotel’s shuttle SUV. The melody of Carpenters songs can be heard in the background noise of the hotel lobby and restaurant area. “Why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near? Just like me, they long to be, close to you……,” is now stuck in both our heads.
For a review of the Ruean Thai Hotel, click here.
That night, we had dinner at the Dream Cafe, which is about a 20 minute walk from the hotel along an unattractive street lined with uninteresting stores. Kind of a commercial drag. (Click here for a review of the Dream Cafe.)
It was dark by the time we headed back to the hotel. Along the way, near a main intersection, there was an area with hundreds – no, thousands – of myna birds perched on buildings, poles, and lines. They were screaming up a storm, so loud that they were drowning out all traffic noise in a busy traffic area. Incredible stuff…right out of the Hitchcock movie.
The next morning, we ate at the hotel and then grabbed a free shuttle to a bus stop. From here, we caught a ride to the ruins of Old Sukhothai in one of the open air trucks that serve as buses here. Our bus was loaded down with produce that an older woman passenger was taking somewhere.
Outside the main entrance to the central area of the park (the park is divided into five different areas), we rented two beater bicycles, bought a couple tickets into the central park area, and headed in.
This is the most touristy area of Old Sukhothai, thanks to being the most accessible and park-like. The ruins are beautiful – a collection of centuries-old wats (temples). Rather quickly, though, the groups of Western tourists became annoying; and we exited the central area.
Along the way, we discovered a nice eatery where we grabbed lunch and a beer. You can read about it by clicking here.
Having grabbed some food, we biked into the western part of the park, where we had to purchase an additional ticket. This part of the park has very few tourists, since it has no facilities, is less accessible, and requires some level of physical exertion (not a plus for most Western tourists, I think). It’s a few kilometers of biking on a small, paved road through rural countryside; where the ruins of the wats are adjacent to folks’ houses. But this is by far a better experience than the well-groomed central area. You can hear some of the sounds at the ruins by clicking here.
We stopped at most of the wats along the route, and Jen took many a photo.
We returned to New Sukhothai in the afternoon by way of the same local bus system, with our bus making a long stop to pick up school kids.
Back in town, we walked through the market area on our way to the hotel. It was a very busy time in the market, with sidewalk food carts cranking out food, carts and mopeds filling the narrow streets, and loads of people milling about.
Back at the hotel, we ate dinner, drank some beer, and went to bed.
The next day, we repeated the hotel shuttle – truck-bus transportation scheme to return to Old Sukhothai. After renting bicycles again, and eating at the 
same food place, we headed back to a large wat to take more pictures (Jen wanted to take some shots using a HDR technique, which requires the tripod that we hadn’t had with us the previous day). Our tickets from the prior day were apparently still good, so we avoided entrance fees.
Having completed the photo mission, it was back to New Sukhothai, where we lingered in the market a bit so that Jen could take some photos.
Back at the hotel, we drank some beer and had dinner, and turned in for an early night’s sleep.
Today, which is Sunday the 22nd of May in Thailand, we had planned to move on to the west – to the town of Mae Sot in Tak Province – but changed our minds to take a day for writing and photo finishing.
Tomorrow, though, we are moving onward to Mae Sot. From there, we are planning to work our way northward through Mae Hong Son Province. This will carry us along the Thai -Burma border area, which is advertised as remote and mountainous. It’s a deviation from the original Lampang plan, but this is an open ended trip, and Lampang isn’t going anywhere soon.
So far, we have been doing the touristy thing – staying at mid-range hotels, seeing the well-known sights. As we head west and then north, we hope it will get a bit more real.
