A Thai railway journey.
We had decided in England to catch the train from Bangkok to Butterworth in Malaysia the who,e journey costing us about twenty five pounds each. The train left the central railway station at 2.45pm, we were at the station at 1.30 having caught a taxi from the hotel. The train pulled in early and we Wat he'd the cleaners go to work both outside and in, one woman who arrived a tried to board was given a good telling off by a man in uniform who was guar,ding the steps of the carriage. Our carriage disappeared for a while as the locomotive took it for a little spin somewhere.But Rosemarie was assured any man in uniform that it would reappear and joing the rest of the train, emphasised by the clapping of hands together, and this is exactly waht happened.
We were allowed on the train about 15 minutes enforce it left and settled down into our seats, unfortunately we were in the wrong seats and had to move. There was no room for the suitcases and we had to sit in a double seat with a suitcase each as a travelling partner.
A very pleasant lady came around taking orders for dinner and breakfast delivered to your seat so we chose chicken with cashew nuts and duck ina red curry sauce, we were assured this woud, be served at 7.30pm.
Imagine our surprise when at 17.30 we were brought a spoon and a fork and then dinner.Dinner was as described but with avery thin chicken broth to put over the rice, which was actually very nice, but as there were two of them we could only manage one. Dinner was cleared before 7.00pm and much to our amazement everyone in the carriage started getting ready for bed. The steward came around and started making beds by dropping the top bunk and then rearranging the bottom compartment seats to create a bottom bunk. By 7.20pm everybody was in bed and silence had descended across the carriage, so much so that I felt guilty whispering to Rosemarie and had to climb into the top bunk.
We did stay up reading but in a very eerie atmosphere, by 8.30 I had had enough and decided to sleep myself. Rosemarie carried on reading for a bit longer.
It is  inadvisable to kick your wife in the stomach in a totally silent carriage as you decide you can reach the floor with out using the ladder. You do have to remember your age sometimes. Rosemarie was definitely not amused. Several of our near neighbours were also woken up by the scream.I had to spend several minutes whispering sincere apologies.
I got up to go to the loo again at 6.00am after crossing the roughest bit of railway track I have ever been on, it was enough to shake your fillings,whereupon I was grabbed by the steward who prepared a table for Rosemarie and I in an empty cubicle and told us our breakfast was ready. We had been led to believe breakfast was at 7.30 but we had finished it by 6.30. The timing of meals appeared to be a real problem.
We watched the dawn come up over southern Thailand before being dragged off the train at the Malaysian border to deal with immigration and customs. We had to take all of our luggage of as well and the whole process took over an hour.
We also had no idea that Malaysia is an hour ahead of Thailand until someone on the train told us so that came as a it of a surprise. On Arrival at. Butterworth we walked to the ferry terminal to cross to Penang and then had a thirty minute taxi ride to our hotel which is very nice.
We did try at Butterworth station to book the 8.00 am train to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday morning but apparently it was sold out so we had to book the 2.00 pm train instead which was a it of a pain.