BANGKOK -> CHIANG MAI, THAILAND
Most people told me that the train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai was kind of a ripoff. It costs twice as much as the bus, takes twice as long and something always, always goes awry. I’ve never listened to a good word in my life and I was sick of buses anyway, so I bought a ticket for the hard sleeper and hopped on at two in the afternoon.

The train isn’t exactly luxurious, but being able to stand up and hang out of the last car whenever you please is luxury enough. There are no compartments in hard sleeper class, but around eight pm the conductor comes by and converts all the seats to beds. They’re actually really confortable, and when it’s time to crash the rocking of the car and Thailand’s lax perscription laws will put anyone right to sleep.

Sure enough, something went wrong. A few hours out there was an accident up the tracks (a train with sixteen cars full of concrete completely derailed; nobody was hurt, but we passed it later and was as awesome as it sounds) and we had to go back to the nearest town. We were told we could refund our tickets and buy seats on the next night bus. I stuck around for a bit, hearing the train’s re-departure time change from “tomorrow” to “five hours” to “very soon,” and when the beast finally set off again we’d only lost three or four hours. As some sort of cosmic compensation for the ordeal the sleeper car had nearly emptied out, leaving only myself, a French woman, her Indonesian companion and a Thai music student.

He carried a violin and a guitar; we jammed like there was nothing else to do.