It's not the trip
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- Category: Blog Friday - Steve
On paper it looked perfectly reasonable. We planned to travel from Saigon to the Thai seaside in a single day. Our flight was at early o’clock, arriving in Bangkok with lots of time to get the 1pm train, which 5 hours later arrived at where we wanted to be. A long day, but not reckless.
By 4pm the train had barely crept out of the city. We had arrived at a town that was described as “a short, not very interesting day trip from Bangkok”. By then Dickon had vomited twice and the ineffectual ceiling fans were struggling to stir the carriage’s increasingly hot, stale air. The train sat in the station for half an hour. I asked a man in a uniform when the train would be off and he said with an unconvincing shrug, 5 o’clock, and we still had another 200km to go.
It was at this point we decided to bail-out. Friendly, bemused locals explained that the town did not actually have any taxis, but someone could drive us in his truck to the best hotel in town. Looking at the area around the station we were far from sure what the best in town would turn-out to be! By this point Dickon had fallen asleep and looked very over-heated. A little scared, we headed off. Thankfully the hotel was fine. It had everything we needed; air-con, clean beds, bland food. If Thailand ever had a Soviet period of architecture, the Whale Hotel would be a great example of this style.
The next day fully recovered we got the once-a-day air-con Express Train which zipped us down to the beach in just under 4 hours – hooray!
So what did we learn from this adventure? Well it reaffirmed our "take it safe" approach to travelling. In Laos for example we avoided the 12 hour coach trips, or three day river cruises and took the more expensive flights. After much agonising we lopped major bits off our itinerary, not going to Cambodia or northern Vietnam, all to cut down on the actual time travelling. Following our Thai railways experience we feel fully justified, as I’m sure Lao mini-buses offer their own brand of adventure, which 4 year olds are ill-equipped to cope with.
Saigon by the way is a great city, if a little mad, 10 million people and over half of them have motorbikes. Prachuap Khiri Khan was also worth the trip. It is a bit like a Thai version of Hastings or Whitby. A real working town, but with wonderful beaches close by, a very relaxed vibe and good seafood. I would recommend it, just make sure you get the Express Train.
