A Week of Movement but not by Bicycle Day 7

January 1, 2023

Bankok to Hua Hin by train

We have seen these bushes the entire trip. We love them because they are a great shade of yellow. They seem to just bloom and bloom all the time. A very happy bush. This one was from the train window.

It's only 125 miles (200 km) from Bangkok to Hua Hin but yet our train was supposed to take five hours. We were sitting in third class but it seemed like the entire train was third class. We were scheduled to arrive in Hua Hin just before sunset. We had to go through the same procedure with our bicycles being put in the freight area but on the same train. This is always a bit stressful because we never know how long the stop will be as we wrestle with all of our panniers to get off the train. There is basically never enough time to run to the back of the train to get our bikes off so we have to trust that someone back there knows that the bikes should be removed, in this case, at Hua Hin.

This guy was definitely trying to sleep off a hangover.

This is really great for an old train. Not bad at all!!

This was taken from the train but I'm not sure where. Not too far outside of Bangkok.

I jumped off the train as quickly as I could and looked to the rear and saw that the freight guys were indeed handing down our bikes and they were propping them up against a lamp post. That was a great sight because there was such a crush of people trying to get on the train right after I got off that Andrea was trapped by them and couldn't get off very quickly. This was very unusual for Thais to be so frantic and inconsiderate as to not let someone off first, especially a foreigner. I think they all thought the train would leave quickly. But with Andrea blocking the way with all of her panniers and at least one of mine there was an impasse for a bit until Andrea had to yell at the frantic people to move.

Our original plan was to get off quickly, make a pile of our panniers and Andrea would stand guard as I ran back to the end of the train. But that plan completely collapsed. In the end everything was fine and we rode to a hotel, one we had actually made reservations for this time. Once in our room we immediately went out looking for dinner before everything closed. Thai restaurants can often close really early.

Hua Hin Station, immediately after getting off the train and retrieving our bikes which were in perfect shape.

As we walked we saw a lot of farang food such as Italian, Swiss, German and lots of pizza but when I'm in Thailand such foods never enter my consciousness. Thai food can't be beat in my opinion, even if it is simply fried rice. We eventually stumbled onto a street with pure Thai street food. We knew we were in the right place when we saw all the Thais eating there, almost no foreigners. We also found a nice papaya for breakfast on the same street after we had eaten.

This is the kind of street food scene we like.

Not really wanting to do anything more in Hua Hin for the day we walked back to our hotel passing along the way dozens of bars, prostitutes, gross older foreign men and massage parlors. It was not a good first impression. We had planned on staying a couple of nights in Hua Hin but we were already having reservations about that. It seemed seedy and dirty, I mean really-gross-caked-on-black-grease dirty as if the streets themselves were sorely in need of a good pressure washing. Not a good introduction but we would see how we felt in the morning.

And so ended our week of much travel within Thailand but none of it, (except for short distances to and from bus and train stations from our hotels), on our bikes. We were excited to resume our cycling. And we were excited to be on the eastern coast of southern Thailand going south.

lovebruce

Today's ride: 1 mile (2 km)
Total: 780 miles (1,255 km)

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