The best way to travel from southern Thailand (Koh Phangan) to KL Malaysia seemed to be get to the train station Surit Thani and go through the night, arriving early the next day at your destination. Due to the nature of the sleeper train they leave late in the evening as most people get their sleep in during that time. To get to Surit Tani required a very choppy and exciting long boat ride from Haad yuan, the amazing bay in Koh Phangan that we stayed at over the full moon/new years eve period - it was the first time they coincided for 30 years. Koh Phangan is the home to the infamous beach party which in many blogs and stories would take prime position, in our story lets just say we went, we saw, and then we went some where much nicer. We got absolutely soaked and luckily our bags that were filled with electrical goodies (lap top, camera, dj equip) did not. This is a moment when sun glasses double up as a retina screen for your eyes against the salt water assault.
Next a tuc tuc to the ferry and a bus from the ferry port to the train station. When travelling in South East Asia is it important to remember that anything that can go wrong probably will so we left early. Of course as we left ample time for errors it was the smoothest set of transfers possible in Thailand and we arrived 10 hours early.
Punctuality is underrated by the young, they believe it is a virtue of bored people that don't mind being lonely. It is a different story for adults and those in business. They have a personal interest that could and probably will be adversely affected by persistent lateness;
Interviews - no jobs given out to those who turn up late for interviews, think first impressions. Current employers - warnings are swiftly followed by removal. Finally and probably most importantly friends - older and wiser people have fewer and therefore stronger friendships that they value more. Even Louis XVIII insisted that “Punctuality is the politeness of kings”.
Punctuality and being excessively early however are different. Imagine a world where turning up hours early for everything was expected, nothing would ever get done unless it could be whilst waiting for something else. You would have to spend even more time with your colleagues but out of a work context. This could however lead to closer and more tightly knit groups, surely leading to happier and more productive work places so maybe...............Don't be ridiculous! Back to the train station.
The advantages of the sleeper train are as follows:
1. You get to save money on that nights accomodation and therefore can deduct a nights accomodation off the price of the ticket
2. The act of moving from one place to another (also known as travelling) is very time consuming, as is sleeping. The night train offers you a chance to kill 2 stones with one bird.
This muddled up saying just about sums up how our night train experience failed to live up to any of its potential advantages. Arriving this early meant that no time was saved at all. Also as we had a border crossing during the journey they woke us up at 5 and made us fill in forms, answer questions, pack up, move and check through are stuff. It was impossible to stay half asleep though this process as you might when going to the toilet in the middle of the night but at least we could go back to sleep when we got back on the train. Wrong. They had packed up all of our beds and turned them into normal seats so that more people could get on the train. Hooray!!! Reza our travel companion quickly transformed his seat back into a bed with a speed that optimus prime would have been proud of. In the time it had taken me to force my sleep deprived mind into calculating that this would be a good idea and then putting the plan into action the guard had appeared. His words could easily be misunderstood and could have afforded an opportunity to claim ignorance and return to bed making and sleep but his tone assured me that the seats would remain as they were. The story tape (it was actually an audio book downloaded onto my ipod but my Mum brought them into my life and they will always be story tapes to me) came to my rescue and Chantelle's size (she can actually lie down on the seat) came to hers.
We all lived happily ever after in KL.
Joseph Davies 29/04/10
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