Night Train to Chiang Mai - Fri January 8th 2015.

The late afternoon was spent with me still trying to get an answer from DW Sports and Fitness back in the UK as to why they had taken 2 months of gym fees from my bank account after my membership had been dutifully cancelled, and to try and see about arranging a refund of the total  amount taken. I was still waiting on a response to an email that I had sent them a few days before querying this action and I had tried twice to get through on the number for membership queries using my prepaid phone sim in Thailand but to no avail. One of the problems is that it takes you a few minutes of being in "the system" to find out your position in the queue and another 5 or 6 to get an update of how much progress you have made. On my first call I was told I was 20th and hung up after just a few minutes, unsure of how much credit I was using on my call back to blighty. On my second I was told after my initial wait that I was 15th in the queue, 10 minutes later I was informed that I was down to 8th. Both messages were bookended by several other messages robotically informing me that my call was important to them, and that if I was calling outside office hours the phone would still ring and I would be charged for my call. The last part of that in particular screams of a company doing it's best to squeeze money out of people, as I'm pretty sure that it would be easy enough to switch over to a message that says "sorry, but the office is currently closed, the opening hours are.....".

When I say "pretty sure", I obviously mean sure because it's the kind of message I have been hearing on the end of attempted telephone calls for the last 10 years or more, but I'm starting to get side tracked here so I'll leave it by writing that as of 1 week after the initial e-mail, I have still had no direct response as to why money had been taken from my account in the first place, or details about getting the money they have taken refunded. I guess I'm not going to be rejoining there then when I return to the UK.

So after all that faffing about and stress caused there was just enough time for a quick catch up with Ronnie, our guide from Cambodia 2 years ago with whom Vicky had kept in touch, grabbing a quick bit of tea with him at a restaurant in close proximity to the train station before stocking up on snacks and drinks from the 7/11 in preparation for the 14 hour train ride up north. At about 9pm we made our way over to the train that was waiting on platform 10, prepared our sleeping bunks in the carriage ready for sleep and tied pink string around our luggage in the walkway to keep it from falling over in the night, and then patiently sat and waited through several "bumps" and "Jolts" as the carriages were connected together. At just after 10:30pm, the 22:00 train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai eased itself out of the stations glare, through brightly lit and colour suburbs before eventually being cloaked by the darkness of the surrounding Thai countryside.

The first hour or so was spent chatting and watching the scenery dim before I eventually decided to hit the top bunk and crash out. A minute or so later we were "top to toe" in the bottom bunk again as I tried to thaw back out from my little misadventure. A further hour on, as I woke myself up from snoring in my haunched position I again retired upstairs, which had by now thankfully come out of it's "ice" age into a "wrap up warm" age and I led there, awake only briefly as the train, lazily rocked and rolled, inducing me into light hibernation. By the time I came around again it seemed that spring was near, so I made my way to the toilets at the end of the carriage before the spring sprung a leak.

It was light by 7:30am, but grey from the cloud and the mist that resulted from the cooler air outside. By 8:30am the sun was beginning to break through and douse the scenery with the colour it had been longing for since the day before. Lush countrysides, mountain passes, workers and towns were passed or carved through as we called at the last few stations on the way to our destination, arriving at Chiang Mai station just after 12:30pm and disembarking into a much fresher, lighter and more pleasant feel that the one we had left behind in Bangkok.

It was simply a pleasure to be able to take a nice deep breath again, without that feeling of denseness that accompanies each such intake in the city of Bangkok.