North – To Chiang Mai

 In the 1960 song, Johnny Horton would sing, “North to Alaska, we go north, the rush is on”. For us in 1982 it was “North to Chiang Mai”. Like Johnny, we were also in a rush, but our rush was to be out of language school and actually doing something. Our real move to Chiang Mai wasn’t to come until October of 1983 but at Christmas time of 1982 and we had a week or two break from language school. So, it was north to Chiang Mai for a sneak peek at our future.

In recent years, a one hour plane ride is the main mode of transport between Bangkok and Chiang Mai. In 1982 however, an overnight train ride was the preferred choice. Actually, I’m not even sure commercial flights were available at the time, but if they were, they must have been prohibitively expensive. In any case, it was some years before we ever flew between Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

Marcia and Shannon showing off
the sleeper berths on the overnight
 train. This pic is from 1998 but it
 would have looked the same
 in 1982 
 

The overnight train featured ample seating room, with the seats folding out into beds. Two seats faced each other with the bottom seat cushions sliding together to make a lower bunk. An upper bunk was made by letting down a cushioned bed that was normally folded up and away. The beds weren’t bad, but a little too short. I could almost stretch out on my back if my feet were bent straight up and pressed firmly to the wall. But if I did stretch out, my head would bounce against the wall opposite my feet with every lurch and jerk of the train. And the train, was always lurching and jerking. I could sleep some in a semi-fetal position as long as I didn’t stretch out too often. As a fairly tall person and normally a stomach sleeper, I see the overnight train as just another confirmation that the world is really designed by and for short people. Sigh! But I never complain!

So, the train provided a mediocre night’s sleep but was good enough. Like everything in Thailand though, it also had food. There were lots of vendors outside the train at either terminal and every stop in between. Food could also be ordered at your seat and brought to you and there was a dining car as well. If you wanted to eat at your seat, there were fold out tables that could be set up. I don’t recall the train food being great, but like the night’s sleep, it was usually good enough.

We’d board the train around 4:00 to 5:00 pm as I recall and soon enough it would start to roll through Bangkok and out into the country side. If you wanted to eat your food while sitting, we couldn’t wait. There were a couple stewards that would take the food orders and the food would come out shortly after the train wheels started to roll. By 6:00 pm or so those same stewards were cleaning up and starting to convert the seats into the beds. Insomnia or not, by 7:00 pm everyone was tucked into their own little cocoon with the curtains pulled tight. And for me, time to start bouncing my head on the wall.

As eager as the stewards were to put everyone to bed, they were equally eager to wake everyone up. Of course, by 6:00 am we’d already been confined to our bunks for 11 hours. So, maybe getting up wasn’t a bad idea. The first indication it was morning was a steward slowly dragging his sleep deprived body down the aisle while calling out in the most forlorn voice ever heard….”Fae rohn ….Fae rohn…”. “Fae” was a short version of “kah fae” or coffee. “Rohn” is hot. Every train we were on and every steward we ever heard offering coffee used the same forlornly desolate voice. It must have been part of the training.

A Thailand train ride!

In our own sleep deprived minds though, we soon got the idea the steward was selling hot coffee!! That sounded great, but we were soon disillusioned. First, the coffee might have been “rohn” (hot) at some point, but it was luke warm to cool by the time it reached us. Then, it was apparently composed of a couple giant spoon fulls of instant coffee, laced with an equal amount of sweetened condensed milk. There might have been a few drops of water added but the combined effect was a dark sludge all semi-congealed in a small paper cup. Impossibly bitter and impossibly sweet all at the same time.  No wonder the steward used such a despondent voice! We’ll soon write a post on the Thailand coffee scene of the 1980s, but for now, just know, the coffee was bad. Very bad! As for the sleep deprived steward’s call of “Fae rohn” in the early morning, to this day, Marcia and I will still imitate it if we wake up feeling particularly morbid and lethargic.

Despite the drawbacks, the overnight train really wasn’t all that bad as long as we skipped the coffee. In fact, this trip north was the first of many overnight train trips we would take between Chiang Mai and Bangkok. On this particular trip, we arrived in Chiang Mai about 8:00 am and were met by a Swedish missionary at the time, Johann Facchini. He and his wife Helena would be our first neighbors in Chiang Mai and were the main hosts of our first trip north.