All aboard the Bangkok "Express"...

After the comparative comfort of our Koh Samui hotel, we arrived back down to earth with a bit of a bump on Friday night. We took a minibus, a ferry and then another bus to get to Surit Thani train station for the 8.40pm train to Bangkok.

Ok, it could have been worse. Some people do the train journey on hard seats, we at least had soft beds, sheets and a pillow. Each carriage has two rows of bunks, one low, one high, with a corridor in the middle. You need to sleep with all your bags to make sure you've still got them in the morning and there's a light proof (not) and sound proof (not) curtain to help you feel more comfortable. I was also lucky enough to be opposite a local crazy man, who started the trip by offering me a sip of his Chang beer (i politely refused!) and continued to work his way through half the contents of the brewery over the following 12 hours. He did break up his drinking with the occasional walk up and down the carriage, talking to his imaginary drinking buddy. As you can tell from the photo, I was totally chilled out ;-)