Night Train to Bangkok

Justin and I were in Khao Sok. We needed to get to Bangkok. And this simple trip ended up as an adventure.

So we thought we could just catch a flight from Surat Thani (the nearest big town) to Bangkok. That is how we got to Southern Thailand to begin with. We got a ride from the guest house owner to the main road where we were going to catch a bus to take us to Surat Thani where we'd get a taxi to the airport to catch a plane.

Ended up we didn't take the local bus. A minibus drove by, stopped, and said he'd take us to the airport for 200 baht. Okay. The air conditioning sounded nice. Local buses aren't air conditioned. And skipping the taxi part of the trip seemed nice too. Except he didn't take us to the airport. He took us to Surat Thani where we had to get a taxi anyways.

The airport in Surat Thani is a long way from the town. In the middle of nowhere. The taxi dropped us off there and we went to go see about a plane. But the plane was completely booked. And it was going to be the next day before there was another plane. So we walked up to the 1-2-3 Go Airline counter to ask about a plane and ended up asking about a train. This lovely woman named Da called the train station and made a reservation for us. Then she talked her friend into driving us to the train (there were no taxis at the airport). And then she came into the train station with us to make sure we got our tickets.

I'm sure Da thought we were completely clueless - and rightly so - but she was one of the nicest people I've met so far in Thailand. She went out of her way to help us. Sometimes when you're traveling things can get really frustrating - like this trip to Bangkok - but for some reason that's when really nice things like meeting Da happen.


I got the top bunk on the train to Bangkok. It was my first long train ride and certainly my first overnight train ride. It was a lot of fun. Sleeping on a train is like sleeping on a boat - you get rocked to sleep. Nawn lap fan dee!

It took us 12 hours of traveling and a minibus, taxi, private car, train, metro, and sky rail train to get to Bangkok. We really just needed to add a bike and plane to make it complete!