I’ve done this journey by plane. Forty minutes, fine, completely forgettable. The train takes twelve hours overnight and I would recommend it without hesitation to anyone who asks.
Hua Lamphong at night
Bangkok’s old main station is Art Deco and slightly crumbling and completely alive at 6pm when you board. Monks in saffron, families hauling enormous bags of fruit, backpackers, commuters. The second-class sleeper bunk is narrow but clean — white sheets, a curtain, a reading light, a window. The train pulls out on time and the city fades into rice paddies faster than you expect.
The food cart
A woman comes through around 8pm with pad thai and cold Chang beer. The pad thai is properly good — not tourist-priced, not watered down. I ate at the little fold-down table by my window watching the darkness outside and felt completely at peace in a way that airports have never once managed to make me feel.
Waking up in the mountains
The attendant taps on your curtain around 5:30am with instant coffee and a shy smile. You pull up the blind and the landscape has completely changed while you slept — the flat central plains replaced by misty mountains, teak forest, morning light cutting through the trees. We pulled into Chiang Mai around 7am. I stepped off into cool air that smelled like jasmine and temple incense and thought: yes, this is exactly the right way to arrive somewhere new.