Travel days: 2 cities and an island in 48 hours

Cue the start of a crazy two day travel saga. 

Back on the 3 hour winding bus from Pai to Chiang Mai. 

From the bus terminal in Chiang Mai we got a songthaew to the train station. Stopped for lunch at the cafe outside of the terminal. Our five pm overnight train started boarding at 4. We had second class tickets for the train which meant that our seats were turned into bunk beds for the night. There was dinner on the train which was overpriced and more or less airplane food quality but the woman serving us was very chatty and practically sang the menu. 

Around 9 an attendant came around and turned the seats into our beds for the night. I had a top bunk which was a little nerve racking to sleep on. It’s very narrow and you have to climb up an even narrower ladder that’s attached to the luggage holds. They never turned the lights off on the train which was a little annoying but was fixed with an eye mask. The bathrooms on the train were the worst part of the journey- one side was a toilet but there’s no flush—everything goes right onto the tracks. The other was a squatting toilet which was much scarier because you could see the tracks going by underneath you. 

We were woken up for tea and coffee around 5am and arrived into Bangkok at by 6.30. We went back to the first hostel we stayed in (Bed Station Khoasan) to leave our stuff in the luggage room and use their facilities (showers, pool, ~chill out area for naps). 

We had to leave the hostel by 4 to get our flight from BKK. 

Some of us went to the Grand Palace for the afternoon. The Grand Palace is where royalty lived and still home to some government buildings. I wore the same outfit I have been wearing to all temples (maxi skirt, tank, and a scarf to cover my shoulders) but you had to wear an actual t shirt and not just something to cover your shoulders with. So 100baht later I bought a cute linen t shirt and we were in then. The palace was the busiest tourist place we had been to yet. The tickets were 500baht and that included a show. We had maps of the area but it was still confusing to go around. There is one main temple- there is an area for Thai and a tourist section. There was another temple that was closed off for religious ceremony  but we could hear the monks chanting from outside. 

We had to get on a (free) shuttle to the theatre for the cultural show which was about the masked fighters in Thailand. 

Then it was back in a car and to the airport to get to Koh Samui. The flight was less than an hour and we got a 15 minute taxi ride to the hotel in Chaweng Beach.