Trains and More Trains Through Bangkok

At the train station in Chiang Mai! All ready to ride the overnight train to Bangkok.

We had a Japanese style car with 4 beds all on one side of the train.  

I am taking the photo from the aisle here.  

Although we had plenty of activities for the kids to do, both boys loved watching out the window.

Watching the sun set in Thailand from the train window.

We arrived in Bangkok close to 7 am the next morning.  We all got little to no sleep since we were unused to all the train noises.  

And the rocking from your head to your feet was a little uncomfortable!

Unfortunately we didn't get any good pictures from Bangkok.  We rode the trains around, wandered around a mall, and found a McDonalds but overall our view of Bangkok was it was very dirty (you should have seen our feet and the kid's hands after walking around touching things!) and very hard to navigate.  We had plenty of offers of taxi rides but all the prices were crazy expensive (at least in comparison to Chaing Mai).  In the end we wandered back to the train station to wait for our next train down to Malaysia.  In front of us, monks had their own section of seating. 

 On train number 2, heading out of Bangkok.  As you can see, Oliver is still loving looking out the window.  Aaron is watching his GPS on his phone to see where we are going on the train, and Carson has resorted to drawing.

 Train number 2 was a Thai style car.  I loved this style a lot more! There was one aisle down the middle of the train with beds running the length of the train on either side.  So instead of getting a small space to sleep in, it was closer to having a double size bed top and bottom! During the day we would keep our belongings and bedding on one side of the train then have our seats with a table on the opposite side of the train. Here you can see our storage side, you will see the table in the next photo down.

 Here you can see Oliver sitting on one side of a booth style seating with our table in the middle. Yes Oliver is still staring out the window.  Here he found some old train cars and engines!

 Going through Thailand and Malaysia we saw so many unique areas. From beautiful houses set back on a nice property like this one:

To shacks like this one: Yes this was someone's house (the smaller shack)!

 In the next 2 photos, you can see how our beds folded down.  Oliver and I slept perfectly on one bunk with plenty of room.  And as I said before I loved this style.  As the train swayed from side to side it felt like we were being rocked to sleep.  The train tracks in Malaysia were much smoother in comparison to Thailand too so that might have had something to do with the quieter ride ( = easier time sleeping)!

 Aaron and Carson on their side of the train.

View of the smoky sunset.  Lots of people were burning their rice paddies in preparation for planting season so this haze was our last view of Thailand before going to sleep.

 We woke up to this beautiful view of Malaysia.  Mostly it was flat with lots of trees and farmland but sometimes we would see these huge rock uprisings. Not sure of the geological process that formed them but they gave the landscape an interesting shape! There was still a little smoky haze in the northern part of Malaysia but it cleared up the farther south we went.

Breakfast on the train was a typical Thai/Malay meal of curry, rice, and cabbage soup.

Housing in Malaysia was a tiny bit better in comparison to Thailand.  Most houses seemed to be built of nice quality materials and mostly everyone had some type of farmland.  At least until we got closer to the city. More on that to come on my next post!