Almost 40 years ago, I used to fly into Ubon Ratchathani to buy jewelry from B Jewelry, a small store located on the Royal Thai AFB, Ubon. I visited regularly, and purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of jewelry, Thai silk, bronzeware, and souvenirs for the ship's store aboard the USS Coral Sea (CVA-43). I didn't realize at the time what a privilege it was to do this, and what good friends I would become with the store manager, Toy Supakorn (nee Tantasirikorn). I decided to pay a short visit to Ubon for old times' sake, so Sunday night I took the train from Bangkok to Ubon for a day's outing.
Well, the night train really was an experience--rocking from side to side, banging and clanking continuously, and (worst of all) suddenly lurching forwards or backwards when the engineer decided to slow down or accelerate. I rode First Class, which meant I shared a sleeper compartment with another person, who decided not to show up for the trip--he must have known what I was in for and skipped the whole affair! We left Bangkok 30 minutes late, were sidetracked at least three times for 30 minutes each, and arrived in Ubon 2 1/2 hours late. With all the noise and rocking, I didn't sleep at all, but I was glad to finally be back in Ubon after 38 years.
That is, I thought I was glad to be back, until I took a ride around town and didn't recognize a single thing, was denied entrance to the Air Force Base (where the B Jewelry store was), it started to rain ("big raining"), and my desire to return to Bangkok ASAP was thwarted by a lack of seats on any of the three airlines serving the Ubon-BKK route. I took some pictures and headed back to the train station so I could be sure to get a ticket in the First Class car. Oops--no such luck--"sorry, sir, all full." OK, so Second Class is sounding better all the time, and I could save 600 Baht--woohoo!
I waited about 2 hours for the train to come, big raining all this time, so I sampled some of the food vendors' delicacies. The only one I liked was the plain rice. I did have some fried rice at one stall, but it included a mystery meat that I avoided--the flies wouldn't even land on it....
The train arrived about 1 1/2 hours before departure, so I thought I'd get aboard and find my seat. I found it, all right--next to the leaking roof from the big raining. I found the conductor to ask if I could change seats, but he just got a rag, wiped the seat and windowsill, and said, "you OK now--sit!" Of course, it only stayed dry for about a minute. I went back to the conductor, who then stuffed a rag up between the window and the frame and said, "OK."
By this time I noticed the few people in the car were all coughing, and I realized that the car was filled with diesel smoke from the generator which powered the on-board A/C unit, which was located beneath the car. I left the car, and the only place I could find to wait that didn't involve inhaling tons of diesel smoke was out in the rain--the covered areas were containing the smoke from five generators. What a revolting development this was!
I boarded again with a minute to spare before we left the station, and was looking forward to relaxing in the seat and getting a free shower, but the conductor immediately started pulling down the beds and making them up. Since I was assigned an upper bunk, I had to climb up into a coffin-like area and lay down on the pallet, even though it was only 6:30 PM. It was a hard day's night, those 13 hours back to Bangkok, for sure.
Goldenbear's Honey made the right choice in staying at the Renaissance and not accompanying me to Ubon.
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21984041@N08/sets/72157626414033571/
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