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ironbark's photos from his train trip from Bangkok to the Lao border.
He reminded me of my overnight train trip from Hualamphong to Nongkhai 38 years ago. I remember that Rama VI (or is it IV or V?) was the biggest road I'd ever seen in my life and just FULL of hurtling buses, trucks and motorbikes. The dominant impression of the station exterior was of dust. In front of it, where the colonnade thing is now, there was a cheap hotel, though we stayed in one slightly further away, across the stagnant, rubbish-filled klong (canal) that then ran alongside the station, in order to get a bit more quiet and less dust. The train trip was overnight, like ironbark's, and I was also impressed by the comfortable sleeping arrangements, the fresh linen and cheap price - something to which, as backpackers, we were entirely unaccustomed.
At one point in the night the train stopped - must've been for nearly an hour - in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. At first, in the dark of the moonless night, the silence was total. Although I knew I was in a train full of people, I felt as if I could've been the only living thing on earth. I was sitting peering out of the open window (I had the lower bunk) and straining to see or hear something, some clue as to why we'd stopped in this particular place. Waiting for something in between sleeping and waking. Then suddenly the air began to fill with a tremendous sound - unmistakably of B52s taking off for their bombing raids somewhere over Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam. There was a transition from complete silence to complete sound, a sound that enveloped you and obliterated every other sensation. I understood why they'd called the bombing campaign in Vietnam 'Rolling Thunder', but it was unlike any real thunderstorm because it was so mechanical and unremitting - even in a thunderstorm there are periods of relative quiet. It was a thrilling sound, in the sense that the vibration went right through your body, but also terrifying because there was nothing else to do but think about where they were going and what lay at their destination. After twenty minutes the noise faded, to a low rumble and then silence again. The rural peace returned, except that by now everyone was awake and in the quiet I could hear soft voices. Five or ten minutes later the train moved again and the sky began to lighten. It was as if we'd stopped for a performance.
ironbark's photos from his train trip from Bangkok to the Lao border.He reminded me of my overnight train trip from Hualamphong to Nongkhai 38 years ago. I remember that Rama VI (or is it IV or V?) was the biggest road I'd ever seen in my life and just FULL of hurtling buses, trucks and motorbikes. The dominant impression of the station exterior was of dust. In front of it, where the colonnade thing is now, there was a cheap hotel, though we stayed in one slightly further away, across the stagnant, rubbish-filled klong (canal) that then ran alongside the station, in order to get a bit more quiet and less dust. The train trip was overnight, like ironbark's, and I was also impressed by the comfortable sleeping arrangements, the fresh linen and cheap price - something to which, as backpackers, we were entirely unaccustomed.
At one point in the night the train stopped - must've been for nearly an hour - in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. At first, in the dark of the moonless night, the silence was total. Although I knew I was in a train full of people, I felt as if I could've been the only living thing on earth. I was sitting peering out of the open window (I had the lower bunk) and straining to see or hear something, some clue as to why we'd stopped in this particular place. Waiting for something in between sleeping and waking. Then suddenly the air began to fill with a tremendous sound - unmistakably of B52s taking off for their bombing raids somewhere over Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam. There was a transition from complete silence to complete sound, a sound that enveloped you and obliterated every other sensation. I understood why they'd called the bombing campaign in Vietnam 'Rolling Thunder', but it was unlike any real thunderstorm because it was so mechanical and unremitting - even in a thunderstorm there are periods of relative quiet. It was a thrilling sound, in the sense that the vibration went right through your body, but also terrifying because there was nothing else to do but think about where they were going and what lay at their destination. After twenty minutes the noise faded, to a low rumble and then silence again. The rural peace returned, except that by now everyone was awake and in the quiet I could hear soft voices. Five or ten minutes later the train moved again and the sky began to lighten. It was as if we'd stopped for a performance.
