The torrential downpours in Sukhothai continued… late into the night. I know because we caught a bus out of the (open-sided) bus station at 10pm, and we were there from 8pm, so we witnessed the truly ferocious rain. It’s no wonder all the ruins in the old city had pockmarks – that rain would pockmark your skin!

After an extremely comfortable overnight bus ride, we arrived in Bangkok at the ungodly hour of 3.56am. We caught a taxi to the train station, and then sat down to wait till 8am, when our train was set to leave and carry us down the coast to Ban Krut, our tropical paradise. Only, the train was fully booked.

Imagine, if you will, what it felt like to be told at 4.30am that you were too late (too late!) and that the train you were going to wait 3 and a half hours for was full, and not only did the next one not leave for another 5 hours, but it was a slow train so it would take an extra 2 hours to get there! All of a sudden our easy 1pm arrival was pushed to 7pm, and we were faced with an 8 hour wait in a grimy, crowded and airless train station.

I was not pleased.
But neither was I freaking out – which would definitely have been my default reaction before this trip. Mark helped a lot, he was totally calm and relaxed, and resigned to the fact that we would just have to sit tight till the next train arrived. “It’s like a lay-over,” he said, but I couldn’t help thinking of all the things airports had that this station didn’t – aircon, padded seats, internet, shops, etc etc etc

I started getting severely antsy around 7.45am, and on a whim I said to Mark, “I wonder if there are any cancellations, do you think we should check?” He ambled off to the ticket counter without much hope, but by 7.52am he was transferred to another ticket counter, and the clerk there didn’t shake his head immediately… In fact, he looked quite hopeful. 7.57am, and as the 3-minute call sounded we got our tickets – somehow they had found two spare tickets! I nearly cried I was so happy. Of course we then had to buy water for the 5 hour journey, and that cost us a precious minute and a half, so that as we ran to the platform the train started pulling away. Dragging our bags behind us, tripping over untied laces, racing to reach the platform, we called out to the conductor, and thank God in Heaven he slowed down for us and let us on the train.

Phew.

You can see why we haven’t blogged since – we needed to catch our breath!

We’ve spent the last five days in beautiful Ban Krut Beach. It’s a long stretch of white sand with a blissfully warm sea, loads of palm trees, and hardly any people around. We’ve been spending our days taking long walks on the beach, reading voraciously (we’ve both finished a book this week), eating a lot, relaxing, taking afternoon naps and getting painfully sunburnt (this sun is HOT). It’s been such a balm for the soul, and I’ll write more about what’s been going on in my head tomorrow…

For now, we have all these delicious Best Moments of the Day for you – http://bit.ly/1amRtW
Check them out, and let me know what you think!