13 hour train from Bangkok to Ubon Ratchathani

January 2, 2012 Pablo

We spent 2 days in Bangkok, during that time we enjoy the variety of food and hand washed our clothes, cause we couldn’t do it in Ko Samet because of the yellow waters. After that it was time to leave Thailand before Ilze’s VISA expired.

We were going to cross the border with Laos, and we wanted to stop some place in the middle for not doing the whole trip in a row, but due to the slow transportation system we figure it out that it wasn’t an option anymore. We had to take one night train from Bangkok to Ubon Ratchathani, the last city on the East of Thailand with train station.

It was suposed to be 11 hours on the way, but finally it became almost 13 hours. In the beginning we though about getting a third class train ticket, but like in the end we were going to spend half day there we reconsidered and took second class. This way we avoided the hard wooden sits and we got more comfy chairs.

Transport cost for third class was a little bit more than 200 baths, and the second class we chose was 371 baths.

So if 1 euro is 41,2 Thai bath, 371 baths are more than 9€.

The journey, for obvious reasons, was long; but comfortable enough. Ilze slept a few hours over me during the night, and I crashed in the morning before arriving. Finally we got to Ubon Ratchathani around 10 am.

Once there, and after getting away from taxi and tuk-tuks drivers who hassle us in the station, we started to walk straight to what seems to be a town. After less than 5 minutes walking we saw the first alive street with a sign of “hotel”, we follow the arrow and we got a hotel/guesthouse named Sri kuhlab Hotel Warin with rooms from 100 baths.

Very basic and old rooms, but clean enough, so I payed and we crashed for a few hours. When we wake up we started to walked around the town, but we didn’t almost find anything interesting. It was Sunday and most of the shops and restaurants were closed; and in the market there were nothing cooked, just fresh veggies. Finally we found one restaurant open and no Chinese were we got a huge and great meal.

In the evening we went walking North, direction to the brige. When we start to cross to river, we show one restaurant and concert area in the middle. We have reached, just by chance, an all-you-can-eat buffet where I ate non-stop; Ilze got a vegetarian meal for 30 baths and joined me with the fruits of my buffet.