I like taking sleeper trains, it is a form of travelling that still has a bit of a romantic air about it. Hua Lompong station in Bangkok is large and busy with countless people passing through on their way to all corners of Thailand. Railway staff is also very helpful towards sweaty, flustered farangs with way too much luggage, and we were quickly guided towards platform 4 where we were to catch a train to Hat Yai in southern Thailand. All tickets on the train directly to Penang were sold out, so therefore we had opted for this train as it would get us as close to the Malaysian border as possible.
The train was chugging its way down through Thailand, we passed by little homes built right by the tracks, if we had put our hand out the window we could have touched the rusting tin roofs and the laundry hung out to dry. As the train got further away from Bangkok we entered a part of Thailand where life moves at a much slower pace. We passed an intersection where a dog was standing in the middle and a pickup truck was driving around it. The next morning we had reached the countryside, and everything was so green. Rice paddies, banana palms, papaya trees and suddenly large limestone cliff started jutting up from the ground, it was a bit like driving through a dry Halong Bay.
