On the Road to Thailand

One nice thing about teaching at a Chinese university, is they pretty much take off all of January for Spring Holiday.

It doesn't seem to matter that it's the dead of winter. It's spring break, and everyone races to get train tickets to go somethere, usually home.

For me, in early 2004, after spending five months in Hunan Province, I was in desperate need of some sun, surf, and recreation.

Somewhere along my trails in Zhangjiajie, I met up with a young man who was trying to break into the travel agent business. So, I put myself in his hands and told him to get me to Thailand at a price I could afford.

Now, doing business in China is different than in the U.S. (lots of "trust me, no problem" and very little accompanying paperwork), and that caused me some apprehension. But, he came through with flying colors, going above and beyond the call of duty in the process.

Eventually, he drove me to the local train station and found a friend of his who was going to Kunming (the City of Eternal Spring) in Southeastern China, where I was to catch a flight to Bangkok. We buddied up for the more-than-24-hour trip, and he made sure I didn't get lost when we had to change trains.

Even today with the huge influx of personal automobiles, traveling by rail is how most people get around in China. (It's common when you ask how far away a place is to get an answer not in kilometers or miles but in how long it takes to get there by train.)

However, railroad travel, especially during vacation periods, is a daunting experience for the uninitiated.

For what it's worth, I prefer purchasing a "hard sleeper" ticket on the bottom bunk for any long trip. "Soft sleepers" are more private, but they can be rather confining and stuffy.

The hard sleepers are pretty much universally two rows of three-level bunk beds per compartment. There's not a lot of room (I'm almost 6-foot-3), but, if you're not too tall, it's fairly comfortable.

Be sure to carry some food and drink with you. You can buy meals and snacks on the train, but the selection is usually pretty slim and often consists of items most Westerners haven't developed a taste for -- like chicken claws. Not chicken legs or wings, mind you, but claws. (Now I tried just about everything in China, including fried grubs and mountain rock frog. I even found a rooster's head in my hot pot one day and didn't blink an eye. But, gnawing on a claw was beyond me. I know ... I know. It's probably better for me than Chicken McNuggets but I just couldn't.)

All in all, the train system is pretty good, and I got to see some scenery that I wouldn't have otherwise. But, it's rather tiring, and I caught quite a cold on my way east. (That later became a problem, because it was during the SARS scare, and the airports had heat-sensing equipment to see if passengers were running a fever. I wasn't going to be kept out of Thailand. So, I poured cold water over my head and managed to choke down my cough while telling the airport screening personnel I felt just fine.)

Kunming, by the way, is a great city to hang out and spend a few days -- mild weather, a beautiful, up-scale lake area, and a place where you can buy Italian food or hit the local KFC. The only drawbacks were that it took me forever to find an Internet cafe, and crossing virtually any street involved a 50/50 chance of being run over. (I actually did see one man on a bicycle bump a female rider, sending her crashing full-speed into a fruit stand. He didn't even look back.)

Well, eventually, I did make it to the airport in Kunming and took a Thai Airways flight to the Land of Smiles, where I met up with Kim, a Peace Corps worker who was finishing out her service in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

The picture, at right, is of her at the presidential palace in Bangkok. Notice she's wearing a Turkmen-style dress, pretty much the national uniform for women in that country.

The picture at the top of this post is of Ko Samui, where we spent a few days relaxing and swapping stories about Central Asia.