Departure

Leaving Bangkok for the start of our journey was surreal.

Leaving Bangkok, the grand departure for our year-long odyssey, felt strangely anticlimactic. Thirty years ago, embarking on our first European escapade, we’d waved goodbye amid tear-stained handkerchiefs, enthusiastic hugs, and a cheer squad of family and friends shouting encouragement. This time, our send-off had all the ceremony of a casual visit to the wet market, albeit with significantly heavier bags.
The previous weeks had been a whirlwind, yet departure morning unfolded with suspicious calm. After handing our car keys to Nigel, we slipped onto a shuttle boat, the motor purring across the Chao Phraya. Pete flagged a tuk tuk, grinning. “If we’re leaving Bangkok, we may as well do it properly,” he said, as we wedged ourselves among bulging backpacks and were flung into traffic, a chorus of honks and exhaust

We arrived absurdly early at Hua Lamphong and I exhaled, grateful for the timeless charm of a proper terminus. Airports promise sleek, antiseptic efficiency; train stations breathe history. They invite you to slow, watch, and savour. Even the clocks seemed to tick more kindly here. Hua Lamphong embodied all that, grand enough to inspire, intimate enough to feel human, its shabby elegance bustling gently rather than rushing.
​Around us, suited commuters arrowed toward platforms. Families navigated the tide, gripping children, while backpackers sprawled like sun-warmed cats, filling time before their next leap. You couldn’t buy a cold beer, but you could buy a bowl of spicy noodle soup that bubbled at track-side stalls, steam rising into the humid evening. Further along, improbably, apprentice barbers offered free haircuts to anyone brave enough.

At precisely seven o’clock came the call to board our overnight train to Chiang Mai. Rumour had it Thai Railways had acquired shiny new sleepers; alas, ours was not among them. We climbed into a vintage understudy, the carriage that had been waiting patiently in the wings for several decades. “Retro-chic,” I said, hopefully, lowering onto a gently sighing seat.
At 7:35 p.m. the train lurched forward, wheels clacking a steady percussion along worn tracks. A stewardess appeared, crisp uniform and a smile that could have sold real estate, offering small plastic cups of neon-orange juice, “complimentary,” she assured us, a promise likely itemised by morning.
Watching Bangkok slide past was pure theatre. Mercury vapour lamps turned late-night markets into dream sets. Under flickering fluorescents on bamboo poles, locals slurped noodles while Pete and I finished the last of the party snacks, raised a furtive paper cup of fizz to the voyage ahead, and watched the neon haze soften into the dark hush of rural Thailand.
I woke to pale, milky-blue light seeping through the curtain. Bamboo trunks stood like sentinels, leaves shimmering in first light. As dawn unfurled across hills and pocket villages, that familiar surge of wonder rose, the dividend that makes a night in a rolling sleeper worth every rattle and squeak. Soon the scenery tidied itself into manicured fairways and gated moo-baans: certain signs that Chiang Mai was near.
We had barely stepped onto the platform when John materialised, windmilling his arms above a sea of backpack-toting travellers. Just like that, the first chapter was complete: one train ride behind us, and, pleasingly, an indeterminate number still to come.