Teak Houses, Trains and Mongrel Bikes
Bangkok to Chiang Mai — Part 1: Bangkok to Ayutthaya
We did not let ourselves be persuaded by arguments of convenience.
Or should I say, we stuck to our plan, which was to travel mostly by train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai so we could see Thailand.
To look at the country out of a train window.
In between reading books and snacking.
Heaven.
The plan took form as we lounged on Thai cushions, trying to catch the breeze on the raised wooden courtyard of Min’s Thai Teak House in the outer Bangkok suburban sprawl of Nonthaburi.
It was hot, and Min had held out against air-conditioning, explaining that the traditional architectural form was designed with enough lounging areas that you could always find a breeze somewhere.
Min’s father had been taking tourists up the khlongs that connect Bangkok’s suburbs through a web of canals on and around the Chao Phraya River since the early 1980s, fearing even then that they weren’t seeing the real — or at least the traditional — Bangkok.
Back then, the Thai house was surrounded by rice paddies, and long-tail khlong boats were the easiest and most direct route from central Bangkok.
Min arranged a boatman to take us through the khlongs to a waterside temple market nearby, but explained that we could no longer reach central Bangkok by boat.
“Tourists like the train, or the return rice barge up the river, but since it’s backtracking, and the cruise boats would’ve left already, you might as well grab a Grab.”
Min runs a cooking class that we hadn’t participated in, but she’d repurposed the morning’s output into a delicious lunch for us, teaching us some Thai hacks with fish sauce, lime juice, chilli and sugar, and how those flavours are balanced.
A full belly, a Thai cushion, a gentle breeze and a generous checkout window allowed for a proper food-coma digestion nap, which somewhat compromised our commitment to the train.
We grabbed a Grab to Ayutthaya, arriving just in time to miss the evening dinner cruise that circles around the old moated Kingdom…
