Another fast start today. Out of the hotel at 9:00 for a 10:00 train to Pandang Besar, a border town between Malaysia and Thailand, where we do border processing and pickup a night train to Bangkok. That all sounds pretty straight forward and certainly the first train was. A modern Euro-style electric train that went as fast as 150km/h. There were a lot of stops along the way and a significant number of locals getting on and off. There was not much to see during the ride because of heavy jungle close to the track that obscured ones vision. Where a view became available one noticed that palm oil forests were still plentiful but compared to yesterday there were now more rice fields. Late in this leg we saw a number of large limestone outcroppings, each attended by its own cement factory.

We got into Panag Besar around 3:00 with the expectation of the night train leaving at 6:00. The town did not offer much in the way of distraction during the wait but it did have a somewhat photogenic temple which is dutifully included in the photos below.

The boarding process was turned into chaos when an arriving train from Bangkok had about 500 more passengers than the local immigration post was equipped to handle and hence this delayed boarding of our night train. It eventually occurred to the customs officials that this was a problem as the Bangkok night train would depart at its schedule time (as it has other connections too and time commitments to meet )regardless of passengers being late or delayed. Hence there was a last minute scramble to get us all through both immigrations processes and onto the train. Quite a riot really.

The night train itself also proved to be a bit of a riot. Our sleeping carriage was OLD, and worn. In its seated configuration, there was one passenger on each side of the aisle, passengers sat in pairs facing each other. When converted to the sleeping configuration there was a lower bunk (the original seat where 2 passengers sat facing each other) and an upper bunk that folded down to make a bed. The unfortunate upper passenger had to negotiate a narrow ladder. The couple of pictures above don't do the scene justice but will help.