North to Chiang Mai

Having finished with Phitsanulok and seen Sukhothai, I caught another slow open train north to arrive in Chiang Mai a few days before Songkran.

I got on the train with a couple of backpackers I had met the day before in a coffee shop in Phitsanulok. Judith is  from Holland and she's lovely- we met a week and a half ago and are still travelling together.

Soaked and streaked with talcum powder at Songkran.

And Jodi was from New Zealand. We left him at the train station once we reached Chiang Mai.

It wasn't that he was such a bad guy. I was initially a bit charmed by him playing Bob Marley on the train as we climbed into the mountains, even though I don't love it when people pull out an instrument in a public place and subject everyone to their unique musical stylings. He wasn't half bad.

The monk behind him disagrees.

But then he started rapping. And after that he would not stop talking. I tuned him out at one point and when I tuned back in he was talking at me about Scottish independence. I have no idea what I said or did, if anything, to encourage the conversation in that direction.

But the ride was fun despite it being a bit humid and gritty and windblown and pedantic. We were in the last car, so whenever things got too hot or long-winded I would go stand in the extremely secure doorway out the back.

The countryside was even prettier than it was heading out of Bangkok. There were the same verdant rice paddies:

This time with a background of hazy, mossy mountains in the distance.

Crooked horizon courtesy of a speeding train.

Until they weren't, and we were in them, clacking up the steep slopes like a sluggish, scenic rollercoaster.

Mountain town. 

It was sweet.

We also spent the ride hanging out with monks:

Not really. They're intimidating. 

and speculating that this monk was actually a hitman. He kept going between the cars to smoke (which is whatever, a lot of monks smoke), but look at this guy.

And his traditional Buddhist shoulder tattoo of a skull with crossed pistols.

Judith and I started to worry that one of us was his hit when he got into the same songthaew taxi as us in Chiang Mai. At the time of my posting this we have escaped any and all attempts made on our lives.

next: Songkran. I lied.