My First Train Experience

10-12 Aug - I left Songkla for Hat Yai again together with Aaron and Kenneth. Upon reaching, I decided to check into a slightly more expensive guesthouse in town as the previous one is too yucky. So I invested in a more luxurious room for 300B in Louise Guesthouse.

Upon checking in, I shopped around the many many tour agencies around town for my next destination. As Hat Yai is the busiest city in Southern Thai, road, rail, and air connectivities are abundant here.

Hat Yai has direct busses that goes to Bangkok (14 hours, 550B), Krabi (5 hours, 200B), Koh Samui (7 hours, 400B), Phuket (8 hours, 250B) Hat Yai is also connected to Kuala Lumpur via a 9 hour bus and Singapore via a 16 hour bus. Prices are 350B and 450B respectively. All the busses are air conditioned.

Upon realizing my options, I decided to go to Koh Samui (koh = island). A huge island on the east coast of Thailand. Although I am able to get a bus plus ferry combo straight to Koh Samui, I decided to take the longer and cheaper route.

I woke up early next morning to catch a 10 hour train to Surat Thani. Known to the locals as Surat, this busy port town serves only as a transit point for travelers to Koh Samui, Koh Phangan and Koh Tao. As I have all the time in the world, I decided to check out this town before heading to the heavily touristed island of Koh Samui.

The train ticket from Hat Yai to Surat cost me an outrageously cheap price of 55B and I was told it's free for the locals (crazy rite). I know this sounds embarrassing but this was the first time I am traveling on a train and thus I was very excited. The 10 hour journey was really an eye opener for me and traveling on 3rd class with 90 degrees wooden seat with no leg room and fan coach added to the "fun".

The locals travels with all sorts of funny things on train including pet dogs, large pack of what looks like rice and fresh produce. Every 5 minutes there will be hawkers walking down the aisle selling chicken wings, drinks, nuts, eggs, rice packets and not forgetting occasional beggars making special appearance by singing or reciting poems.

When my train reach the station of Surat Thani, I was so relieved. From the train station, I took a tut tut into town where I stayed overnight in Ban Don Hotel hidden inside a Chinese restaurant which serves delicious and cheap food. After that I went sightseeing around town and shop around for the ferry to Koh Samui on the next day.

There's really nothing much you can do here in Surat and there are only a couple of temples that is worth visiting in town. I managed to secure a ferry ticket to Koh Samui for 150B and a night stay in Matlang Resort for 400B.

At night I had dinner in the Night Market which in my opinion is the biggest tourist attraction in town. HAHA. There were so much food and I had the famous Massaman Curry here. Massaman curry is actually inspired from the Indian curry available in Malaysia but in my opinion it beats the authentic Indian curry hands down. Massaman is also only popular in Southern Thailand so if you are in Southern Thai, don't forget to try it. Other snacks available in town includes the creepy insects, scorpion and worms.