All Aboard

At the train station in Kuala Lumpur we headed straight to the Information Booth. "We want to go to Bangkok tonight," John said. "What's available?" The information agent opened a book and pointed to a picture of the train's sleeper cars. First class looked perfect. Even second class, for the second leg of the trip through Thailand, looked like deluxe accommodation with its crisp white sheets, sparkling bathrooms and shiny floors. "We'll take it."

The first class berth was comfortable. Unfortunately the ride to Butterworth, Malaysia only lasted seven hours, not quite long enough for us to feel totally rested. In Butterworth we had seven hours to kill before the next train departed. We took a ferry across the river to Penang, had breakfast in a hotel dining room and wasted the rest of the time walking around an air-conditioned mall.

The next leg of our trip was on board a Thai train. Alas, the pictures of the second class Thai sleeper cars we'd been shown at the information booth were a bit different from what rolled into the station. Those pictures were no doubt taken the day the cars rolled off the assembly line. But their heyday was over; half a century of crud has taken its toll. Looking at the blackened exterior of the train as it sat waiting for us on the tracks, John summed up our feelings in four little words, "We should have flown!"

The exterior was a forewarning - the interior too was old, dingy and dirty. An attempt had been made at cleaning the floor; there were circles where a mop had swirled the dirt around. But not even a perfunctory attempt had been made to clean either the accumulated filth between the seat folds or the blackened window sills. An on-board archaeologist could have had a field day digging and dusting for skeletal remains. And when we saw the restrooms, I wondered if could hold my brew for 19 hours. We watched one train attendant urinate into a sink and were left to wonder whether washing our hands would in fact remove germs or add to them.

But this is all part of the experience, isn't it? That's what everyone tells us anyway. Of course most of these people don't seem to mind the dirt. Maybe they just don't see it.

"These sleeper cars are so comfortable," one young woman told me as she threw off her thongs and padded barefoot across the floor encrusted with candy wrappers and balls of hair. Once under way, I noticed a whole aisle of similarly germ-laden feet hanging over the arm rests and plastered to the vinyl seats. I cringed. What had been on our seats?

Sometimes John and I feel as old as the train car on which we are riding. The car's primary occupants were ten to fifteen years our juniors. In discussion we found a wide difference in traveling styles, ours apparently at the luxury end of the spectrum. One young man from Denmark had just returned from 35 days in Indonesia. We talked about how cheap it had been to travel there. When I commented that John and I had enjoyed a five star meal in Bali for only US$9; he exploded in "Wow!" I smiled. Only his 'wow' was to express how steep he thought that was. "Did that include the room?" he asked.

He talked with us about Malaysia too. He hadn't visited the Taman Negara National Park, although he would have like to, because even the hostel dorms at US$8 per night were too expensive. We ended the conversation while he tried to figure out how to spend one week in Bangkok on his remaining US$24.

Every once in a while John and I look at each other and wonder if we're too old for this. Then we remind ourselves that our reason for travelling the world isn't to see how cheaply we can visit every country and to save every dime we can. Still, I feel old when I'm the only one who seems to mind that our backpacks have just slid onto the dirty floor and a ratty-haired man with blackened bare feet has just walked across them.