Sunday, July 7, 2013

Riding trains with strangers in Thailand

When people want to hear about my travels, I frequently hear the same question. “But they don’t speak English, how did you get around?” Despite explaining that people do speak English, and there are books and signs to help you, I also find myself thinking about the fact that you do not always need language to get around. Language is nice, but after living abroad for years, and not always having the words to talk with the people I wanted to, I have realized, you do not always need to talk.

There is one particular memory that comes to mind. During my backpacking adventure and my second time in Thailand, I felt pretty confident in most of my city choices and knew how to get from point A to point B. I had been traveling for several weeks at this point and thought I had it down, but Ayutthaya posed a new challenge for me. Ayutthaya is about an hour north of Bangkok and is a well known city for their temple ruins. It’s a beautiful city with lots and lots of ruins, and I had just happened to be there during Songkram (I’ll save that for another post), which in itself was an intense experience.

I packed up my backpack at the hostel, and headed towards the train station. I bought a train ticket to Bangkok and was ready to leave in 20 minutes when the train came. 20 minutes. 30 minutes. 45 minutes. 1 hour. No train. I was starting to get confused and anxious. Had I missed the train or bought the wrong ticket? Was I in the right place…. I had no idea what was going on. I waited it out for about 2 hours before I started getting nervous. There was a group of foreigners not too far away from me, but when I travel I try to avoid being seen in large crowds of foreigners. (I can’t explain why, but if you travel enough, you know what I mean). Instead, I sat on the bench with a group of Thai women, and tried to casually look over their shoulders at their train tickets. Not to Bangkok, dang. A woman in all white saw what I was doing and came over to me and smiled, tapped my hand indicating she wanted to see my ticket, and I handed it to her. She then showed me her ticket, which was the same train as mine, destination กรุงเทพฯ (Bangkok). She handed my ticket back and motioned that it would be okay. And in her motion, I heard, “It’s fine, the trains are late, this is Thailand. I’ll find you when it is time”, and with that I relaxed.

I cannot remember now how much longer we waited, but when the train finally came, I could not find my new friend in white. I went and stood with a cluster of people on the platform, and she came up behind my, grabbed my hand and started walking across the tracks, and after traveling for so long you start to think, okay, let’s see what happens. I crossed the tracks with her, and walked quite a ways down the rail to a tiny wooden platform, that was barely standing. We waited there together to board the train, and the spot we chose to get on the train was significantly less crowded than where all the other foreigners had decided to get on. Ha! This is why I do not follow the other foreigners around.

We squeezed onto the seats and I held my bag in my lap. The seats were not the best, but we had seats, which a lot of people did not. I closed my eyes, took in the sounds and smells on the train. I watched people get on, animals run about, people walk through selling different drinks and snacks. After 20 minutes, the woman grabbed my hand and we were off again. This time to seats of our own, next to windows, where we had a great view of the scenery passing us by. It was a beautiful train ride, and this woman helped me through the whole process. I do not speak Thai and she didn’t speak English, but somehow we had managed to understand each other and she helped me find when and where I needed to be. Half way through our journey, she looked at her wrists, took off a turtle bracelet and clasped it onto my wrist, and smiled.

She got off the train a few stops before me but made sure to show me in my book which stop I was getting off, and to put me at ease about where I needed to get off. She got off the train and that was that. We shared only a few hours together but her hospitality and generosity spoke louder than any words we could have shared.

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