The eastern horizon remains unkissed by today’s sun. The ice trucks of Bangkok slumber peacefully, waiting for their drivers to wake. Food vendors, their street-side carts covered in canvas, grab a few more minutes of alone-time before their days begin. But, for me, this day has been a known quantity for several weeks. A quantity with fixed points in time. One of which points finds me outside the house at 4:15AM walking up to a waiting taxi.
Khun Thongchai, a name which takes significantly more letters to spell in this language as opposed to his, was waiting for me in his Grab Car, as promised. He popped the trunk as I approached and came out to put my one small bag into the boot.
Wait, what’s a “Grab Car”?
I’m glad you asked. Grab is one of the foundational “ride sharing” – later to be rebranded “ride hailing” because they found that nobody wanted to travel with strangers – companies. The ones you are familiar with, Uber, Lyft, and their ilk, after being in business for a couple of years, realized – well, their venture capitalist, sugar-daddies realized – that there really isn’t much money to be made in this business especially once competition gets factored in. So, Grab and Uber got together and divided the world, much as colonial Spain and Portugal did in the late-1400s. Grab sold Uber a 27% stake in their business and Uber upped its other stakes and left Southeast Asia. The consequence is that the weary, uninformed, traveler, having been spit out into the night at the airport, will be well and truly screwed when they whip out their phone and try to get an Uber.
However, getting back to the story at hand, I needed to make sure that there was in fact a ride outside my house at 4:15 am on a certain Monday morning and Grab allows you to pre-book and get a confirmed car and driver to be there waiting. Because I needed Khun Thangchai to drive me all the way across town to…
… The Bus Station.
For this Monday morning, I get to check off one more option on my list: I am going to Chiang Mai.
Hey, wait a minute. Didn’t you just go to Chiang Mai a few months ago.
Indeed. Last November. But that was by motor scooter, not by bus. The list I’m referring to is not The Places I’ve Gone in Thailand list, but the How Did I Get to Chiang Mai list.
Professional help is available…
Not the point. Chiang Mai, for this list, serves me as a voyaging touchstone. An anchor in space that is perfectly close enough to, and yet perfectly distant enough from, where I live in Bangkok to allow me to make this trip easily and yet still feel upon arrival that I’ve actually made a trip.
Distance-wise the journey is about 700km, the same as from Boston to Washington, DC or from San Francisco to Los Angeles via the PCH in the US. Not small, but not long enough to need to get a place for the night.
In the twelve years it’s been since my first trip to Chiang Mai, I’ve gone a total of five times. Twice by air and once each by train, scooter, and, as you read this, bus. But, while I may be an idiot, I’m not particularly stupid, so I always hedge my bets on the dodgier modes of travel I take and, other than the scooter trip, always return to Bangkok by air.
Khun Thangchai slammed the trunk down on my luggage and I slid into the back seat. The taxi, as Bangkok taxis go, was pretty typical. On the dash a golden Buddha sat on a white plastic dais covered with a clear dome like some karmic snow globe. Above it on the headliner was a blessing bestowed on the vehicle by a Buddhist monk. Basically, just fingerprint size smudges of paint to assure the drivers prosperity and safety. Being Thailand, I’m guessing the blessing leaned into “prosperity” more than “safety” as the windshield was a spiderweb of cracks spreading out from an area where something large, heavy, and reasonably soft had impacted the glass at speed. I didn’t ask.
A bit over a half hour later I was deposited at Bangkok’s Bus Terminal in the northwestern part of the city. I grabbed a coffee from a Flying Turtle – a robot vending machine that at least makes a noise like it’s grinding the beans and brewing it fresh – and waited to board my “luxury coach” for my promised eleven-hour journey. The trip was billed as an express with one stop for a lunch break. The bus also featured a bathroom for the passengers’ comfort the rest of the time.
Finally, at 6:10am, a mere ten minutes behind schedule and just as the sun broke the eastern horizon, we pulled out of the terminal and into Bangkok’s morning rush hour. Which gave me plenty of time to look out at the passing traffic and assess my ride.
Roads in Thailand tend to be narrower than their equivalents elsewhere. Almost, but not quite, as narrow as the tiny lanes in the medieval city-centers of Europe but expected to support two directions of traffic and a robust streetside economy. Vehicles that would normally be banned to the highway network for safety are, instead, welcomed with open arms providing the driver thinks he or she can make the turns. This results in very tall and narrow vehicles that look as if their most stable position would be on their side. My bus was one of these. It had two decks. The lower of which supported the driver and conductor, a small group of passengers, and the engine and luggage compartments. Most of the passengers were consigned to the upper deck as was the toilet. The view, at least, was great.
Not to bring back bad memories, but you no doubt recall your high school geometry class. When you have a box that is twice as high as it is wide and you raise the short side by, say, X, the long side – AKA: the upper passenger compartment – will move 2X. So, hitting a 10cm bump in the road or dropping into a pothole that deep, results in the passengers all getting slammed left or right by 20cm. Now imagine that happening every few seconds and it gives you a pretty good idea of what the physical experience of riding in the otherwise comfortable seat was like. The seats were equipped with some very plush wrap-around head and neck supports. They didn’t exist to allow you to sleep enroute, but to prevent whiplash so the hospitals at the destination wouldn’t be overwhelmed every time the bus pulled in.
Given that it was going to be about five hours until our rest stop for lunch. I thought I’d make use of the on-board facilities once we cleared Bangkok. Fortunately, someone beat me to it. When the door opened the bus was flooded with an odor I can only equate with the smell of a Porta-Potty that had to wait until Thursday to be collected from a summer music festival whose last act cleared the stage the previous Sunday. I immediately removed “Bus Toilet” from my bucket list, so to speak. I mean even the toilet on the train was better and it was just a straight pipe onto the tracks below.
The lunch stop, when it finally happened, was quite pleasant. The roughly US$20.00 bus fare included lunch and there was a good variety of Thai food available to choose from. The rest stop had a nice garden setting with large, clean toilet facilities completely opposite of what the bus offered. Everyone took advantage of the break to stretch and relax for as long, and as far away from the bus, as possible. Then we were back on the road.
The biggest disappointment was all the stops.
But you said “Express”!
And that’s what was promised. In Thailand caveat emptor, is basically the national motto. Because the six intervening provinces between Bangkok and Chiang Mai were opportunities to pick up and/or drop off passengers to improve the profitability of the route, extra stops were essential. Each of those provinces had at least one stop along the way to do so. So “Express” was, ummm… more aspirational than experiential. Eventually, of course, the bus rolled into Chiang Mai Bus Terminal 3 a mere hour and a half late. Or, as that’s known locally, right on time.
Before my little adventure I was talking about my trip plans with a friend at dinner one night and she asked why I would even consider doing a trip like this. I thought about it for a second and answered, “for the experience.” You know, she said, there are a lot of things that you really don’t need to experience.
I should have taken her advice.
