Travelling Hopefully - Boats Trains and Hungry Fish Edition

After exhausting the opportunities for harmless entertainment at the temple (and having been strongly warned off harmful entertainment) we decided to go and pester fish.  There wasn’t really much more to do at the temple unless you wanted to become a monk (spoiler alert; you do not want to become a monk) and the fish weren’t going to pester themselves.  Our walk down to the river reintroduced us to the heat of Bangkok and one or two of us were only prevented from plunging into the river to cool off by the sight of the river.

We were due to go for a cruise around some of the canals of Bangkok but were delayed because the boat had broken down.  According to our guide this was because the boats are powered by repurposed car and truck engines that have been adapted to a new working life on the river with varying degrees of success.  Eventually though the boat, or a boat, sputtered up and perhaps slightly optimistically we climbed on board.  Or rather we descended on board as the boat sat rather low in the water. This also meant we were spattered with bits of river as we set off.  Still off we did set and were soon making our way around Bangkok’s rather extensive canal network.

The canals fronted onto houses, businesses and what appeared to be random patches of jungle that no one had got around to clearing yet.  Pulling up beside another monastery gave us the opportunity to see fish in a non dead and floating down the river context.  An elderly lady sold us a bag of bread with which to feed the fish.  Feeding the fish is part of this monastery’s charitable work and the fish have definitely figured this out.  The water heaved with vast quantities of piscine mendicants.  No divine powers would be required to walk on water here, the most egregious sinner would have been able to cross the canal without getting his feet wet.  Although he may have been eaten by the fish.

With the bread exhausted we ploughed off through water that was approximately 80% seafood and headed for dry land.  Along the way we passed water lizards of various sizes lurking dinosaur like in the shallows.  After only a few hours of relaxation to recover from fish induced psychosis we gathered our belongings and headed to the railway station for our journey south.

The railway station reminded me a bit of Central station in Sydney.  It was an old building with a bunch of new technology shoehorned in wherever it would fit.  I felt immediately at home.  I did get lost briefly but I do that at Central as well.  Our train was a purple painted ribbon of steel ready and apparently only waiting for us to board before setting off.  We boarded and settled in.  The train politely waited until it was an hour late and then launched itself into the steaming Thai night.  To compensate for the steaming Thai night an extremely efficient air conditioning system had at least one passenger concerned about frostbite.