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This morning we were up and out of the door by around 8:15am to get our train tickets to Chiang Mai. Laura thanked the hostel ladies and said we would likely see them again soon... we had no idea then it would much sooner than we thought.
On arriving at the train station there were a lot of people milling around waiting for trains. I confidently strolled up to the ticket office, smiling, to then be told all the 3rd class tickets had been sold. Me and Laura looked at each other with that, 'how the hell did that happen?' expression. We were informed that the 233 seats in 3rd class for the one particular train are not available for advanced sales. In other words they can only be bought on the day, likely to help the local people. Yesterday the kind information lady failed to mention this and we assumed the tickets were free because no one wanted them. It transpired that the ticket booth opened at 5:30am and all had gone by 7am, therefore we were two hours late. Needless to say we were both thoroughly fed up by this point. The ticket man advised us to come back later for possible cancellations but we knew there would be no chance over the festival weekend. The bus and train tickets apparently available from travel agencies were about triple in price. Out of principle we decided not to go for these and debated calling Chiang Mai off. Unfortunately as we booked the accommodation and being festival time, the hostel would probably charge us now for cancelling. In a little bit of a pickle to say the least! We hung around for a while and kept checking for cancellations while munching the picnic we had made for the train before giving up around midday.. We then headed back to the hostel thoroughly peeved off.
Arriving back at the guesthouse, they didn't really expect to see us quite so soon so looked at us a bit bewildered after all we had been gone about five hours. We checked back into our room and I immediately got on the Internet and low and behold found a really cheap flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai leaving on 13th. There was one flight left at 8:30pm and being so cheap we had to go for it.... It was literally a few hundred more each to fly then to take the now extortionately priced buses. I contacted the guesthouse in Chiang Mai to explain we would be a day late and they were very kind and did not charge us for cancelling one night. So this meant we had two days to kill in Bangkok! There was a nice couple in our room now who we chatted to about travelling. In addition there was a young man who didn't really say anything and was generally quite odd. He would just lay on the bed staring at you and not speaking... Mmm odd.
The day past without much happening apart from catching up with the masters golf and watching more movies. It was safe to say we were in a very lazy mood after a very exhausting day.
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