Leaving On The Night Train

So, one last day in KL. It was a good introduction to Asia, in conjunction with Singapore, and we felt like we were gradually becoming accustomed to it. We had a check-out time of noon so we made good use of the morning to research a few more things about visas and suchlike before leaving our bags at reception and going out for one last wander.

But to where? We had had to calculate how many Ringgits we would need for taxi to train station and food, and we had pretty much seen everything of worth. So we jumped on the metro one last time and headed out west towards the Malaysian World Trade Centre. When we arrived we were pretty much unimpressed – it was OK but it seemed like we could only get to the tradesmans entrance and not where all the important people arrived. This was the area for the original/old town centre, with the new one now being centred around the Petronas Towers and the KL Tower, etc. There was a shopping mall there too, and not much else. Once we had walked round all the shops and seen the MWTC, it was just gone 1pm, and we were struggling to fill the time before we needed to be at the station.

The old city centre

We go the metro back to our main stop and walked up to the food court/street market we had been at the day before (Central Market). Once there we ordered two (slightly different) dishes of Nasi Goreng and munched it down. It was delicious. After a couple of cookies for dessert we opened our trusty deck of cards and went through the motions: first to 5 on Black Jack, first to 5 in Rummy, first to 1 on Beggar-my-neighbour, and first to 3 in our version of Threes. That managed to waste a further two hours, which put us in a good position time-wise. The next part of the plan was to hit the supermarket and buy a couple of items for the journey to Krabbi – water, apples, etc. With that done we just needed to head back to the hotel, pick our bags up and get to the station in plenty of time. We had decided the day before that we shouldn’t do too much walking around as we wouldn’t be able to shower before (or during) the train ride to Hat Yai, but we had inadvertently done just as much, if not more, than in the previous days! So, hot and sweaty, we made it back to the hotel and asked Cheesy Dave if we could collect our bags.

Once outside we hailed a taxi and he offered to take us to the station for RM20, to which we acted appalled. “We got it for RM10 to get here the other day!” we spluttered, and James finalised a deal for RM15, which would leave us some small change to get a meal in the station. There were no information boards or any indicators as to where the train would be arriving, so we grabbed some seats and settled in for the long wait.

At 9pm the train arrived at the station and we were all herded onto the downwards escalator. There was nearly a catastrophe as the old lady at the front simply stopped at the bottom of the escalator and everyone else bumbled into her and the people behind her. Crisis narrowly avoided we got onto the train and found our beds. Not too shabby, and certainly looked more comfortable than the Greyhounds we have frequented oh-so many times in the past. We were right by the doors though and the “automatic” door……wasn’t. It would slide open on a slight right-hand turn letting in the noise and the smoke from the guys sitting in the bit between carriages, evidently the smoking room. Me and James played a few more games of cards before hitting the hay at 10pm, as most of our bunk-mates had already drawn the curtains on their compartments. We decided to sleep with all our luggage on the bed rather than leave it out in the open for anyone to have a cheeky look at, so it left little room for manoeuvre on the thin bed. I plugged my earphones in and put on some music to drown out the noise from the train, and hoped I would be able to get off to sleep pretty sharpish.

Train bed