I’m writing this blog on the train right now and I’m so freaking happy right now, I love riding trains!!!

Joanna and I weren’t able to book a Thai cooking class. I’m a little bummmed that we didn’t manage to make it work but I guess it’ll be something to look forward to next time I come back to Thailand? I actually bought a cookbook called Pok Pok before we left on our trip. I really recommend it as it reads as an autobiography of a white guy that travels Thailand for months learning about the nuances of each region and how he starts his restaurant out of his house in the US.

Since we didn’t have any concrete plans until our train departs at 6pm we decided to search for a type of durian that Joanna’s parents told her about. Her entire family grew up eating durian. I guess there are many different varieties of the smelly fruit that range in color, butteryness, and sweetness/bitterness. The TOP TOP kind is called mao shan wang which translates from Chinese to cat mountain king.

We’ve been ubering around Chiang Mai as our main form of transportation. It costs like a buck or two more than tuk tuks but the effort saved of having to haggle your fare each time is worth it. I asked our uber driver if she knew where to find this kind of durian. She didn’t know but took us to a day market that the locals frequent. What’s hilarious is that I asked both our hostel front desk and our uber driver, both of them said they don’t like eating durian because it smells bad.

We arrived at the market and I told her that she could let us off but she said no, drove a few blocks down and dropped us off at a random warehouse that didn’t have many people around. To our surprise this was the area that they dropped off and stored the durian for the market. You got out of the car and the pungent smell of sweet very ripe bananas was in the air.

Unfortunately none of the vendors sold the specific durian we were looking for. I did some more googling on my phone and turns out this single fruit sells for $200 in some places whereas you can buy one here for $5. Joanna bought a AAAAA rated one and enjoyed it among the giant piles of fruit around her. I had a section, still not a fan of it.

I got a text from Christine and Keith that they wanted to hang out with us and walk the market before we left town. We met up with them and wandered around seeing how the locals really shop for their food. Lots of different fruit, meat, and seafood was being bought and sold in this marketplace.

We caught an uber back to the center of town and found a random goat tied to a tree. Before we knew it, it was time to say goodbye to our new friends. They were going to stay in Chiang Mai for another day and then continue on their month long travels (I’m totally jealous).

Joanna and I got to the train station with our bags around 4:30 and it leaves the station at 6. I booked us a 2nd class sleeper train which is a bunk bed on the sides of the train. I think it was $35 per person.

I just love train travel. It’s just so easy to go to the station, pick up your ticket, and just jump on the train with very minimal hoops to jump through. You get lots of room to move around, wifi, and there’s a dining car. Each seat had a reading light and an outlet. I would advise anyone taking the train that they should bring warm clothes. They had the AC running cold, I had to switch to long pants and a hoodie.

The train departed exactly at 6pm. Around 8pm the attendent came by to make our beds. The two chairs folded to make a bed, and the top bunk folded down from the ceiling. It’ll take about 12 hours to ride to Bangkok, the equivalent distance of going from Minneapolis to St. Louis. We rode through mountains and past rice paddies. Riding the bullet train in Japan is a little bit different of an experience. Both absolutely wonderful, this one is just a little less fast paced as we’re not moving at 250mph and I get to have a bed on the train. I’m enjoying this experience so much, I don’t want to sleep.