Everything worked out great. We picked up the tickets with no trouble. Our hostel was just across the street from the train station, we visited the train station ahead of time to scope out facilities, food availability and departure procedures. We even found out that a First Class ticket earned you the right to wait for departure in the First Class lounge - air conditioning, TV, lesser used toilet area.. great, we were set.
We took one last shower at the hostel late Saturday afternoon. We took our bags and made our way over, one more time , to the 511 cafe and ate with other passengers waiting for their departing trains. It was like a mini U,N, People from many countries waiting to travel to varied destinations. It was great.
We got to the station in plenty of time and found out they were boarding the train early enough that we decided to skip the lounge, board the train and settle in to our cute little private cabin in First Class.
... What is that old saying, "the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray, awry, or something like that?"... Well, that is true.
A train official took our tickets, looked at them and said something like " whoops' sorry, no First Class tonight" (my loose interpretation here). After some protesting, gesturing, and repeated times of pointing out the words "FIRST CLASS" on our tickets, the poor man finally made it clear that tonight there was no First Class car attached to our train, but he could not explain why, and he would get the monetary difference in a First class ticket and a second class ticket refunded, but if we wanted to get to Nom Kai and then over the Laos border, we better accept our fate and get on the train. We would still be in a sleeper car, on a sleeper train, but there was not going to be a private cabin that night. 💔
So... with sad faces, we boarded. The sleeper car brought back some deep seated memory of a long ago watched Bob Hope movie of people on sleeper cars falling out of their berths, getting into berths that already had other people in them, etc. Actually, it didn't look bad. We and a few other no longer First Class people found seats and waited for the train employee to come along and change our seats into berths and make our beds. We made our nests for the night. My claustraphobic tendencies quaked at sleeping in the top bunk where there was no window, so Philip graciously agreed to sleep there. Off we want. Our family awaited at the border, so hat made this easier.
Sleep was fitful, but we did sleep. Somewhere in the night, Nature called to me and I had to visit the facilities. OMG, as they say! This was a frightful experience, to say the least. I totally understand that peeing while standing and rocking back and forth might be difficult for men. It is difficult even for women who have to manage to make it on a seat while rocking back and forth.
But this bathroom, the only one available for 10 hours, was a Nightmare! I will not go into detail about the condition of this floor, but I will just say that I drank nothing for the rest of the night so that I did not have to go visit this place again for the rest do the trip. I did have one alternative, which I did not choose to utilize, and that was the "squat toilet" across from the savory one I did visit. I can't even imagine what shape the toilet with a small hole in the floor must look and smell like. Surely, aiming at a small hole would be even more difficult than a larger bowl.
Enough of this. Early on, the train made several stops to unload and load other passengers. The last five or six hours were then uneventful. I did try to see some of the landscape by pressing my face close to the window, but the full moon was hidden behind clouds. Somewhere around 6:00 am, people began to stir. We all took turns brushing our teeth at the two little sinks and by arrival time, we were all packed up, the berths turned back into seats and we were ready to depeart our train.
We made our away to the ticket window and bought passage on the "Freedom Train" which would cross the border (the Mekong) into Laos and deliver us to Jenny and family.
Again, a litte U.N. of people; many were backpackers. Finally, we stepped off this train into Cold weather. I know, you are thinking, "What? Cold weather? No. This is Laos, it can't be cold. It isn't cold in Laos. Jenny gave us all the warnings about hot weather, humid weather. Bring warm clothes. " Uh, yes cold weather, a cold front had come through that morning. We did have jackets because we had departed Texas in cold weather. We pulled them out while filling out Visa forms on the outdoor platform.
The kids were waiting for us in the unprecedented Cold Weather and once we were though the final gate, the hugging began.
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