to Hat Yai by train

My journey to the north of South East Asia started off with a McDonalds meal; quick, cheap and unwholesome. I boarded into the train of ten-hours-of-boredom when I still had the taste of chocolate sundae on the tip of my tongue. With me hundred other passengers – men with their ladies, ladies with their kids and kids with their toys, pillows and tantrums. I took my seat by the window, continued eating my chicken burger with brimful mayonnaise. The kids, the plague were making so much of havoc and the train didn’t move. The aunties were showing excessive discomfort on their wrinkled face and the train didn’t move. The horn made a long snore and the train at last set off from Kuala Lumpur. People say, every dog has its master, or was it every dog has its day. As the train travels along the curvy Malaysian peninsular, I thought myself: Every trip is a responsibility. Every journey is a job. A job of self-satisfying and self-educating. Until then you’re beholden to that trip. It was boring the train journey and I was sick of the smell of my chair and I was sicker when the kids kept making noises you don’t want to listen. I walked from one compartment to another, maybe six of them with the curiosity on what the canteen has to offer for my hungry stomach. I reached, forgetting how to walk straight and guess what, I saw nothing. These train canteens are all the same, they smell like a toilet and sell nothing. And I walked back to my seat, the other end of the train, six compartments away.

I was half-sleeping-half-awake like a half-boiled egg while sitting on my second class seat, watching with extreme covetousness the next coach, first class bed seats. They were sold out the other day when I was purchasing the ticket. I studied in detail the faces of people who were quicker than me, the victors. I slept. Somehow everybody around me did the same. They snored but.

With my book scantily touched, with almost ten hours of journey spent with my eyes shut, with my damp towel on my face I arrived in Padang Besar, the border of Malaysia and Thailand. Border crossing isn’t like last time when it used to be thrilling and fun. Nowadays, you will just need to carry your passport over to the box counters, get it stamped by the stern looking officers and walk across the border. No more troops with German shepherds and M16s, no more long queues and no more greasing one’s palms. The train swallowed me once again. All the other coaches were disconnected, left now only with two, mine and the first class bed seat coach. To Hat Yai on the way another two hours spent like a wink.