Date: 19th April Place: Bangkok Weather: Thundering badly! But still very hot I was woken early today by the sound of really heavy rain and thunder. I looked outside and it was raining ridiculously heavily so we decided to go down to breakfast a bit early to see if there was a change of plan at all. It stopped before we had to go out thankfully so it wasn't too much of an issue. After breakfast we walked through Bangkok to the Grand Palace which is where some of the Kings used to live and will do in the future. It was absolutely amazing; there was one building that was made of gold!! And the others were all sparkly and nice. After looking around there we got tuk tuks back to the hostel. They were much better this time, a bit madder! Ours overtook the other two and took a little short cut… he was right speedy! The rest of the afternoon was just chilling and waiting to leave for the night train at 4ish. We got a minibus to the train station and sat on the floor amongst everyone waiting whilst we got food from the thai food courts. When we got on the night train it was simply just seats apposite each other. They come around at about 8pm and fold the seats down so they join in the middle to create the lower bunk and then the top bunk folds down an above compartment. I sat with Andrea, Vanessa and Simon and we all entertained ourselves by playing a few games like I have never. There wasn't much entertainment so every so often when the smokers went to the doors to have a cigarette Id go with them to see what we called 'the death chair'. It was basically that you had to have the door of the train open to smoke and you could sit on the steps as it was whooshing down the track. Good fun. Overall I think I got about 3 hours sleep on the train because I was immensely paranoid of turning over and falling out of the top bunk because they were so narrow and had no barrier. I sat down on Andreas bed most of the night and we all just passed the time by talking and telling jokes.