City dwellers wave goodbye to the train wearing the eponymous grins from the “Land of Smiles”, motorbikes sit idling at the crossing. Brick walls evaporate into the rice paddies. Two pretty Asian girls in glasses and ponytails settle in across from me, one thin and bird like, the other, cute and plump. I’m sweating and they are pulling out their shoulder wraps to prevent a chill from settling upon their ultra delicate skin.
A group of strange people in colorful t-shirts are filling up the seats behind me, quiet surrounds us. I take off my earphones and hear only the click clack of the train. It’s a woody area now. Dense trees, all seem to be cousins of the same ancient seed. Not much roadside trash to be seen. Power lines remain visible. Some kind of building material lies dormant with spider webs yet stacked neatly, waiting to become useful. Railroad ties, tracks and wooden beams are abandoned and rotting slowly or perhaps have been replaced and are merely waiting to be recycled.
We slow down for a moment at Kuhn Tan, which appears to be a town solely inhabited by strutting roosters. Our first tunnel, black inside and always a relaxing moment instead of the fear that going under a mountain should induce. A chubby girl on a hill is playing her tennis racket like a guitar and dancing about like Elvis. Her brother seems embarrassed by her behavior.
Night settles into itself like an old man kicking back a La-Z-Boy chair. The full moon rising up from the horizon, barely illuminating the rice fields, glowing golden gleams of glistening light. Right now, hundreds of miles south in the Gulf of Thailand, people in their second earth decade are applying day-glo paint to their taut appendages and taking shots, toasting in a bacchanalia of juvenile expression of life’s promise under that forgiving moon’s eye. They will drink from buckets, indulge in hallucinogens, and dance on the beach like a drunken and drugged version of Lord of the Flies. They will awake with gruesome hangovers and flock into social media proclaiming it to be the “greatest night ever” prefaced with a picture of hugging strangers masquerading as friends.
Distant lights flicker through the foliage. Smells of train food being served, soggy microwaved meats and saucy veggies served with that ubiquitous starch of Asia–rice. I take a paper towel to my face and futilely attempt to blot off the accumulated grease and grime of my earlier city walk. The towel becomes clear in places.
An androgynous ticket checker struts the aisles with an appeal to both sexes and in a pull and a push quickly turns two leather benches into a clean, crisp bed with white sheets.
Lightning strikes far away amplifying the dark vista with a sneeze of light. At a dreary train station a lady gets on with two plastic bags and a purse and sits opposite me assuring my feet a place on the ground for the duration. She takes out a pungent piece of sausage. It smells like beer spilled on the floor of a busy bar. The stench lingers in my nose making me hungry and nauseous simultaneously–a most confusing feeling–like when someone gives you unsolicited yet nevertheless good advice. Clouds casually hide the mouth of the moon as my new bunk mate asks for her bed, thus closing my window view and chasing me to my top berth.
I love having a little space all my own. I have a mesh cup holder, non functional light, pillow, blanket, curtain, leftover sunflower seeds from my boat ride last week and a new apple in Saran Wrap. There are three Simpsons loaded on my laptop, it’s 20:25–bedtime for train people.
Bangkok
William Sabia 
