Bombardier's finest.

After a successful dry run to the Thornbury station as an in depth conversation with a local water taxi driver that you could no longer get a water taxi to the station, but had to alight one stop prior and walk the 3 minutes to the little used local train station.

The station had just one platform and a hand written timetable in chalk, which didn't really instill me with the greatest confidence. I spoke with the ticket officer who assured me that as long as I arrived in plenty of time in the morning, I would have no problem purchasing tickets. Happy with my fact finding mission and confident that we were once again pushing the frontiers of family package holidays, we headed home for an early night via our hotel restaurant. We were delighted to find the special was Korma and settled down to an enjoyable evening with a few light beers.

I have never tasted such a "ring burn" hot curry in my life. It was nasty. To make matters worse I swallowed a whole chili whilst trying to wash the taste out my mouth. I went to bed with tummy ache

Despite feeling incredibly sick we all managed to get out of bed, head across town and were safely in the water taxi heading for Thornbury train station. It was very early around 6am and Bangkok was coming to life with the freshness of a new day. I have always loved sun rise and sun set and this day was no different. Apart from the pains in my tummy, I knew this was going to be a spectacular adventure and I wanted it to start. It started to go wrong when Roland insisted that we get off at the wrong taxi stop.

I was starting to feel a little strange and didn't have the energy to make a fuss. We then tried to find a taxi, that went the wrong way and we had to jump out on a five lane carriageway and run across to get a taxi going in the right direction. The departure time was rapidly approaching and I was starting to sweat. After a lot of madness and a couple of laps around a car park I was green.

But we made it just in time. I sent everyone to get on the train whilst I sorted out the train tickets. By this time I was feeling sick, the train was steaming up to leave and I was getting ready for a Indiana Jones entry onto the train. How fast could this train go I wondered. I was looking at the Jonas clan hanging out of the holes where windows could once have been, thinking about the worst case scenario. The ticket clerk could have given Midland Mainline a run for the money on the slowest transaction award. By this time I was pouring in sweat, my stomach was cramping and there was a nasty niff coming from behind me. If I had relaxed for a split second, it would have been a natural disaster and I didn't have a change of clothes.

I lept onto the train and directly into the the toilet aka hole with hose. I was trying to slid the non sliding door but was loosing the battle of the bowels. I was heaving and tugging but the strain was too much and I had to go then and there. Toilet door half open, complete view of the platform and ticket office and no toilet paper. Just when you think things cant get worse, the train was then delayed by about 15 minutes as porters came with fire hoses to sluish the carriages. Though they only appeared to do ours.
So, we set off into the unknown with no supplies, no reservations and a seriously jippy tummy.