. Sat at the station at 06:00, and some station official approaches and asks to see our tickets. Mrs BB is directed to the ticket office, and new tickets are issued - this time for the 04:09 (all trains to Bangkok were running late). This meant that the 2 of were travelling for less than 400 Baht - we received a 200 Baht refund for this earlier train
. I had a look at the statistics board at Bangkok, and our original train, due to arrive in Bangkok at 10:05 didn't actually arrive until 13:25 
.It took 5 hours to get to Bangkok, and I think we visited every little backwater en-route.
Leaving Hua Hin, I was disgusted at how filthy Hua Hin's railside is (obviously no 'elite' visitors recently). Until Bangkok, it was by far the dirtiest town/village we visited.
Off the train, and straight on to the Metro to Sukumvit. Very impressed - London Underground has a lot to learn from this - it was very smooth and spotless.
Found South East Pharmacy very easily, and was very impressed at the way they could convert our current medication into Thai equivalents - 6 months medication for Mrs BB and I was less than 8000 Baht - a lot less than I had anticipated, so this really was a result!!
We had to wait over an hour at Bangkok - we got on the train almost right away, and noticed as we walked down the platform that there was a fair bit of maintenance being carried out on some carriages. Our train was due to leave at 15:10. At 14:20 there was an almighty thud. I said to Mrs BB don't worry, they're just connecting the engine at the other end of the train. This then happened about 6 more times in fairly quick succession - it was so severe, it was hard to stay in our seats. Then the train left the station!! It turned out that they were doing some sort of road test on their repairs. Emergency stop after emergency stop. Travel forwards, travel backwards - each stop and start was with another almighty thud. Eventually we pulled back into the station, loaded up with passengers, and were away dead on time. However, the driver did take the opportunity to make about another 5 emergency stops before we were out of Bangkok. I call them emergency stops, although I don't know what they really were - very dangerous though.
Most of the 4 hour journey home was quite uneventful - they had a buffet car on board, but don't sell coffee in the afternoon - I was hanging by the time I got home (beer is out of the question for me at the moment).
There were a lot of police on board, and they kept coming around asking where we were travelling to - as the train was destined for the deep South, I assumed they were looking for terrorists, although Mrs BB said they were looking for drugs. 3 and a half hours into our journey, 3 police marched into our carriage, walked straight up to and arrested somebody. Mrs BB confirmed it was for drugs, and then asked me if the drugs we had just bought were OK? Whoops
- I hadn't even considered that, but every one was a prescription only item in the UK. Fortunately, we weren't searched - just shows how easy it is to get caught. I don't know how we would have stood in that situation.We arrived home at about 20:00 - a long boring day, with a few interesting highlights.
