After doing a lot of read up we decided that we will take the train ride to Bangkok and return by flight, and with the date set on 2nd December and returning on 5th December, we set off to buy our train ticket 1 month ahead directly from Thai train website here. Do take note, this website only sell ticket from Padang Besar. One thing strange is you will see a selection of Padang Besar, from Malaysia side or Thai side, and the funny thing is both are the same. However the Padang Besar (Malaysia) departs at 5.00pm and Padang Besar (Thai) departs at 5.06pm, but it is acually rhe SAME.
As we stays in Penang, we decided to take the KTM intercity komuter to from Butterworth to Padang Besar. You can't buy tickets ahead and it is free seating.
On the day, we took Grab from our apartment to the ferry terminal on the island. Arriving at the ferry terminal at 10.30am, catching the 10.45am ferry to Butterworth.
We arrived at the Butterworth side of ferry terminal at about 11.20am, and started to walk KTM station, arriving at about 11.45am.
We purchased the komuter train ticket leaving the Butterworth Station at 12.30pm. There was a 50% discount :) for all passenger.
It was a crazy almost 2 hours ride to Padang Besar. The train was packed almost all the journey. You will be lucky if you get a seat. There was people seated, standing and seating on the floor of the train.
We arrived at Padang Besar, Malaysia side, at about 2pm+. As we had not taken lunch, we were hunting for food, but did not leave the station as we were not familiar with the place and was worried of missing the train and get into trouble with immigration.
There were 2 cafe at the station. One upstairs which is always packed with people, more food choices, and another one downstairs, less choices and less people. We chose the one downstairs.
While the kids were eating, I decided to walk around to check out the immigration area. Apparently the immigration open 30mins before departure, there is 2 Thai men hanging around selling Thai prepaid card, taking dinner orders for the train ride. They were very helpful and answer many of my questions. I don't think they worked for the Thai railway but they were quite ok.
I bought prepaid SIM card from them and they helped me to put it on my phone. This is where dual sim phone come into handy. You can put in the Thai sim card in the 2nd slot and get the phone use data from it. So you can now still whatsapp from your original M'sian number.
Immigration forms are available from a lady in the immigration area for FREE. You can fill it up yourself or get a guy over there to fill up for you for a small fees. Or above, get our eldest to fill up all our form for free, Oh yah, the lady who hand us the immigration form is also the money changer. She gave us a good rate comparing to the google exchange rate.
30minutes or so before the immigration open, a long begin to form. There you will the 2 guys who sold us the SIM card is now asking us what we want to order for dinner in the train.
Clearing immigration was a breeze, despite the long line, everything went smoothly. The train was quite punctual and nice.
We are served watermelon refreshment, like taking a plane :)
And after the train started rolling on the 2 guys brough dinner that was ordered. Oh btw... we have to pay for it, not part of the train ticket
and here we have ES wearing her Ah Kong's sarung. We just ordered the food for the kids, thinking we could order more on the train. But seems like it doesn't work that way. The 2 guys seems to be very busy running here and there and forgot our extra order that we made. MOST IMPORTANTLY they forgot daddy's singha beer :(
But all is not lost, at almost every stop some people will come up the train and sell you some food.
And daddy finally got his beer, although not singha.
We decided to take a walk along the train to discover the back carriage is a very much older, wooden seat, no aircon carriage. At a station it got detached.
Lisa enjoying her ride.
At about 6-7pm, 2 conductor come and start converting the seat to the bunk bed. The way they do it is almost like military.
We had 4 bunk beds. 2 top, and 2 bottom.
The bottom is a little wider than the top.
The twins decide to pretend to sleep, but they did share the bottom bed for the night.
We had a good sleep. Everyone slept soundly throughout the night. The blue curtains nicely cover up the bunk bed.
The next morning, again we ordered our breakfast. They have also begin to convert the bunk beds to the seat again. However the kids decided to convert as they enjoyed the beds so much.
Lisa having her breakfast on bed :)
Enjoying and the morning view outside the train.
After almost 18hours of train ride at almost 11am, we arrived at a Harry Potter like train station in Bangkok.
We have to say we throughly enjoyed the ride. It is an experience of a life time. More of the Bangkok experiece in the next write up.
