Overnight Train to Chiang Mai

Convenience and speed has taken over our lives. Air travel has made distances negligible, and now we can reach destinations in the blink of an eye. Well, almost - frankly, the sooner they invent teleporting the better ... I loathe flying!

But sometimes it's nice to take the slow route, watch the world slip by in real time and appreciate the simple things in life. But even with this in mind, I'm surprised by how reticent I am at the prospect of travelling by train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai.

Chiang Khan - Town that Time Remembered

Regular contributor John Borthwick goes in search of a forgotten Mekong port.


I awake to a hullaballoo of gossip and chanting monks in the street outside. It could all be 100 years ago but it’s not. Chiang Khan, an old Mekong River port in Loei province is a town that time remembered. At 580km north of Bangkok, Chiang Khan’s glory days — if any — hark way back to times of rubber and opium smuggling, and cross-river spats with colonial French or Lao communists.

Until recently Chiang Khan’s riverfront road, Chai Khong and its century-old teak shophouses were slipping into a picturesque decrepitude. It’s hard to get facts about Chiang Khan, other than it has several old Buddhist temples, the population is about 10,000 people and the place celebrated its centenary in 2009.

The sleepy main street

Chiang Khan has boomed in the past few years, having been well and truly “discovered” by urban Thais (although not much by foreigners), many drawn nostalgically to a past that they never had: Buddhist monks receiving alms and sticky rice at dawn, and rambling family homes made of ancient teak on streets of almost no vehicles.

Monks in Chiang Khan

What visitors don’t come here for is banana boat rides, go-go bars and day spas. Instead, I have a simple choice of bicycle or motorcycle hire, Buddhist wats, foot massage, drink by the river, eat by the river and a few more wats. Or coffee. On the trendy Soi Nine side-street off Chai Khong, two escapees from Bangkok, wife and husband team Em and Arm, tell me how they visited Chiang Khan, “fell in love” with the place, bought a run-down shophouse and transformed it into the "See I 249" coffee and music shop.

Farther along Chai Khong I drink at the Ganga Guesthouse, a beautifully restored teak shophouse that bristles with antiques and curios. The proprietors, also ex-Bangkokians, tell a story that might be, as Thais joke, “same-same but different”. However, having settled here just four years ago in their quest for a quiet, creative retirement, they are already considering moving on, due, ironically, to the tourist influx that they were harbingers of.

Chiang Khan stretches languorously along the Mekong shore like a cat on a couch. Sensibly, its citizens long ago constructed a promenade right along the riverbank. This is where you stroll those lavish Mekong sunsets or morning mists.

Rush hour traffic

I hop on my bike and ride through a cool morning, south along to one of Chiang Khan’s main attractions, the Kaeng Khut Ku rapids. I read that “the shiny rocks here are supposed to be very beautiful”. Like me, the writer didn’t actually see the rapids because the river’s flow was too high at that time. No worry. Instead I get birdsong, an old wat, plenty of exercise and the endless Mekong flowing by like time.

Wat in Chiang Khan. Pics: John Borthwick

Getting There: Fly to Loei then it’s a one-hour bus trip north to Chiang Khan.

A visit to Ko Phi Phi Leh: where Leonardo diCaprio filmed The Beach

The Beach is busy today. Well, not just today, every day. We wait in a queue to land, bobbing about on the azure swell, snapping photographs from a distance of the white strip of sand, coconut palms ... and hordes of tourists, like ants swarming over roadkill.

Then we are informed it will cost us 200 baht per person to land anyway. With no desire to join the throng, we decline and ask to move on to somewhere Hollywood - and the Thai tourism industry - hasn't yet exploited.

The Beach - beautiful from a distance

The 2000 film, The Beach - starring handsome heart throb Leonardo diCaprio - forever changed the sleepy islands of southern Thailand, with backpackers and package tourists alike keen to glimpse the filming location where Leo's character faced drug cartels, executions, gangrenous injuries, sharks and insanity. Come to think of it, it really was the ultimate in rotten holidays - and why anyone would want to emulate that is anyone's guess.

But come they do, by their thousands, wanting to set foot on and have their photograph taken on the very beach where Leo gave one of his lesser acting performances. Amongst Gen X, it's probably the most popular experience that Thailand has to offer, apart maybe from the Full Moon Party on Koh Phangan.

Ants crawling on The Beach

While it was filmed in several locations around Thailand (the waterfall scene, for instance, where Leo jumped off a high cliff into the water below, was shot in Khao Yai National Park in central Thailand), the bulk of the movie was filmed at Maya Beach, Ko Phi Phi Leh, an unpopulated island in the Phi Phi Archipelago in Krabi Province. Surrounded by rearing limestone cliffs and with water a dazzling gin-blue, it really is one of the most stunning locations on the planet, as idyllic as the book written by Alex Garland describes.

"On the white sands, fishing in the coral gardens, a select community of travelers pass the months. They leave if they want to, they return, the beach never changes."

Perfection, however, is an irresistible lure - and due to the thousands of tourists that tramp its shore every single day, The Beach has changed. Developers may have been kept at bay due to its official status as a national park, but there are no limits to the numbers of speedboats and spluttering, deafening longtail boats that ferry tourists on island-hopping tours from Phuket, Krabi and Phi Phi Don. Any physical beauty the bay may still possess is overshadowed by noise, rubbish and just too many damn people!

Thanks a lot, Leo - the so-called "secret" beach is no secret any more!

Paradise can still be found on Phi Phi Leh, however - you just need to avoid the crowds, and seek out a quiet nook elsewhere on this or surrounding islands. After we rejected the idea of landing on The Beach, our canny tour captain - from Centara Grand Beach Resort at Krabi - found a deserted cove to moor in, sunny for soaking up the afternoon rays, and shallow and sandy for swimming in the blissful balm. We ate, lazed, snorkelled, fed brightly coloured fish and admired the view for a good hour before continuing our snorkelling trip, content in the knowledge that Paradise does still exist - you just need to go around the corner from where you were expecting it.

Our boat in an idyllic cove

Now THAT's Paradise!

Koh Samui's Secret Garden

In 1976, at the age of 75, Grandfather Nim, a durian farmer who lived in the mountainous interior of Koh Samui, decided to build a garden. Not just any garden, but a fantasyland celebrating Buddhist mythology, folklore and legend. For 16 years, he created over 100 concrete sculptures, artfully placed on rock shelves, on the banks of a creek flowing through his property, and amongst the verdant jungle; and as he approached the end of this mortal coil, he also built himself a mausoleum, so he could be buried in his beloved garden.

Deities and scenes from Budhhist folklore in the garden

Some of the bizarre sculptures in the garden

This lush jungle property, now known as the Magic (or Secret) Buddha Garden, is today one of Koh Samui's post popular day trips, allowing visitors to experience the island's interior as they wander through this rather bizarre attraction.

The road to the Magic Buddha Garden

Getting to the garden is half the fun. Located on a steep (though thankfully concreted) road accessible only by four-wheel drive, most people choose to visit as part of a 'safari adventure' day-tour with Samui Off-Road Mountain Tours, based at the Namuang Safari Park. 

Our group just did a garden visit with this company, who use 4WD open-backed trucks with bench seats, plus two seats atop for thrillseekers. I travelled up the winding road on top, through coconut and durian groves, wind (and the occasional branch) rushing through my hair and my nerves on full alert - it's seriously scary stuff at first!

The perilous top seat of the Off Road Mountain Tour

While the garden itself is a tranquil retreat, choose your time to visit wisely - we arrived at the same time as several tours, which meant we had to battle half-dressed Russian backpackers swimming in the waterfall, yelling at each other and generally getting underfoot. It was chaos - but once they'd left, the garden was a different world, serene and intriguing.

It's certainly a change from the beaches, nightclubs and bars of Koh Samui, and well worth visiting to experience an alternative side to paradise.

Sculptures galore...

Getting there: Secret Buddha Garden is found on a hilltop, just off Route 4169 (ring road) at Baan Saket. Follow the signs on the air force road leading up to Ta Nim Waterfall.
Cost: Entry fee 80 baht per person unless travelling as part of a tour.