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• Kuala Lumpur

• Phnom Penh

• National Museum & Khmer silk weaving

• Fried tarantulas & centuries-old temples

• Tonle Sap Lake, stilt houses, and a scam in Siem Reap

• Big Three of Angkor- Angkor Wat, Bayon, Ta Prohm

• Male genitalia and land mines

• Chaotic border crossing

• Train ride to Bangkok

• At a resort recovering from the 2004 tsunami

• Early food reviews

• Relics of a tsunami

• Thai cooking class

• James Bond island

• A lazy last day at Khao Lak

• Nai Yang Beach & back to KL

• Staying in a kampung house

• Lunching @ Menara KL

• Last day

As it turns out, the drive to Poipet and crossing the border was only the start of a long hard day.

We've now reached an airport hotel in Bangkok after a tough afternoon and evening.  The 200km rail trip took more than six hours in a train which I'm sure first saw service in the 1950s, and hasn't had any TLC since then.  It rattled along, sometimes at only 20-30kph, which we think was probably because of the condition of the track.  The carriages not only rocked from side to side, but also up and down, which Dave found a bit alarming.

Some seats had collapsed, and  there was no aircon, only a couple of ceiling fans that worked sometimes. The only cooling, to misuse a word, came from the flow of hot air through the open windows, and the catering for the six hour ride was basic - workers carrying unidentifiable snacks in plastic bags through the train  To be fair, the cost of the ticket was unbelievably cheap: 48 baht each - and when the exchange rate is about 3800 baht to the $A100, well, work it out.  I reckon about $1.30.

However, the scenery was interesting.  The coming wet season will make a big difference.  The dried out fields will become luxuriant rice paddies within the space of a couple of weeks. We had a hint of a rain front coming through, but nothing eventuated from it, apart from high winds.

There was a spectacular sunset to be seen during our train ride - almost worth doing the trip for:

We made a couple of mistaken attempts to get off the train too soon, only to be corrected and hustled back on to the train by kindly locals who realised we were looking for the stop which connected with the Airport link service.  If they hadn't intervened, we would have found ourselves dumped in the dark at a station we didn't know - and would have had a hard job of making ourselves and our problems understood by anyone.

The Airport Link train goes to the swish new Suvarnabhumi airport, but our flight tomorrow leaves from the old Don Mueang airport, a 40 minute shuttle bus ride across town. Tonight's bus barely made it.  It struggled up gentle inclines on the motorways, generating terrible noises from its differential.  Dave thought the diff might explode!

Thankfully, we made it without further drama to our hotel (right), which appears to have the softest, most comfortable beds I've felt in a long time.   It won't be long before I fall into ours....

Next: Recuperating at a Thai resort