Hualamphong is Bangkok's central train station. It's much like any other station really. There are ticket counters along one wall under an electronic display that shows the scheduled departures. Most of the interior of the station is a large cavernous area that is filled with seats, which are in turn filled with people waiting for their trains.

There is a coupon food court in the station. It was only 10:30 am, but I was starving, so I went in and got something to eat. A coupon food court is one where you go to a coupon booth, pay your baht and get coupons in different denominations (5B, 10B, 20B, 50B). Then you can redeem your coupons for food and drink. If you have any coupons left when you want to leave, you can exchange those coupons for baht again. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what the point is.

My train was ordinary (i.e. 3rd class) number 209. The 3rd class fare from Bangkok to Ayuthaya is only 15B ($AUD 0.71) for the 1 hour 45 minute trip. Third class trains have reasonably comfortable seats. There's no airconditioning, but the windows are quite big, and are mostly fully open.

There are vendors everywhere here, selling all kinds of stuff, but mostly food and drink. Trains are no exception. On the way through Bangkok, we stopped at a nuber of suburban stations (some of which consist pnly of a wooden platform about a metre wide with signposts to identify them). Sometimes at one of these stations, a vendor would jump on, try to sell stuff for a few stops along the line, and then jump off, presumably to do the same thing on another train going back into town. The vendors walk up and down the train announcing what they've got to sell with a chant like "naam yen... naam yen..." (cold water). I bought a bottle of naam yen.

Once the train got out of the city, the scenery in the countryside was pretty interesting. Lots of banana and palm trees, and paddy fields. The families who work the paddys actually live right in them in houses that sit over the water on stilts. The houses then usually have some kind of rickety bridge that links them with the nearest levy or other bit of dry land.

My train left Bangkok at 11:20 am, and arrived into Aytuthaya at about 1:15 pm