South bound to Prachuap Khiri Khan....

And the winner for clean station floors is......Thai Rail.

                Created in Prachuap Khiri Khan (pop: 86,500)---- aka: PKK. Apologies to any of the blog! Forced myself to the vertical at 5.05am this morning, so as to be sure of catching the 8.05 "Super Express" for points south of Bangkok.  I was not sure of the availabilities of taxis to transport me to Bangkok Central railway station so early on a Sunday morning. My contracted motor cycle was a no-show, as I half expected that he would be, but as luck would have it---no shortage of official meter taxi men on the prowl for fares.
Turkish intelligence community that might be following my
                    Bangkok main offensive to them

Looking from Prachuap to the islands

railway station is a hive of activity in the early morning hours, although I suspect that the central waiting hall also doubles as a cheap (free) overnight hotel for many, as there were stretched & sleeping bodies sprawled all over the place occupying blocks of 3 or 4 seats at a time. Interestingly, they have a special waiting area of the main station waiting hall just for saffron robed monks. Monks are restricted in their contacts with females, so possibly sitting next to one in the general waiting section could be
                 Thai trains are moderately modern, very clean and quite comfortable. The "Super Express" consisted of 3 carriages powered with diesel engines--not the quietest form of

Scary sea monster........

propulsion--- we rattled down the track at perhaps max. 80 km/hour. One area where Thai rail does excel, is in having perhaps the cleanest floors. Every 30 minutes one half of the floor crew came through the carriage with brooms, followed 5 minutes later by the wet mop man, for a total of perhaps 6 clean-ups in the 4 hours travel time. Might have been more efficient if they just banned shoes in the carriage---removing shoes is quite common in this part of the world.
               Arrived PKK at 1.00pm just 30 minutes late to be welcomed by just two motor cycle tuk- tuk men & none of the ultra high pressure sales tactics common in larger SE Asian cities---a very pleasant change. The Pancake House B&B, booked in advance over the internet, 100 m from the sea- shore. The first accommodation so far that did not have its own en suite bathroom. My fault, I missed the feature, or lack there of.