Sitting in the only real air conditioning of my "air-conditioned coach"-- the breeze blowing over the outside steps at the coach's end--I watched with growing pleasure the tropical scenery whizzing past. Though it was the hottest time of the year in Thailand and far into the dry season, a dark rainstorm swept off the seas to cool things down and make the setting seem all the more a part of some high adventure. As if trapped inside some demonic cyclone, the train sliced through winds that howled in my ears and set my mind to imagining all sorts of intrigue.
What creatures. for instance, might be watching us from the heights of the spectacular limestone monoliths rising like sudden bergs from the jungle? Or, from where did that wonderful scent come? Perhaps from the bright orchids waving at us from the edges of the bamboo hut villages?

How beautiful and proud the tall, lone palms seemed. They were so aloof from the tangle far below their branches. And yet, could not there be pirates plotting on the beaches under those arched trunks? After all, only the day before I'd read in the newspaper that pirates in the seas off Thailand had killed at least 400 people, mostly Vietnam boat refugees, the year before. Certainly there was the possibility of bandits stopping this very train in some remote stretch and robbing all of us by holding long curved knives to our throats. Well...it does happen. More than once I'd read of bandits in the same part of Thailand stopping and robbing the tour buses. Why, only the previous week, the police had found another foreigner's slain body--headless at that!--beside the road I'd be walking along for the next several weeks.

Who knows? This very evening, in the dining car over a glass of wine and a flowery vase, I might meet some enchanting and sophisticated lady. Perhaps, just perhaps, she might even give my heart a good jolt by leaning over the tablecloth and asking softly if I, too, might be heading to a quaint and romantic little place called...Butterworth.

I sighed, leaned back against the top step, and let my thoughts be carried away by the rhythmic clickity-clack of the train over the tracks. Americans, by doing away with the long-distance passenger trains, are missing out on an invaluable opportunity to slow life down just that little extra bit that is so necessary to fully enjoy it. On a train there is more freedom to strike out down the aisle and start up conversations with total strangers. And, in a setting like the dining car, who can help but come away with some good memories?

Oh, to be sure, not all cross-country train rides are a joy. In Morocco the train I took from my month-long stay with the Jaquiths in Marrakech back up to Rabat, the starting point of my North Africa trek, was like a scene from an exaggerated disaster film. From the way the train station's mob in Marrakech rushed the incoming train even before it stopped--most screaming hysterically and shoving everything from babies to suitcases to wives through the open windows--one would have thought that that Sahara Desert city was about to join Pompeii and Mount St. Helens in the annals of great catastrophes! Stepping off that train after spending a bitter cold night squeezed between snoring soldiers was probably one of the highest moments of my life, although I crashed to earth quite abruptly when I found I was missing a pair of new shoes and my food.

But, good or bad, one thing is sure to come out of any long train ride ... stories.

After all, where do you think this one came from?

Steven