How to buy tickets: At the station...
It's easy to make reservations yourself at
the station, when you get to Thailand. Reservations are computerised,
and the booking office at any main station can reserve seats or berths
for any journey in Thailand. Your ticket will have the train
time and your seat or berth number printed on it. In Bangkok,
Hualamphong Station has a well-organised reservation office, open
daily 08:00-16:00. From the main entrance, walk towards the
platforms, and the reservation office is tucked away on the extreme
right, more or less level with the entrance to the platforms.
There's a queuing system: When you enter, take a numbered ticket
from the machine and wait until your number appears on the display,
directing you to a particular reservation counter. The staff are
friendly and helpful.
Although it's easy to
book at the station, if you want to travel at peak Thai
holiday periods or absolutely have to be on a
particular train soon after arrival in Thailand, you may want to
book in advance. You can do this either through one of the Thai
travel agencies recommended below (see next section) or by email with the State
Railways of Thailand.
To
book with the State Railways of Thailand, email them at least
15 days before your date of travel on passenger-ser@railway.co.th
or fax +
66 2 225 6068.
Your fax or e-mail must include the journey, date, train number, departure time, class,
seat or sleeper (upper or lower berth), number of passengers, your
name and e-mail address, and whether you want to collect your tickets
at Don Muang or Bangkok Hualamphong
station in the city centre. You will receive an e-mail confirmation,
and you then collect and pay for your tickets at the station booking office at least 1 hour before
departure. Bookings open 30 days before departure, but
email bookings are only accepted more than 15 days before departure to
give them time to respond. The Thai railways charge 200 Baht (£3
or $5) per email booking. Booking this way normally works well, but recently several
people have said they waited up to 2 weeks for a reply, so you may just have to be patient.
Some people have recently reported that they haven't had a reply.
If you have
any problems, or need to make a booking less than 15 days before
departure, try using an
agency such as Thaifocus or Traveller2000 as shown below.
You can book Thai train tickets
through several reputable Thai travel agencies, including the ones
listed above. These agencies will book trains for you and
have the tickets waiting for you at your hotel in Bangkok, or they can
send them to you in the UK by courier. Naturally, they charge a
small fee for this.
Traveller 2000 charges the normal Thai Railways fare plus a 200 Baht
(£3) booking fee, then either 300 Baht (£4) for airport delivery or
whatever the actual overseas courier costs to your home country.
Five seat61 correspondents have highly recommended
www.traveller2000.com,
saying they give good and reliable service, and
two have recommended www.thaifocus.com (though another has said that
Thaifocus charges higher fees) Shop around to check what
fees each agency charges before booking. Reservations open 30 days (1 month) before departure, so you can't
book before then.
People often ask, "Will I
be OK booking my Bangkok-Chiang Mai ticket at the station on the day?".
It's normally not too difficult to find seats or berths available if
you book on the day of travel or perhaps the day before, especially if
you aren't too fussy about which train you take or in which class.
But trains do get fully booked from time to time, especially at peak
Thai holiday periods. If you can be a bit flexible and aren't
travelling in a peak holiday period, you should be fine booking
when you get to Thailand. But if it's important to be on
a specific train in a specific class on a specific date, then
book in
advance and pay the small agency fee.
To get a real-time feel for whether to
pre-book or just buy tickets when you get there, imagine you are
standing at Bangkok Hualamphong station today. Use the real-time
seat availability check below to see how many seats/berths remain
available on each train heading to your destination today, tomorrow
and the day after tomorrow. Would you have got a seat/berth in
the class you want on the train you want on the day you want if you'd
really been buying tickets today?
How to check seat / berth
availability at the Thai Railways website...
To get
a feel for how quickly Thai trains get booked up, there's a seat
availability check on the Thai Railways website, which will show you
how many seats remain available in each class on each train on each
date over the next month. The English version hasn't worked for
some years, but the Thai version works, so here's how to use it, with
thanks to traveller Bob McCormick:
-
Go to
www.railway.co.th/seatcheck2/aseat.asp. It's in Thai, but
don't panic.
-
The first drop-down box is for the
route. The options are:
Top = Bangkok to Chiang
Mai (Northern Line)
Middle = Bangkok to Hua
Hin, Surat Thani, Hat Yai, Butterworth (Southern Line)
Bottom = Bangkok to Nong
Khai (for Vientiane), Ubon Ratchathani (Northeastern Line)
-
The second drop-down box
is for direction.
Top
option = Trains leaving
Bangkok
Lower option = Trains heading
towards Bangkok
-
The next three fields are day, month, year
(2008 = 2551 in the Thai calendar!). Use two digits for
'month', so January = 01.
-
Click the button and you'll get a summary
of seat or berth availability in each class on each train, in
English. Easy when you know how!
