How I got screwed by Thailand Railway

Hello All,

I want to share my bad experience with ordering train tickets directly through Railway Company in hope that it will help other tourists in future.

Knowing that 1st class sleepers Bangkok-Chiang Mai are sold out fast, we emailed Railway Company DIRECTLY (as advised on tripAdvisor and Seat61) to reserve 1st class cabin. In two days, we got the confirmation and reference # . I was so happy it went smooth and fast and we started booking our trips and hotels in Chiang Mai. Emailed reservation confirmed we had out tickets waiting for us and that we can buy them out from train station in Bangkok any day upto the day of the departure. Great! However, something kept bothering me badly all that time, probably because nobody asked us to pay the deposit and everything was that simple and nice. I tried calling Railway Station, but as soon as they were hearing me speaking in English, they were hanging up the phone. So no luck there! Then, I asked my tour representative in CHiang Mai to call them to confirm my booking. She was so kind to do that and .... the booking was cancelled!!! She said she was told that we had to buy out our tickets the next day or they get cancelled!

Unbelievable! I still hold email from them saying I can buy my ticekts any time until November 24th!

Since I have everything pre-boked and pre-paid in CHiang Mai, now I have to find other ways to get there. Obviously, it%26#39;s not the end of the world, we can fly to Chiang Mai, but we were hoping to save on hotel accomodation by taking the train.

*****

The point of the story is : do not trust railway in Thailand. I feel so disappointed now and lucky that we found out about it now, not on the day of the departure.

:(

How I got screwed by Thailand Railway

Hi Kaffka,

I%26#39;ve seen some of your other posts about trying to get the train between destinations such as BKK%26gt;C. Mai, CM to Phitsanoluk, Phit back to BKK, and am very sorry to read about the cancellation of your reservation. It really is the pits when you%26#39;re trying to nail down an itinerary and even when you think you%26#39;ve got everything all lined up, then a wrench gets thown into your plans.

That%26#39;s really frustrating! Sorry again about what happened.

Hopefully you%26#39;ll still be able to catch a budget flight from BKK to C. Mai.

And also hope you%26#39;ll still be able to visit Sukothai. Might consider those VIP buses as an option.

Cheers and don%26#39;t let it get you too bummed out!

How I got screwed by Thailand Railway

PS--thanks for alerting others that one needs to confirm and reconfirm those reservations since it looks to me that you did everything right.

Thank you so much, SeaGypsy!

It%26#39;s so kind of you to remember my concerns and posts.

As I mentioned earlier, I%26#39;m not fully disappointed by what happened, as we will definitely figure out another way to how to get to Chaing Mai. And I feel very lucky by having figured out this incident in advance!

And yes, we%26#39;ll go to Sukhothai!:)

I wanted to share my story so that others avoid it:!)

It happens frequently in Thailand that the left hand doesn%26#39;t know what the right hand is doing. Despite the call by your tour guide, I betcha if you go to a train station on your arrival in Thailand with your email confirmation in hand, you%26#39;ll have your tickets, no problem.

November 24th is still a long way away. Thailand, and particularly Thai Railways, is just not set up for long-advance reservations by foreigners. Employees of any Thai institution, when reached on the phone, may tell you anything just to get rid of you and avoid having to look up some reservation in the computer system.

Additionally, I%26#39;m not so sure the sleeper places sell out so fast. Personally, I%26#39;ve never had any problem getting a train ticket anywhere in Thailand on a next-day or even same-day basis. If not, as you said, the fallback is a flight. There are lots of planes flying to Chiang Mai. Easy.

If you insist on having everything 100% nailed down for your travel in Thailand, I think you%26#39;re going to be very frustrated. Sometimes you just have to ';go with the flow.';

Just in case you end up flying for some of your journey....we took a flight from CM to Sukhothai with Bangkok airways- I think they own the airport at Suk. and there is a van there to transport you to all the hotels (for a small fee). we stayed at the orchid hibiscus right next to the historical park in old sukhothai and it was lovely. New suk. is some distance away so try and find a place near the park. They all have bikes and scooters if you want to bike around the park (it is vast!) but we were lazy and hired a tuk tuk and driver.

have a great time. we took the first class sleeper from bangkok to CM, ordered on line and paid to have our tickets sent to our home in the UK . it all went very smoothly.

Thank you all for opinion and advice.

I read all of it carefully:)

Just wanted to make an update to my story.

Afterall, I might have slightly overreacted yesterday giving bad reputation to Railway Company.

My agent in Chiang Mai (I think she%26#39;s an amazing person and tour agent, and we%26#39;re so lucky to have her - I%26#39;ll definitely write a separate post about her once we%26#39;re back!!) put so much effort into this issue, although I asked her not to worry about it at all. She kept calling Railway and eventually reached an authoritity in Bangkok. They reassured her that if I got a confirmation email with reference # it means that these tickets WILL be waiting for us upto the day of the departure, no matter what other representative told her over the phone earlier.

So, as somebody previously mentioned, it%26#39;s almost sure that reservation exists and ';left hand doesn%26#39;t know what%26#39;s the right hand is doing';. :) Meanwhile, we already purchased and payed for the tickets through an agency (traveller2000, as recommended by seat61.com), and our tickets will be waiting for us in our hotel at our arrival.

RIght now, it seems, we have 1 pair of tickets and another reserved pair. Once we arrive to Bangkok and get out printed tickets from hotel we%26#39;ll cancel previously reserved tickets. But not beforehand, as I%26#39;ve learned that noone can be fully-fully trusted:)

Well, the point is: I might have been wrong regardign Railway reservation system. My appologies.

Great news. All%26#39;s well that ends well!