It was early evening at Hualamphong train station in Bangkok and after paying for a ticket I promptly repaired to a small shop outside the station and bought seven large bottles of beer chang. I weighed the bag in my hand and the bottles clinked tunefully like a wind chime - it was a nice sound, it was the sound of happiness. But I decided after a time or two that seven wasn't going to be enough and paid for another five just to be on the safe side.
Who knew how long this journey would take.
I looked at the locomotive. It idled there on platform number three and it shone - it actually gleamed. The claret red of the engine carriage had been polished to a sheen, resplendent with embossed gold lettering - the state railway of Thailand.
Further along, the carriages were a little more downtrodden, adorned in flaking blue and white paint with smatterings of rust and splodges of oil sullying the appearance.
I boarded and found my seat.
I would, it transpired, be sharing a table with a local gent of an age I was unable to guess at. He had the weather-beaten features of a man who had toiled hard in the fields and had spent a significant amount of time at the bottom of a glass of lau khao - needless to say I liked him immediately. He sported the beginnings of a grin and upon observing my unearthing a bottle of beer from the bag, he beamed a wide and toothy smile.
"My name Jit" he said in shattered English.
"Yes, never mind all that" I replied. "Here, drink this."
I held out a full bottle of chang and he politely snatched it from me and, using the edge of the table as a bottle opener, removed the cap and took a tremendous swig.
"Where have you been? Where are you going? Why are you going there?"
Three questions which you'd normally struggle to answer. On a train, though - it's easy. You can summarise your life without really giving it any thought.
Where have you been?
Jit was unsure of this.
Where are you going?
Again, the question drew a blank.
Why are you going there?
Looking at the now empty bottle of award winning ale, I could only surmise that Jit was en route to wherever he was going in order to consume a terrific and possibly life-culminating quota of booze.
I liked the cut of this man’s jib. And now as he dozed, the beer chang bottle gradually falling through his grip, the train lurched away from the station and set about a steady chug bound for the boondocks.
I cracked the window an inch or two and sparked up an SMS red, complementing it with the final furlong of my first lager of the evening.
According to the schedule we were due to arrive in Kalasin at 11 o’ clock.
I had never been to Kalasin before and knew nothing of what was there.
Surely there is no greater lure.
But then, just a few short moments into the journey, something quite extraordinary happened.
I woke up in an office. Looking out of the window I noticed with not a little distaste that dark and damp clouds dominated the horizon and the skyline was that of suburban London.
In front of me, instead of bag of beer and a semi-comatose Thai national with a predisposition for getting fucked up as much as humanly possible, was a packet of smoky bacon crisps, an egg mayonnaise sandwich, a can of diet coke and a computer monitor.
At the risk of plagiarising that most cliched of story endings.
IT HAD ALL BEEN A FUCKING DREAM.
That's one way of spending a lunch time anyway....