Well, I guess I forgot to knock on wood whilst writing my post The Infamous Commute to Work last week. As soon as I thought I had the commute all figured out... I accidentally went to Rangsit.
Let me explain...
As usual, my coworker Jeff and I were waiting at the train station on Tuesday morning. Our train wasn't listed on the delay board so we were expecting it to come at it's usual time, 7:00 AM. At approximately 6:59 AM, the announcement was made over the speakers, "asfjadjflkajsfdkjfkdjSAMNUENGJEDajsdkjkalsjlfkasjfkjdSAMNEUGNJEDaksjdkfasjdkfjasklKRUNGTEP" Sam, neung, jed towards Krung Thep (Bangkok) - that's our train! So we stood up with the crowd of people, walked to track 4 (where our train almost always comes), the train pulled up, we got on, and we were off. About 10 minutes later, the train conductor came around to punch tickets, as always. However, this time the conductor looked very confused as he looked at our tickets. He shook his head and said "No Bang Pa-In." Huh? "No Bang Pa-In" he repeated. "Next stop, Rangsit" then walked away.
Jeff and I just looked at each other. "Well, I guess we got on the wrong train" he said. "Oh well" I responded. I guarantee if this situation would have happened 4 months ago, we both would have literally been freaking out; but today all we could do was laugh at ourselves. This is a perfect example of how the Thai "Mai Pen Rai" attitude has affected us over the past few months. Remember: There's no use dwelling on something you can't change (i.e. being on the wrong train) because your dwelling still won't change the situation.
Well, apparently this mysterious wrong train we accidentally boarded was an express train to Bangkok and the next stop was in Rangsit, which is about 45 minutes away, on the northern edge of Bangkok and home of one of Asia's biggest malls called Future Park. We got off at Rangsit and bought a ticket for the next train going in the direction of Bang Pa-In in 40 minutes. We called one the Thai teachers, told her the situation, and said we'd be there by Period 2. All she said was "Okay, I'll give your Period 1 classes a free day." I mean they cancel class on us enough, that I think it's okay if we do the same once.
When we arrived at school around 9:30 AM, I saw my 6/3 class (who I was suppose to have for Period 1) in the hallway. They all made fun of me asking, "Teacher, how was Rangsit? Did you go shopping at Future Park this morning?" No one takes anything too seriously here.
Mai pen rai.
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