An announcement was made in Thai that people heading for Bang Sue had to switch trains at Rama 9 station. A farang counldn't understand the Thai announcement and asked the male staff member if the train would go to Sukhumvit. The dude did not reply immediately, but pretended to investigate the matter by walking towards the MRT route map, looking at it for a sec and then escaped from the scene. It appeared like "he don't love falang". So I walked over and explained to the gentleman that it goes to Sukhumvit, but required a train switch for people going further than Rama 9 station.
The train finally arrived but when the doors opened, only a handful of tiny people could make it inside and I decided to ditch this one as it was way too crowded. But the doors didn't close after a while, so I walked towards the other end of the train to check for a few inches of space, if available. I managed to squeeze in on the last compartment and stood there waiting for the doors to close with my body tilted to a 70 degree angle from my waist up. There were several announcements that the train is ready to move to the next station, but it just never took off! After a longer while the doors closed and the train moved to the next station.
As the train arrived at the next station the doors opened and there were even more people waiting in the queue, a few of them managed to get in by shoving. This made things worse as the train got overcrowded. The queue on the platform was jam-packed extending up to the opposite platform! As I had to hold on to the 70 degree pose for so long, my right obliques were getting tired and I was beginning to get muscle fatigue. I wanted to take some pictures of the crowd but it wasn't that convenient. As usual, it took a long time for the doors to close and the train to take off for the next station.
When the train arrived at Rama 9 station I had to go through a "get off the train challenge", since very few people got off the train. After feeling so relieved to make it off, I heard another announced that proved the earlier announcement wrong! The train switch was to take place at Thailand Culturual Center and not Rama 9. This sounded so dumb! How do I get back into the train now?
I walked around and was lucky again to hear 2 women whispering "let's get off this train, I'm suffocating" and they just got off the train while minding the gap between the train and the platform. I took their place just by the door and stood there for a while, when I looked out the door and noticed a young Thai dude enjoying his comic so much that he did not seem to bother about the train delay. I managed to take a photo of this guy as seen in the picture below:
After the train left, it finally arrived at Soon Watthanatham station and everybody gets off the train, it was almost 7 pm then. Imagine an overcrowded train with everybody disembarking at the same time, all heading for a narrow escalator, while pushing each other! Nobody was willing to take the staircase next to it, which was totally empty. I decided the only quick way out is to avoid the pushing and get to the stairway. I took a long U-turn walk and made it for the stairs without pushing anybody! I then made it out of the station and got to Esplanade, and started feeling hungry early that day, so went had some Korean Pork Rice for dinner.
It was quite a challenge for me as I've never seen so many people at a station before except on the public opening day of the MRT on 3 July, 2004, when I took that first ride. Read about it in 2Bangkok.com - 7:14pm, July 3, 2004 - The subway is OPEN!
The MRT was functioning normally this morning thanks to the "repair gangsters" as reported in Bangkok Post newspaper this morning:
[Repair gangs were working overnight to solve the problem which had slowed the MRT subway service to a virtual crawl on the Bang Sue line.
The problem occurred between Huai Khwang and Sutthisan stations, affecting services along the entire MRT route from Hua Lamphong to Bang Sue.
Passengers had to disembark between Thailand Cultural Centre and Phahon Yothin stations, with a shuttle train travelling on a single track carrying them between the two points.
Some travellers said their trip took up to an hour longer than usual.
The glitch hit during rush hour, at about 6.15pm, and had still not been repaired by midnight, when trains end their daily run.
Officials expected normal services would resume this morning.
"We have sent technicians inside the tunnel to find out what the problem is," the governor of the Mass Transit Authority of Thailand (MRTA), Prapas Chongsanguan, said last night.
Chartchai Praditpong, public relations director of Bangkok Metro Plc (BMCL), said: "We don't yet know yet what happened to the system, but it was a technical problem that stopped the normal operation of the trains."
Roughly 50,000 passengers were affected, he said.
Subway commuters complained about the delays.]
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