Journey to Malaysia

The alarm on my phone didn't go off at 4.45am as planned because I'd turned off the ringer by mistake. Luckily Cliff's watch alarm did go off and woke us just after 5am. The taxi was meeting us at the end of the road at 6 so there was just time for showers and to get some food together for the long journey. Packing is thankfully always done the night before. Very organised huh? It was still dark when Sarah and Wilma walked down the hill with us, helping with the bags (Sarah, not Wilma). The taxi was there right on time and dropped us to Nathon town, only a few minutes away by car but a long hot walk (even at this time in the morning). The lady from the travel agency was there as promised with our travel tickets and red stickers for us to wear - not sure what the stickers actually say (kick me?) as they're in Thai. And even after a month here my skills in the Thai language run to hello and thank you. Quite shocking.

The tickets are a bit confusing, there are three that are clearly the ferry tickets taking us from Nathon port on Samui to Don Sak on the mainland. But the other one says we're going from Koh Samui to some other unknown destination. A magical mystery tour. The ferry left at 7am and arrived at Don Sak at 8.40, we were back on the coach (AC, loud Thai pop karaoke on the tv) by 8.50. The ferry was fine, the waters were very calm and I saw a big orange jelly fish in the clear blue water.

By 10.30 we'd reached Nakhon Si Thammarat. A fairly sizeable town. We had a 10 minute stop here, time to stretch legs and buy pringles and cashew nuts. We waited in line to buy some watermelon but the queue was slow and the fruitseller cut his finger with a big sharp knife and that put me off a bit so I got back on the coach. Whilst this is an express bus, it still stops in really small places, letting more passengers on and taking on boxed up goods too. We're due into Butterworth (Malaysia) at 7.30pm, so it's going to be a long day. And I wish they'd shut the loo door after they use it, it stinks!Well we made it as far as Hat Yai, a large city close to the the Thai Malaysia border. Here we were told those travelling to Penang were to change buses. This is despite me checking a least twice with the travel agent that it was a through bus with no changes ("yes same bus all the way"). We got off with two women who were also going to Butterworth to get the ferry to Georgetown. We were told to wait until 3pm for the bus, it was 2.20 so it gave us a good chance for a stretch and maybe some food. About a minute later a man came along insisting we get in his mini bus, a ploy we've seen lots of times at bus stations. the fact is we are wearing stickers that we realise say 'Penang' so we're kind of sitting targets for anyone coming up and saying they'll take us there. Cliff was ultra sceptical so he went and found the woman who had told us to wait until 3pm and she assured us this was our man. After spending another hour in Hat Yai rounding up other travellers to fill the bus. The travel company also insisted on taking our passports to complete the immigration cards for Malaysia, but we never let them out of our sight. This whole process took ages and they wrote all sorts of things down wrong. Our new vehicle had AC, no karaoke but with a fast driver who was pretty much was on his phone the entire 4 hour trip and we were on our way.

There was a bizarre process at the Thai border where we got off and back on the bus to get stamped out of Thailand and then five minutes later back off it to get stamped into Malaysia. The very young immigration officer asked me if I'd ever been to Malaysia before and I said yes, when I was 15. He thought this highly amusing and said that this was a very, very, very long time ago and that he wasn't even born then! Nice. I really must think about colouring my grey roots at some point.

We were stopped again by the police just after the border and the officer only looked at our three passports (ignoring the other 7 people on the bus) and then seemed pursuaded by our driver not to delve any further with a not very discreet handover of cash. What was that all about?

We were still under the impression that we were getting dropped at the Butterworth ferry terminal to take the trip over to the island but after taking a diversion and going through two tolls to pick up his girlfriend, our driver actually started drivng over the bridge to Georgetown. This was a result as it cut at least an hour off the journey and avoided a ferry trip in the dark, which are generally not very exciting.

Georgetown is much bigger than we imagined, apparently it's the second largest city after Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital. It was only a short 10 minute walk to our hotel which is clean, has a well designed but tiny room with no window. I'll go down to reception in the morning to see if we can swap to another with a window as we're here for four nights. Finally managed to get some cash out of an ATM (my bank card is refusing to work) and some noodles for dinner, celebrations are on for Chinese New Year, so dinner was accompanied by some very loud singing from an outside stage. Showers and an early night.