From island to island

Day 95 - 28/08/2010 - 21:05 - Georgetown, Penang Island, Malaysia

Well we're now in Malaysia albeit briefly. We'll be back to see KL after we've been to Singapore. As I've mentioned earlier, we're now flying, on Monday night at 8:50pm.

Our final full day in Lamai saw us lounge on the beach and also by the pool for the last time. My sunburn was still hurting (and still is now) but when there was cloud cover, I went in the sea for a bit which was really nice and refreshing because it was very hot that day. We were really sad to leave the beach that evening but we want to come back and will do I think. Such a beautiful part of the island. We went back to the pool in the evening, I had no hesitation about going in as the pool is in the shade in the afternoon so just really enjoyed the last pool on the holiday! Wish I was back there now to be honest! That evening we went to get the suit finalised and paid for. It looks really nice and I'm carrying it with me instead of shipping it - it was £30 just to Singapore! Pah. Never mind.

We got up the following day and checked out at 11, before heading to the town centre to post some postcards, buy some food for the journey and check the Internet (the Internet died the previous evening, so I had no idea Villa had lost, again). We got picked up at 12:50 and got dumped at the Raja Ferry port on the other side of the island. A 40 minute wait there, we got onto the boat. Laura and I had a great view over the back of the ship, we gave Samui a proper wave goodbye as we saw it fade in the distance. It was sad but we were looking forward to our stupidly long journey - our last real one this trip. I said it didn't matter how long we spent in each place waiting, it was all the 'final' experience. And it really was. We had to wait another 30 minutes or so at Don Sak pier before a bus picked us off and dropped us off at a random cafe in Surat Thani. We sat with a northern Irish couple and chatted to them for a while, getting stickers with "Train" stuck to us in the process (we were the only 2 going to the train station). They were headed for Krabi along with most others it seemed. We waited for about 45 minutes there before being bundled in a Pick-tuk. I've named this, it's essentially a small pick up truck that's been converted into a tuk tuk. It was powerful and we got bundled into the back with 2 others - both heading to Bangkok by bus. One of them was old Australian man with a long white beard and was wearing a bandana. He was a great character and kept telling me that everything they do in Asia "is all organised" - including the mad driving! It was funny, every Thai person in their car that saw this man just had a huge smile on their face! Maybe we are not so "same same" after all! (The thai way of saying all whites look the same, I actually saw a Thai teenager wearing a t-shirt saying this! The text was conveniently white on a black t-shirt)

Anyway, we got dropped off at the train station at 7pm, 6 hours before our train was due in. The pick-tuk driver laughed when we told him how long we had to wait. It was all organised though - on my end! We ate a meal at a dirty cafe which we had a coffee at when we first arrived at Surat from Bangkok and this time had something to eat. To be fair, it was pretty good and cheap. Unfortunately they shut at 8:30pm so we needed to find something else to do. Luckily, there is a 24 hour Internet cafe on that road and we spend from about 7:45pm to 11pm in there. It only cost 8quid for 2 PC's as well! After that, we went to the 7/11 and got a couple of beers (I drank them both). Strangely enough the 7/11 at Surat train station was open till 12 but I wasn't complaining. We headed to the train station to wait. On the platform near where we were waiting were yet another British couple around our age - both met at Nottingham Trent Uni. We had a chat with them for 40 minutes or so before they got their train north to Bangkok. Our train was 1 hour and 15 minutes late, it didn't come in until 5 past 2 in the morning. Bad times. That said though, the sleeper was good. It was completely different to any other carriage layout for 2nd class we've seen but it was clean and comfortable! The whole carriage was open, but there were 2 seats facing each other on each side of the train, running down the carriage. These folded down and out to make the bottom bunks and the top bunk came from above, much like they do elsewhere. There is only a curtain separating you from the corridor but it worked well and I slept reasonably well.

Customs was pretty good too. The passport control for both Thailand and Malaysia were in Malaysia so you went through the Thai and then the Malaysian one straight after, got back on the train and then we were off. At the Thai one there was a great law about how the King can refuse entry to those who have "hippy" characteristics, such as being dirty! It was funny. Many people took pictures of it and it led to a conversation with yet another British couple. I knew the accent was fairly local this time, turns out they were from Nuneaton. Small world. We rolled into Butterworth 2 hours late, at around 2:30pm, caught the ferry across and then got a taxi for £2.50 to the hotel. It's a nice but very basic hotel. For £5 each per night, I'm not complaining though! This afternoon we just looked around the town a bit, tomorrow we're going to see if we can make our way all the way up Penang Hill!