sunday 27th February Krabi - Hat Yai - Penang

We left at 6am this morning for Hat Yai, this is the closest train station to Krabi.

Luke is still asleep!

We were filled with dread as we sawe ANOTHER mini bus pulling up to take us away. After our journey to Trang we thought nothing good could come for this. How wrong could we be! Driver put the two of us up front with him! Leg room, seat belts and air con blowing right in our faces, epic!! The journey took about six hours and was pretty uneventful. Every now and then we'd pass an entire family squashed onto a scooter...or an open back pick up carrying a massive cow!

We got to Hat Yai and headed for the train station to sort out our journey. We got talking to a monk in the station, really cool guy. I was a bit anxious at first becuase I wasn't sure if he could speak to me but he was chatting away fine. We talked about his Monastery up in the North, compared North and South Thailand, discussed the consumerist western world and spoke about home. He said he'd love for us to come stay with him in the monestry and experience the simple life . We swapped details (was quite strange actually, I went to hand him my notebook and he just stood in front of me limp, eventually explaining that I needed to pass it to Luke and he could hand it to him. Monks cannot accept anything from women!) I hope we get to visit him, I think it would be a great experience.

The train to Butterworth was full so we opted for a bus straight to Penang instead. We met a really nice couple who we were sharing the mini bus with, Ian and Melinda from UK and Oz. They had been to Malaysia before so were filling us in and calming our nerves as we approached the first boarder crossing! We were pretty anxious about it but it turned out to be absolutely nothing! It's really well organised. You get your exit stamp from one office then drive down the road and get your entry visa to Malaysia. We had heard a lot about corrupt officials looking for bribes so it was nice to avoid that.

It was crazy the minute we crossed the border the road was smoother, people drove cars instead of scooters, housing estates lined the orderly highway....big big changes from Thailand! As we got closer to Butterworth the changes were even more evident. Huge supermarkets, fast food chains, chic hotels and colossal sky skrapers....we thought we were going to an untouched land, even more remote than Thailand - probably should have done our research before fleeing Krabi!!!!

We crossed Penang bridge (a huge 13.5km long!) and arrived on the 'island.' I can't explain how shocked we were!! We have been staying on islands that have little electricity, bamboo shacks, white beaches...this island resembled London, no joking!

Penang bridge in the distance

We left our mini van, walked the streets for a while and found a reasonably priced guest house to put us up.