Malaysia in a week

Cable car up Penang Hill
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Time to cross the border and say a fond farewell to Thailand!

We were due to be collected from Sanctuary at 7:30am but the bus was late which gave us more time to say our goodbyes and get our things together. The 2 hour mini van ride to Trang was pretty uneventful due to the fact that we just slept!! We then got a connecting bus to Hat Yai which was much more exciting! It doubled up as a public bus and for most of the 4 hour trip Jenn had a Thai man perched on her lap!! Not so easy to sleep on that journey!! We had it easy though, some people were stacked up 5 to a seat! We were dropped in completely the wrong place in Hat Yai (luckily with some other travellers). Between us, we made it to the tour operators shop where we could board the mini bus to Pinang (not without the threat of the police being called when the people we were travelling with wouldn't pay the taxi driver!) So, us, 11 people, 6 backpacks and a sitar were jammed into a bus meant for 9 people, a couple of backpacks and no bloody sitars! We eventually crossed the border into Malaysia and arrived in George Town 5 hours later. It was dark and we had no idea where we were going to stay. True to form though, a helpful little dude appeared out of nowhere and insisted we stay at his friend's guest house. We checked out a couple of other places but in the end, we gave in! Whilst searching for money and food it dawned upon us that the high number of scantily clad women (or men...not sure in some cases) that were perched on the edge of pavements were not there just to watch the world go by! We had skillfully landed ourselves in the middle of George Town's red light district! All good fun though and pretty harmless, we found some food and headed back to our hostel. Up early...or so we thought (did you know that Malaysia is an hour ahead of Thailand? We didn't!!) As recommended to us by a fellow traveller, we headed to Pinang Hill. We took a cable car right to the top (over 700m above sea level) and took in the stunning view of Pinang. Being the adventurous girls that we are, we weren't content with just that. We unwittingly took a detour thinking it would lead us to some botanical gardens...would have been nice, if we hadn't ended up on a 5km, steep downhill trek over rough terrain in flip flops! On the way we saw many monkeys and many more mosquitoes, most of which feasted on my back! It was a fun day and we booked a bus to take us to the Cameron Highlands tomorrow - a good stop over between Pinang and KL.

Time to cross the border and say a fond farewell to Thailand!