By George, we're in Malaysia!

Approaching Penang
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We left Ko Tao by nightboat. The only other time we were on a boat overnight was a cruise several years ago and this was a world away. The upperdeck was packed with thin, narrow matteresses on the floor. So that was our "bed" for the night. Since we'd be sleeping effectively with them, we got to know our neighbours on the floor, a really nice Belgian couple. We chatted for a whle and then it was lights out at 9.30. We were a bit alarmed at the fact that the Thai men opposite us were smoking furiously, bearing in mind what a fire hazard the boat was and I'd counted the life jackets and beds. And there was a discrepancy. However we decided to ignore it and went to sleep.

Bus number 1 of 6, taking us to Penang
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We arrived in Surat Thani at 5.30am. We bundled into a tuk tuk, all 12 of us and went to wait at a travel agency's office for our next transport. We hung around for about an hour, during which time they checked and held onto our ticket. Anyhow we went bundled into a minibus, along with a friendly Thai lady and drove for about 10 minutes at which point we had to change minibus. And then we had to change again. It was 7.30am and we still hadn't left Surat Thani!

Once on the road however we went to Hat Yai where we had to change bus again. We didn't have a ticket to show them, which caused a bit of confusion. We took the opportunity to say we were going to Penang, or Georgetown our final destination instead of Butterworth where we'd originally booked. Thus, we hoped, saving us a taxi and ferry cost. After a while we were directed to a minibus, piled in and off we went.

Our palatial accommodations on the night boat from Koh Tao
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The border crossings were smooth. We were on our last day of our extended Thai Visa but the Malaysian border crossing was really simple and fast. And they actually scanned our bags which is the first time it happened at a land border crossing, bearing in mind this is our ninth country number, that's a bit worrying.

We arrived at Georgetown having crossed on the ferry in our bus (result)around 7.30pm making about 24 hours on the road/sea etc. Our chirpy Malaysian driver dropped us off exactly where we wanted to be grandly waving his hand at the street saying "all farang here". Farang is what Thai people call foreigners. Hilarious. So we booked ourselves into a nice hostel and had our first hot shower in about 3 weeks. We then walked around a bit savouring the Chinese/Indian/European flavours before ducking out of the sudden rain into an Indian street cafe that was full of locals (always a good sign). We didn't really know how it worked, there were no menus or anything, so we sat down and just said vegetarian to the smiley man and he fed us handsomely with various delights served on banana leaves. We were stuffed for about 3 dollars including drinks.

Penang (Georgetown) street
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We then went to bed respectively eleven to rest up so we could explore Georgetown.

The next morning we wandered around the city and went to the Maison Bleu which was very interesting.... to be continued.