The long journey south to Malaysia started with a bracing early morning ferry ride to Ranong. The rest of the day’s travelling to Hat Yai was to be by bus. Now the “guide” books all say that the bus should take 5 hours. Just take one look at a map and even an amoeba could work out that in a lifetime of dreams it just wasn’t going to happen in 5 hours. No, our experience of bus travel is to take the guide book time and add 50%. That meant we were in for an 8 hour trip. Neil’s patience had only been tested up to 5 hours so this wasn’t going to be one of his better days. However, the bus was comfortable and the trip wasn’t so bad and we’ve now raised his threshold to 8 hours “daytime” running.

The trip was made all the more pleasant by Lisa and Gary who travelled from the island with us. They were on their way to Penang and travelled with us to Hat Yai. We found a hotel near the bus station, tried the local food at the busy night market and spent a pleasant couple of hours wandering around the colourful stalls. Lisa discovered she was pregnant whilst on Koh Chang and there is a possibility that she may have twins so we wish them both the best of luck….and are they going to need it!! Lisa, now that you are famous perhaps you could post a message on our blog to let our readers know the result of your scan in Penang.

Next morning we struggled to find a quick breakfast so we had our very first hotdog from the 7Eleven and a very strong local coffee. The onward journey from Hat Yai to Satun to the ferry was a fairly uneventful 90 minute minibus ride. We then had to wait about 2 hours for the ferry to set sail on the 60 minute crossing to Langkawi Island.

The time passed quite quickly and having bought our ticket it was time to queue for immigration. Generally speaking S E Asian immigration officials are good humoured unlike their US and UK counterparts. However, as we had overstayed our visa by 2 days, something we had forgotten about, we were whisked away to the back office to sit before two officials. Here we go again…..in trouble crossing a border, but this time at least it wasn’t over smuggling a bottle of local whisky as in Singapore last year. To cut a long story short, and despite a made up story of being too ill to travel, we were fined 2000 Baht, about £40. We protested in vain over what seemed to be a very high fine for a 2 day overstay, only to see the money slip gently into the side pocket of one of the officials. Yes it’s annoying but we were in the wrong and that’ll be a lesson to us that we won’t forget in a hurry.

The crossing was fine and the taxi ride to Zackry Guesthouse pleasant so what started as a difficult day soon got slipped from our minds. We’re back on Langkawi Island for Christmas and New Year.