Long journey to Malaysia
Trip Start
Jan 29, 2008
1
23
32
Trip End
Mar 04, 2008
Georgetown,
Pinang,
Malaysia
Saturday, February 23, 2008
At some point in the morning, SH figures around 4am, we woke up to the shrieks of "Chicken! Chicken!" from some woman walking up and down the aisles. It seemed like the wrong time for dinner to me, but later I regretted not taking advantage of the opportunity. Maybe if I had been awake and coherent I would have reacted differently. It turns out that was the only food on the train and a twelve hour train ride is not very fun at the best of times, nevermind when you are starving.
The train got to the Malaysian border and we all got out to go through customs. I was ahead of SH in line and got my exit visa stamped in Thailand, then was told to go over to the Malaysia customs desk. I tried to look like I was busy with my bag while I waited for SH to go through. I was hoping their wouldn't be a problem but as soon as they saw his passport he was hustled away into an interrogation room. He had overstayed his visa by a day which required him to pay a fine. I stood outside the Thai customs office, waiting for his interview to end. I could see him quite clearly in the interrogation room so I kept an eye on it. A Thai customs officer came around and told me to move. I moved out of the area where I couldn't see anything, and waited until the officer was distracted. Then I went back to my original location with the good view. At this point my friend had disappeared from the room and I had visions of rubber gloves and torture. But after a few minutes I realized he was just sent back to the end of the customs line so he could pay his fine. I went through Malaysian immigration and waited for him to get through before getting back on the train.
Once we crossed into Malaysia, some cute school girls boarded the train. We had 4 seats reserved for just the two of us (because two beds convert into four seats) so we squished over a bit so they could take the empty spots. But it turns out they were pretty scared of SH. At first two tried to sit by me but their instructor made one of them move over to SH's side. It was pretty cute. The girls were quite endearing and I tried to make room for another to sit by me but she wouldn't. So we shared our bench with one girl each and they got off a couple stations later.
We eventually got to Butterworth where our train ride ended, and were pretty much starving to death after 12 hours without food. We went straight from the train station to the restaurant across the street and gobbled some noodles down. I am pretty sure that there was chicken mixed in there, though this has caused some disagreement, but there was definitely bone included with whatever meat it was. It probably would have been the best meal ever given how hungry I was if not for the fact that I had to keep removing bone fragments from my mouth.
After getting some sustenance, we decided we were done with public transportation. Neither of us were digging the idea of a ferry to Penang (Penang is an island state) followed by a taxi to George Town. So we got in a cab over the longest bridge I've ever been on, which crosses from Butterworth to George Town. After doing some research I have discovered it is actually 13.5km long and is the longest bridge in Malaysia.
The bridge did eventually end and we headed for the Banana Club in George Town so SH could get a new Thai visa. Somehow we got stuck on the idea that we needed a hotel with a pool so we asked around a bit and found a kick ass room in a kick ass hotel for the equivalent of about $30/person/night. After I took my big backpack off in our room we raced to the pool, cooled down a bit, and then hung out in the hot tub for as long as we could handle. SH ordered a beer to the hot tub which was pretty awesome. I went back and forth between the slightly chilly pool and the hot tub, but SH was a wimp and stuck to the hot water.
After a good soak in the huge hot tub we went outside and walked around. We stumbled across one of the best restaurants ever, just around the corner from our hotel. We hung out on the patio for a long time before tracking down an Irish pub serving Guinness not too far from the hotel.
