Koh Phangan

Our last day in Koh Phangan was a lazy one, the weather wasn't too great so we puttered around the hotel, trying to make sure we didn't leave anything behind. Lots of eating and internet time. But the internet access on the island was really expensive, it was 2 Baht a minute, whereas in Chiang Mai I had paid 10 Baht an hour. I think it was here that we realised that we had travelled through S.E.Asia the wrong way. We had started in one of the cheapest countries and travelled to one of the most expensive. I'll know better next time.
We said goodbye to Dave and Scott, Betsy and myself got a cab to the ferry port and then said our own goodbyes. Luckily the ferry tickets to and from the islands include the bus ride to the nearest train station. We got to the station in Surat Thani about 8pm and went to buy our train tickets as we hadn't reserved. Then we settled down to have dinner with some people we had met on the bus. Dinner didn't take too long and we spent 3 or 4 hours waiting for the train. It didn't help that the train was 40 minutes late, we eventually got on at 1.30am June 17th and set off to Butterworth. The sleeper trains in Thailand are different to the ones in China and Vietnam. In China the car is split into compartments and the bunks run across the car and there is one long corridor at the side of the car. In Thailand there are no compartments, the bunks run down the side of the car and there is a corridor down the middle of the car.Privacy is achieved with curtains around your bunk, but the cool thing is that the bottom bunk converts into 2 seats and the top bunk folds away, so it's a lot more comfortable for day travel.
We reached the border at about 8am and it was everyone off, with their luggage to go through immigration. I was glad that we weren't too late and hoped that there would be no problem leaving Thailand as we were on the very last day of our visa. This had been the case when we left Vietnam as well, I've never cut it so fine before!! But there were no problems and it was a short walk to Malaysian Immigration, then the health check,to make sure we had none of that pesky swine flu and through customs. And we were in Malaysia, it was a bit of an anti-climax really. I did have a bit of a shock when I saw the train, what was previously a 10 car train was now a 2 car train, but I went to get on anyway. A Canadian girl tried to stop me by telling me that it was a different train, didn't I notice that the train was a lot shorter? Well of course I did, but it was still our car and since there was no other train, I figured that this was my best option, and it was. We think the other cars were something to do with the army and they were off to fight the insurgents in southern Thailand and so didn't need to go to Malaysia.
Back on the train and we were off to Butterworth, a nondescript town in north Malaysia that serves as train terminal for Thailand and a ferry terminal for Penang. We arrived at about 1.30pm and the next train to KL was not until 9pm and took 9 hours, so we opted for the bus and arrived in KL about 8pm. On the journey we had picked up a guy called Viktor,who was still a bit wide eyed, so we said he could tag along with us to our hostel, he hadn't booked anywhere to stay. We stayed in a great place called Hotel Cosmopolitan for 5 pounds for the night in Chow Kit. We got there, dumped our bags and had dinner at the curry house next door. Then it was time for sleep, in a real,non-moving bed. We were in Malaysia!!!