Mister you want buy cheap suit..?

So it has been an interesting old couple of days... after an afternoon of drinking coffee and hanging around airconditioned malls trying not to sweat every last drop of moisture out of my body, the loooooong wait for the train was finally over at 8pm and the thronging masses flocked aboard. I of course was somewhat icky and smelly so I climbed into my top bunk and put to use my skills from a previous career as a circus contortionist to get changed behind my little curtain without falling out naked onto the old Muslim lady in the bunk below. Since my packs and all are rather bulky, and I am also a cynical and untrusting kind of person, I elected to have them on the bed with me rather than leave them in the aisle for people to fall over, meaning that lying on my bunk on my side I could just squeeze my legs down one side of my pack to almost stretch out my full length. So not much sleep was had, especially when you throw in the noise of the train and stops every five minutes and people coming and going.

Since I had no joy finding a book to read in KL I was forced to amuse myself by sitting/standing in the little area at the end of the carriage where the carriages join, where the smokers are forced to congregate next to the decidely unappealing toilet facilities. Despite all the signs commanding otherwise, in Malaysia they have no objection to you opening the side doors of the train and hanging out sitting on the stairs etc while you thunder through the night with posts and trees and bridges whooshing by inches away (I doubt they would have had much objection to us falling to our deaths either really). Within about 20 minutes of leaving KL I had met an English guy, and Estonian girl and an old chap who was probably once Scottish but had been living in Thailand for 20 years or so, and we chatted for a good few hours before people wandered off to attempt sleeping.

Each second class sleeping carriage like ours had about 40 bunk beds, 20 or so down each side... I pity the poor folk sleeping next to the automatic doors at the end which generally didn't do anything automatically and saw constant passenger traffic most of the night. Sometime in the early hours of the morning, with much noise and drama as is always the way with trains, they unhooked our car from the back and hooked it up to a new train, so that when everyone woke the next morning we appeared to be going in the other direction and half the passengers thought they had slept through their stop and we were going south again... but no, all was under control. I woke with the dawn after fleeting moments of sleep and got up and started hanging out the doors taking photos.

Derek, the English lad, was up before long too and we resumed our posts on the steps on each side of the train, having half-yelled conversations across the aisle and admiring northern Malaysia.

We crossed into Thailand mid-morning with little drama, although the train did leave us sitting at a small station in the middle of nowhere for about 45 minutes while it went for "servicing"which I think was just a scam between the local cafeteria staff and the train crew. Sometime after 11am our 14 hour ride ended in the (more than a little unappealing) southern Thailand town of Hat Yai, a place visiting foreigners are not generally encouraged to hang around in (don't know if it made NZ news but a bombing in south Thailand injured 60 last week, attacks have been ongoing for some time). I was planning on getting a bus to Koh Samui but I was the only one heading in that direction, with the half a dozen other foreigners heading for Phuket... Derek was also travelling by himself with little in the way of plans and since our missions appeared pretty closely aligned I decided that Phuket may be a better bet for a few days of chilling out...

So all of us in the newly formed Phuket group were quickly hijacked by a band of bus-touts offering "best deals" on coach-bus rides to the island (and then ripping us all off). To our surprise and horror we learned it was in fact a 7-8 hour trip, for some reason I, and the others, had thought it a lot closer. We were all crammed into the back of a covered ute which whizzed around the back streets until it found the bus, and then we all got on board and made ourselves as comfortable as possible with the barely-working aircon. The bus made the train seem like luxury, and despite the driver overtaking every other vehicle on the road the hours went painfully slowly, and we were all going pretty much mental by the time we rolled into Phuket township in the dark.

We arrived in time for a monsoon deluge and since Derek and I had joined on with a couple of Dutch guys and a young Swedish bloke to combine our resources in finding accomodation, the only vehicle that could carry us and all our gear was another partially-covered (and very leaky) old ute. Again we sped off into the night, the rain soaking us as the ute struggled over the hill to Patong Bay, cars and scooters behind tooting and passing on the left and right. We ended up wandering the streets as the rain continued to bucket down until we finally found a guesthouse with enough rooms at a reasonable price, and we dropped our sodden bags and showered (which was very badly needed after 24 hours of travel) and went for what was only my third meal in 48 hours. After a few beers in the local pubs I headed off for much needed sleep.

Today on the other hand was the total opposite, some time on the beach and a casual wander around Patong, which is a nice place to relax although I wouldn't exactly bring the family here.. not that that stops some people. Not exactly sure now where the next stop on my travels will be, will have to get thinking about that...