The Malaysian adventure begins!.....

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After a fairly late and drunken evening, we dragged ourselves out of bed at 8am, finished our final packing and started the hike to the pier. The boat journey was not one of our favourites but after almost 6 months, we were accustomed to travelling with a hangover. We arrived in Krabi at 10.30am and boarded a minibus for a town further south nearer the Malaysian border. As usual Me and Ollie were the tallest and were also crammed into the smallest seats at the back of the bus. However, after 6 months we had also learnt to perfect the art of contortionism and after a small re-arrangement our limbs were slightly more comfortable.

.......A painful 6 hours later, we arrived at our destination and changed into another mini-bus. This time we had far more space but the journey was much shorter. We appraoched the Thai-Malysian border around 6pm and had no problems crossing into Malaysia. After the standard bag and passport checks we were back onto our minibus and heading for Butterworth, where we were to make our final change onto a larger bus which would take us to Kuala Lumpur. We arrived in Butterworth at 8.30pm and were told we had to wait around for 3 hours before our final stage of the journey was to begin. We headed to the nearby railway station to change some currency and get some dinner. It turned out that Malaysian chicken and rice was superb and we both scoffed down a rather large and very cheap meal. The remaining time passed very quickly and we were relieved to find that our final bus was very comfortable. Fully reclined and relaxed we settled in for the final 300km.

We had been told that the bus would arrive in Kuala Lumpur at 5am but we were awoken from our sleep at 3.30am as we rocked up at Puduraya bus station. We quickly got our minds back on track and headed for China town, luckily a short walk away. We were both exhausted after our 20 hour journey and checked into a small hostel room. The room was a tiny box but it had 2 beds and we both collapsed with the idea of changing to a better hotel when we awoke!

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