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Published: December 3rd 2009
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Day 22: Hat Yai, Thailand to Sintok, Malaysia
We awoke and biked thirty-eight miles to the Thai border, through steady rain on a hilly road, J still feeling quite ill. We stopped only once, a for a quick morning snack of scrumptious spicy-sweet chicken and rice, to give us energy. Approaching the border, there was quite a bit of car and large truck traffic.
We had ridden 817 miles through Thailand to reach Malaysia! After a few excited photos to commemorate biking through our first country, we went through pedestrian Thai customs, with no wait, although it would have been easy to go around the checkpoint if you needed to exit illegally. The customs official was very admiring of our trip. Then we entered in to Malaysia, passing through Malaysian customs, where the official never said a word, just stamping our passport without a single question. Easy as could be! You could even drive right through the Malaysian customs without stopping if you wanted to; we watched loads of motorcycles do this.
Directly after customs, there was a fabulous Tourist Info Center, well staffed with English speakers and stocked with loads of colorful, professional pamphlets advertising different areas
of the country. The staff here happily gave us extra maps and answered all our questions. We were tired from the morning ride, and requested the closest hotel. They advised us that there was a hotel at the nearby University, ten miles away.
Along a nice, modern and quiet highway we biked in a wide motorbike lane. We instantly missed the street-color brought to the ride by the many vendors in Thailand. We passed little neighborhoods, small strip malls, orchards, schools. All the women and girls we saw wore hijabs, the traditional scarf head covering. They didn’t seem shocked or dismayed that I wasn’t wearing one, calming my fears. This hour-long ride, along a highway no-less, was quieter than any place we’d ridden in Thailand. Malaysia just appeared to be a much more developed country lacking the noise of the street and the neighborhoods found everywhere in Thailand.
We found the University Utara Malaysia campus, and rode around for awhile, searching for the hotel. We finally found it and were delighted that the receptionist spoke perfect English. But the price of the room was 90 riat, at 3 riat to the USD, so $30! Yikes! This was more
expensive than anyplace in Thailand and worried us a bit, as our funds wouldn't last long if Malaysian prices stayed like this. But the room also offered more amenities than anyplace we’d stayed before; TV, a kettle, hot water, coffee, air conditioning, and a sitting room. An arrow was painted on the bedroom ceiling, pointing towards Kiblat, or Meccah, so Muslims would know in which direction to pray.
From the receptionist, we learned that students come to this school from all over Asia, the Middle East and Africa: Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia…many Muslim countries. Students do not come to this university from North America or Europe. We strolled over to the student center and experienced culture shock. The student center looked just as any student center would look in the US. Students sat at tables, hanging out and eating with friends in the cafeteria. There was a bakery, selling pizza bread and foccacia. The women wore headdresses of every variety, from covering just the hair, to covering the entire body, to covering the entire body and the face. Some Asian female students wore no head coverings at all. There were students of all nationalities, but no Americans or Europeans. No white faces. Except ours of course. And no one was too curious about us. We were ignored.
Everyone we spoke to responded in English. The signs were all in Roman letters, like English letters are, but in Malay. So we could now read the words, but we couldn’t actually understand their meanings. The food, excitingly, was completely different. With the advice of a Chinese student, we ordered paprika nasi goreng, a boney, curried chicken and vegetable dish over white rice, apparently a national favorite. After that, we ate fish nuggets from a stand that was all the rage among the student population. Then a burger stand opened next to our table, where we sat, naturally, trying not to stare at everything around us.
Two female students operated this stand with the utmost seriousness. The girl flipping the patties was obese and pressed those patties on the grill with a mission. Her assistant layered cucumber, lettuce, tomato, mayonaise and hot ketchup, also with a mission. They were fast, efficient and stern. We of course ate one, and thanks to their devotion, it was superb.
We strolled over to a cell-phone promotion, setup on campus by a local company. A rap musician was performing on stage, which really brought us back to the Western world, as we’d never heard rap music in Thailand or Laos. We visited the campus supermarket, stocked with most every imported Western product one could want, whole wheat bread with crusts, chocolate buns, sandwiches, canned soup, crackers. We were truly in a different country now and we already missed the outgoing, friendly nature of the Thai people; even if we could barely converse with them, at least they liked us!
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