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Published: March 27th 2007
The journey so far
cherie Denise Preston We travelled down to the Malaysian border on another mini bus, being very careful to avoid travelling through the problem area of south Thailand where their have been a number of murders reccently. The BBC reports....
S Thailand hit by wave of bombs
Banks across Yala province were attacked
A series of small bombs has exploded almost simultaneously at commercial banks in southern Thailand.
At least 21 banks were attacked in quick succession on Thursday morning across Yala province.
Two people have been killed and police say dozens of other people were injured in the blasts.
The attack is the latest in a string of violent incidents in the Thai south, where more than 1,300 people have been killed since January 2004.
Officials blame Muslim insurgents for much of the unrest, although criminal gangs are also thought to be behind some of the attacks.
So we took a route that bypassed this mess.
We arrived at the border and i said sawadeekia (Hello in Thai) for the last time, I felf really sad that i was leaving the place that had made a fantastic home for almost two months, i had had a really lovely time in
thailand and have nothing bad to say about it.
I crossed passport control and stood on the border, to my left i could see Thailand and a billboard displaying another picture of Thailand's king (these pictures are huge and everywhere in Thailand) . The locals ware yellow on mondays, some everyday in respect of their king.
and to my right there was alot of greenery a Malaysian flag flapped in the wind.
We drove into Malaysia i could immediately tell that Malaysia was a wealthier country than Thailand as the roads were of a good quality with crash barriers and plants in the central reservation. It rained really hard on the journey to Penang a big thunderstorm overhead.
We crossed the sea to Penang the skyline was incredible as the sun was setting.
We landed at a ok guesthouse and got ready to go out for dinner.
James tipped me on how to dress as the majority of the surrounding community were muslims. It was really hard for me to dress respective of their beliefs as i had only brought short shorts and tiny light t shirts.
We set out on the street in search of an ATM machine,
we were followed by an old man on a push bike conversion. Welded to the handle bars was a buggy for two people to sit, these are called Trishaws, he wouldn't leave us alone, as we weren't really sure where to go and he had bargained with us a cheap price we accepted his offer and got taxied to "little India".
The man recommended a restaurant for us to eat so we went. The restaurant was really busy, fluorescent strip lighting plastic chairs and tiled walls with about 100 air conditioning units! The food was in burn maries out on the street they heated all the food out their too. we were seated down with a menu, i couldn't understand a word of the menu as it was in Malay and without thinking (and half hoping) i asked the waiter if they had chicken korma!!!! James was in hysterics.
James ordered an assortment of curries for us with only one i recognized, chicken tikka.
A banana leaf was placed in front of us and they served onto it some rice and vegetables, delivered our poppodoms and curries too. It was delicious! All that food and three drinks cost
less than 3 pounds!!! BARGAIN!
I felf rather intimidated here at first as the place was full of staring locals that eat using only their fingers.
We went to a buffer fly farm and took a trip up the Penang hill, the view was great, their were loads of little monkeys playing around and the python snake i am holding in the picture.
Penang was very multi-cultural, there were numerous houses of worship to cater to nearly every faith - Islam, Taoism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism.
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