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Published: April 25th 2007
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Tim and Arno on the train to Butterworth On The Road To Penang.
It was actually a boat, train boat journey but it didn’t have the same ring to it. The whole reason for the trip was to renew my tourist visa. It just happened to work out that Tim and Arno needed to do theirs as well, I ended up going about 5 days early, but the boys road trip off the rock was great. I never really took that many pictures going to and in Penang mainly because it was a very unremarkable trip. All of these Visa runs are booked out of travel agents, as you may remember the last time I did one on my own it got a little hectic, I didn’t need that again.
We started with the afternoon boat to Chumpon, where we made the pilgrimage to KFC. Everybody that comes off Koh Tao, at least from Asia Divers, heads for some true western grease. Then we all complain about how much our stomachs hurt after, this happened several times to me on this trip. We had about 4hrs to kill till we caught the night train to Butterworth, Malaysia. This is truly the way to travel if
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Chulia St. in Penang I stayed at the Banana Guest House you can get away with it. The bed was smaller than mine at home (in Thailand) but it was more comfortable, best nights sleep I’ve had for weeks. I have no idea why I get all twitchy every time I get to a border, I have had some issues in the past, but standing there at immigration I was sure that I wasn’t getting in. Then the guy barely looks at me, I gotta get out of my own head. Now that we’re into Malaysia the train journey really slows down and it seems to take forever to get anywhere. I’ll swear that they cut the speed at least in half. We hit Butterworth at about noon and were on the ferry to Penang in no time. Little side note here every time that someone goes on one of these necessary trips, they come back and help out the next people that have to make the same trip. We had the heads up that this one guesthouse did a great job with Visas and such, boy were they right. Within minutes our passports were off to the embassy and Arno had an appointment for a couple of x-rays all set
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Night golf with Dean and Lorne up. One small unavoidable fact of traveling is that everyone wants your money, some just make you feel better about giving it out by working for it a little. I had a different way of putting that but it was not printable. While in Penang I was also presented with a couple of little extras, an invite to go to KL to visit and play golf with Dean and Wendy Tingley, and dealing with two seriously infected hands that were not responding to treatment.
I thought that bad hands would possibly take away from golf, I had actually forgotten just how much I missed the game. I decided to fly down to Kuala Lumpur for a couple of days, this is where my travel schedule gets very liquid, a 4 day trip to Penang ended up being a 2 week vacation to Malaysia. I was doing laundry every two days. Not like I actually had the clothes for city life anyway.
I landed in KL after a marathon 15min flight from Penang that cost 30cdn, it would have been a 4hr bus ride at close to the same price. Once I got myself downtown and into
the bar that Dean had directed me to everything became very easy, Dean & Wendy looked after me so well I had a hard time leaving.
After several beers at the Tingley house Dean mentioned that his course has night golf. This was just too good to be true 4hrs in KL and I’m on a course playing golf. Wendy’s whole family was there so it really felt like I had been transported back to Canada. Wendy even made me Kraft Dinner, oooh that was good. The next morning we had a great discussion on how long I could visit for, now that I was there and the weekend was coming up I thought that Monday sounded good. That was about the time when Wendy said she was leaving for Bangkok for a few days and I should think about staying for a little longer. This also coincided with a couple of Malaysian holidays so that would mean a lot more golf, very difficult to say no to that. As for the golf can’t really say that I played all that well but all the laughs that I used to have with Dean were still there, I’m glad
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BEWARE if you see this course---> THERE IS NO BEER he was as rusty as me. All of the courses we played were good, EXCEPT one, and here we go. We went to this one course it did feel a little strange around the clubhouse but no real alarms were going off, then after all the money is paid Dean went to go and get BEER. In 40-degree heat you need beer. We find out we are at a very exclusive Muslim course, that means that it is DRY, no booze. A very long round that was, but the day just kept getting longer. On the way home all of us talking and dreaming of the beer that is awaiting us at home, the car breaks down on the freeway, and we still don’t have any beer. It was pretty funny in the end but at the time Dean wasn’t laughing too much. It was one of those moments when you wished you had a camera, dumb ass that I am, I had mine and didn’t figure it out till we were all the way home by cab. We really had a great laugh when Dean said it was a rental and not his problem anymore, after he phoned the
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Cab dropping us off after the break down. owner to pick it up, and it was probably getting stripped right now. There were some very helpful young men that came by as we were leaving, we were pretty sure they were just going to turn around and come back to it. They never did but it made the night a little more enjoyable to think someone else’s day was about to unravel.
So the golf is done Wendy has come home, now Joe Reid throws his two bits in, he has arrived and is going to meet with a guy at Dean’s office so we’re sticking around for another few days. This leads us to me pissing off some Hindu god at the Batu Caves. I thought it would be funny if I rubbed its belly and Joe took my picture, not 20 seconds after doing this my wet flip flops hit the wet concrete stairs and away I go. A full flight of very wet, very steep stairs I’m at the bottom with a very nice Hindu Priest picking my ass off the ground, saying that I should have worn real shoes. Maybe not making fun of religious icons might be a start as well.
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We made up for the lack of beer this day. I have never seen 4 guys go through it like that, we had to play 27 to get it all down..;-) Time to get back to Thailand.
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