Malaysia to Thailand

From Singapore I made my way north to Malaysia.  I crossed over the bridge linking the two countries and found myself completely, utterly lost.  You pass through immigration and then on the other side is just a maze of stairways and open corridors.  Was I supposed to get back on the bus I came from?  Was there a bus station nearby?  Add to this that I had no money in Malaysian Ringgit and I was kind of in an awkward position.  I managed to find the bus I came on, though, and it took me to a bus station where I was able to get myself on my feet.

I could say what I did in Malaysia but in general it really doesn't merit much discussion: I went to a tropical island (Pulau Tioman) and hiked through rainforest.  I saw the Petronas Towers.  I did some amazing hikes near Kuala Lumpur with gorgeous views.  The real highlight of the time I was there, though, was the Cameron Highlands, a region near the middle of peninsular Malaysia that, due to its higher elevation, enjoys cooler temperatures, lush greenery, and an insane amount of rain.  It's there that Malaysian tea is produced and with that comes the surreal beauty of the tea plantations.  They really are beyond description, but luckily the pictures do them a good deal of justice.

After the Cameron Highlands I was ready to leave Malaysia.  I took a bus to the most northern big city I could find on my free little map -- a town called Kangar.  It's the capital of its state and, being that it's like 30 kilometers from the Thai border, I figured it'd be easy to head off to Thailand from there.  Boy was I wrong.  What a weird town.  Small and filled with expensive hotels; nothing at all reasonable.  I actually laughed out loud at one hotel when the receptionist quoted me the price.  I'd arrived near 10 pm and by midnight I came to the sobering realization that there were no reasonably priced rooms in this town so I decided, "heck, I'll try sleeping on a bench."  The oppressive humidity and the aggressive mosquitoes made this effectively impossible, but I still struggled at it for a good hour or more.  Eventually I retreated to the bus station and it's stone benches which, inexplicably, alleviated both of those prior concerns.

The troubles had only begun though.  I found out in the morning that, despite being 30 km from the Thai border, there wasn't a single bus that went from Kangar to Thailand.  Moreover, none of the ticket sellers spoke enough English to help me at all.  I've gotten pretty good at using hand signals and my broken Malay to express myself (or drawing pictures when necessary), but the only seller that might have been capable of helping me wouldn't even try to understand me.  Even when I spoke in slow, terrible Malay, he would just lower his head, shake it slowly while looking at his hands, and say, "I no English."  This was absolutely infuriating because he wasn't even trying to meet me half-way.  After twenty minutes of fighting this wave of incomprehensibility and scurrying from vendor to vendor, I finally decided I had to just go someplace big and hope they had buses to Thailand.

As painful as it was to accept, I bought a ticket going three hours South.  Then from there I bought a ticket going BACK up those three hours and an hour into Thailand.  What a pain.  So my plan to get into Thailand quickly and easily turned into a day of frustration.

On the plus side, I finally have made it.  On another down side, I am in here on the 15-day visa exemption, meaning I didn't have to pay $30 for a visa but I have to get the heck out by June 26th.  I've spent the last four days in Krabi, Thailand, widely considered to be the premier rock climbing locale in the world.  I climbed for three days straight alongside beautiful beaches, but with my limited time and the long distances remaining until Lao, it looks like I'll have to make a break for Bangkok tomorrow.

So that's the whirlwind summary of the last three weeks.  The funny thing is I have barely any idea where I'll even be three weeks from now-- my plans are getting very jumbled and confused.