We left on a bus from a 711 in Phuket and traveled across southern Thailand. As we’ve previously observed, the travel company used stickers to keep everyone’s destination straight. The journey was uneventful. The bus dropped us off at a ferry terminal that was full of hundreds of other travelers waiting around. We walked around a building looking for some information, but only found a food court so we decided to walk down the long jetty where the boats were parked. Continue reading
To begin our onward travels, we took a ferry from Langkawi, Malaysia to Satun, Thailand. We were pleased to receive a 30 day travel visa upon arrival because we had read conflicting information about the length of stay we would be permitted. We then hopped on a bus to Phuket Town. We immediately noticed things were different than Malaysia; there were less signs in English, less Muslims (or at least less women wearing veils), and a higher military presence (many checkpoints along the way and even had a heavily armed officer board the bus and search the bag of a fellow passenger). The other unusual part of the bus ride were the seemingly random stops along the way. Continue reading
After an overnight bus ride from Singapore, we arrived at the Penang bus station before sunrise and were ambushed by multiple cabbies. We were actually the only two left on the bus and they even boarded the bus to try to be the first to snag us. We fought through the crowd and picked the most respectable looking cabbie to head to the guesthouse. It was only 7:30 when we arrived but thankfully they let us check in early and we spent most of the morning organizing and researching what to do in Georgetown. Continue reading