A Thai kiss for goodbye and the first day in Malaysia

I finally made it to Malaysia yesterday, one day later than I had actually planned to. The reason for the delay was not a very nice one, but something that is commonly called the „Thai kiss“ – a burn on the leg by a motorbike exhaust… It happened shortly before I was scheduled to hop on the night ferry, so I decided that it would make more sense to pay a visit to a doctor instead and delay my trip for a day. Luckily that was no problem and even despite the pain I had another great and relaxing day on Koh Tao! However, I had to leave at some point and I managed to get the night ferry on Tuesday which took me (and a bunch of other people sleeping and snoring all around me) in 8 hours to Suratthani (mainland Thailand). From there I took several minibuses and finally landed in Georgetown, Malaysia in the evening… The whole trip went by without any problems, there was just one woman in a travel agency that really made me angry. She kept telling me (at 5 am) that, as I was one day late for my visa, would have to take an 8-hour taxi-ride to some office, costing me 6500 Bhat (more than a 120 Euros) in order to pay for my overstay. I was a tiny bit confused as I had heard from several other people that I could simply pay the fine for the overstay at the border without much hassle, but as soon as I mentioned this she just said: „Well, try it if you want, it’s not my story, you’ll have big problems at the border!“. I really didn’t know what to think, especially at 5 in the morning after a night with little sleep, and started t0 discuss this with her, with the result that she threw me out of her office!!! I couldn’t believe it! In the end it turned out that it was no problem at all to pay the fine at the border, and that – after talking to another traveller – this travel agency tries really hard to rip off anybody… So if any of you reading this are planning to come to Thailand, be warned that there is a travel agency somewhere in Suratthani that tells you loads of stupid stuff in order to get some money out of you!

Anyhow, the important thing is that I finally reached the place I wanted to get to: Georgetown, Malaysia. It’s a nice city on an island with a history of British settlement. It has quite a nice atmosphere, and there is a „Little India“ and a „Chinatown“. Both of these cultures heavily influence the local food which you can enjoy from the small food stalls on the streets – it’s very tasty indeed, yummy! The Malaysians speak very good English, which makes communication with the locals a lot easier than in Thailand, and they are – all in all – a pretty nice bunch of people, very helpful and smiling at you all the time… However, I’ve also noticed that there is a lot more harassment than in Thailand, many men stare at me again or start whistling when I walk by, one even touched me in order to make me stop and talk to me. But all in all I guess it’s not as bad as it was in India, or maybe I simply know better now how to handle it… However, it’s not bad enough to make me want to flee the country, I rather have to admit that I still enjoy travelling enough that I started thinking about delaying my flight again… I just don’t know, I kind of look forward to go home, but then I don’t really have a time limit and could easily just go on travelling for a couple more weeks. Geeze, there are just too many options and things to see and discover, hehe… A friend send me this link earlier, it’s a damn good article (unfortunately in German) about the way that the travel bug is able to destroy lives, very true I think!

Well, I’ll hopefully be able to decide within the next couple of days, I’ll let you know then… Speak soon!