Day 702 - Delayed

When we boarded the train last night, it was 3 hours behind schedule, but once we woke up we had managed to lose another 3 hours and were now trailing 6 hours behind! We managed to fill our time by eating snack food, reading, and checking out the views from the window. The further south we went the more rural it got - with a feel of India, although much cleaner!!!

The boys in the seats in front of us entertained themselves by putting a plastic bag on the end of a string and flying it out the window - in between gazing at the scenery that was also entrancing us.

When we got to Hat Yai there was a huge change in the atmosphere as military men with M-16s and fatigues boarded the train and spent the rest of our journey patrolling the aisles. When we glanced out the windows we saw barbed wire and sandbagged blockades, and yet more army guys at each station. The reason for ths heightened security is due to the frequent attacks that happen in south Thailand due to insurgents wanting their own independent state. It's been so bad in the last few years that in 3 of the worst hit areas the schools have been shut down because the attacks were so frequent.

The other thing we noticed was the prevalence of young boys and men outside playing anything from hacky in circles to full uniformed games of soccer. It was great to see entire villages come out to watch their guys play and kind of funny to see them all straddling their motorbikes around the field.

In Yala we had an additional delay as we had to wait for a local train to take us the rest of the way as ours didn't want to waste the 2 hours to Sungai Kolok and back as it had to get back to Bangkok. When we finally arrived in the border town of Sungai Kolok the friendly station master pointed us in the direction of Malaysia and 500m later we were walking through immigration and into another country!!!

Unfortunately the end result of our train delay was 8 hours meaning we arrived in Malaysia after dark, when we should have been there before lunch, and all public transport had stopped for the day. We ended up sharing a taxi with an Aussie guy and made it all the way to Kuala Besut where we'll catch the boat from tomorrow. Here we battled with touts to find a room - with guys on motorbikes following us in order to get the commission. One guy even wanted us to sleep in his office to ensure we'd get on his boat tomorrow. In the end we found a good deal at a nice place and went out to convince a restaurant to cook us up Nasi Goreng at midnight!

Adlibing it to Malaysia!