From Malaysia to Thailand

There are no big buses or coaches going from Malaysia to Thailand. Our only option was a minibus, which always cost more and always have crazy drivers. In Georgetown you can go to the ticket offices near the big white tower and shop around. Most of them are quite rude and not helpful at all. We went with KKKL and they were quite ok. There are no direct services to Trang and a minivan will cost about RM60 per person to Trang. They all go via Hat Yai and a minibus costs about RM30 per person. The journey takes about 3.5 hours and you have to go through customs on both sides, which is relatively painless.

Once we were in Hat Yai and got off the bus, we knew we were in Thailand. People were like flies, trying to sell us taxi rides everywhere. Ignore everyone, get some baht to buy a bus ticket. We asked around and it seemed the minibus and coach fares from Hat Yai to Trang are both about 100baht per person. We decided to go by coach. At the counter, the ticket lady ignored Emma trying to buy our tickets and kept serving locals which pushed in front. With a bit more aggression she finally acknowledged us and sold us the ticket for 130baht each. We don’t know if this was the farang rate or she was just pissed. Then she vaguely pointed in a direction where our bus supposedly is.

The bus was labelled Hat Yai – Phuket. Was she just assuming we are damned tourists and surely we wanted to go to Phuket or was this actually our bus? No idea. We got on and still didn’t know. No one spoke any English. Finally we decided it must be after the woman in front nodded.

3 hours later and we are in Trang, except not quite. We are about 4km from the actual city. The only option was motorbike taxi. No one spoke English again. The bus guy started yelling at some guy on a bike and told him to take us. He had to go into the shop and between 5 of them they could work out that we wanted to go to the station, Trang city. One bike for both of us with bags? We didn’t feel comfortable with that, so the guy hailed another one. Before we could think we were on the back of two motorbikes with no helmets. It started to rain and these guys drove like Ghostrider through all the red lights.

We arrived alive.