May 11th, 2006 - Hitching a ride to a new level!

As mentioned, Penang was just another big city. Cute and historical in its own right, but still more of the same scene. We spent most of the day walking the historical walk through the town centre after visiting the cultural Penang Museum to find out more about the East India company. Once again, the fusion of indian and Chinese influences leads to a multicultural ethnicity. The food, the various architecture and religions all remind visitors of this. In the afternoon, we took a public bus out to Penang Hill. It proved quite an ordeal to get to the foot of the mountain where a special tourist train takes you way up to the top. The view was pretty stunning, looking back to the mainland accross the city center. We were slightly disappointed when we missed seeing the largest Mosque because it was on a different hillside...Oh well, we saw it from a distance, can't win em all.

The next morning we woke up at 5am for a minibus to Thailand (Krabi). It's a little dodgy getting into an unmarked bus at 5am, and the border crossing was a whiole other story, complete with odd packages being stuffed inconspicuously under the seats in front and around us as we crossed...? We made it through and off to Hat Yai where we had the thrill of getting onto a different Minibus. We were the last two to get on and the driver miraculuosly managed to squeeze all of our luggage in to the roof. The vans are designed with one thing in mind 'more people=more money' luggage is not a priority. As we were leavibng town, or so I thought, the driver stopped at another tourist place to pick up another passenger. Looking around there wasn't a seat free in the 11 person van. This didn't seem to bother the driver and after he handed Laure's bag to me to put it in the walkway between the two of us, he shoved the front passenger to the middle and pushed the last man into the passenger seat. I would not have been happy about a five hour drive with a shifter between my legs! Ok, now we're ready to move as we were merging to get on the main autoroute, there is someone hitching at the side of the road. We pulled over and stopped, and the driver pushed the three small Thai girls on the bench in front of us over to fit four people in the space of three seats...Oh well, I can't complain cause the driver made the 5 hour drive in warp speed, cutting it down to ~4 or so it seemed. Safety was a bit of a concern as it seems 2 lanes can be unofficially split in three, where people pass in between the two 'real' lanes and the two lanes get pushed onto the shoulder. This becomes slightly complicated when you consider the scooters and motorbikes that regularly use the shoulders of major highways. We got to Krabi town and needed to make our way to Ao Nang beach yet another 45 minutes away. Although all of the locals were trying to get us to use a taxi for 400Baht, we really insisted on finding a bus to the beachfront, which after much difficulty, were able to find. Ao Nang is as stunning as we expected and before the end of the evening, we'd booked a room, a dive course and started thinking about an extra day for a rockclimbing trip. Our room is for 5 nights overlooking the waterfront and a series of limestone cliffs edging the city, I'll include pictures later. Needless to say, we're really enjoying the balcony, the view, the airconditioner and the private bathroom for <18$ a night after some haggling. That night we walked the beach to settle in and then grabbed a full size meal of Pad Thai outside of the house from a street vendor for 30 baht (~1AUD$, and those are tourist prices). Our haggling abilities aren't up to par compared to the locals who do this for a living, but we've managed not to get too worked up over any bad deals.