Friday to Saturday...new day brings new country!

So, Friday morning brought packing (which seemed quite alien now, after having 7 days in one place), and checking out of the Silver Sands.  As we had a long wait between check out and our taxi to the pier we decided to have our last meal in the same place that we had our first...Chopper's bar and grill!  In time honoured tradition we had decided to have our next 'western' meal of the trip...for Nicola eggs benedict, and Ben...the full English of course!

At 2pm we were picked up by our 'taxi' at the travel agents where we had booked our next 'leg' of the journey with...by taxi we mean an open back truck with 2 benches!  Down at the pier we boarded our catamaran after a short wait, and travelled the 90 kilometres to Chumphon pier.  A smooth journey followed by a walk along the longest and most rickety old wooden pier either of us had come across.  A quick bus journey took us to the centre of Chumphon, and another 4 hour wait started; we decided to spend it at a nice laid back little restaurant that seemed happy for us to sit and drink them out of sprite, and ice tea for the next 4 hours.

At 9ish we wandered over to the train station to wait for our train, which was supposed to arrive at 9:47, but eventually showed up an hour later than scheduled.  Which would have been okay, apart from the fact both of us were being bitten to death and the humidity was intense!

Once on the train we were relieved that the air conditioning was on high, the beds were clean and the carriage was quiet...apart from the screaming baby that had got on with us!  It eventually quietened down however, and we settled to try and sleep through the journey.  At 7:30am Saturday morning we got up to see the last 'Thai' stop before reaching the border.  The crossing was fairly painless, the usual formalities, luckily for both of us we didn't have long hair, were silk trousers or have the appearance of a hippy as from the warning notice on the wall these were the characters that the Malaysian border guards had a real 'thing' for!!  So, across the border we went, and after a trivial bag search we boarded the train again and set off towards Butterworth.

4 hours later and after seeing a vast amount of Northern Malaysia's countryside we arrived at Butterworth and hopped on the ferry to travel the short 15 minute journey to Penang Island, and our home for the next 4 nights Georgetown. 

After a nights sleep was lost on Friday we had an easy night once we had checked into the hotel, and after a short wander around town had dinner and headed for bed.