The 5000 Project

We took the last leg of the jungle train to a train station a few clicks off kota baru, the last town on the border of Malaysia. At first we were told we could walk to kota, 15min in we were told that we should have taken motorbike taxis from the train station, we decided to hitchhike the rest of the way… shortly after we hopped in a car, we saw the city. It looked massive. No way could we possibly walk to a backpackers from where we were, the driver dropped us off right in the centre of the hostel area.

The next day we woke up early and headed for the bus station, to Thailand!

The Malaysian side of the border was very flash and professional, the Thai side was a very busy and chaotic small hut on the side of the road – no police to be seen. We could have easily walked past, performed some crimes, then just stroll back the same way. Not that I recommend any of you people do this.

We walked to the train station, it was more heavily guarded than the border, army soldiers roamed the complex armed with M14 assault rifles, one guy had a large fully automatic. Feeling a Tad nervous, we purchased our tickets for hat yai and hopped on the train. The area to the north east of this border is renowned for Muslim extremist activity and apparently sometimes they target the trains.

We arrived in the safety of hat yai unharmed, this large city had markets on most of the central streets, fresh fruit and deep fried pasteries was my food of choice at the time (having a bit of a weak stomach from either the durian I ate days earlier, or some bad noodles). Feeling a lot better after 2 days rest, we took a local minivan to trang, enroute to ko muk, a semi-untouched (but a lot touched) island.

After extensive searching, accommodation seemed quite expensive, even though its the off season, there were only flash resorts to choose from – I really wanted to stay with some locals in their wooden shacks :(

Eventually, after walking a third of the island, a resort gave us a good deal ~$12 for a bungalow with a double bed, fan, fridge, TV, onsuite. Nothing that we needed but a lot more than we were used to. Being the only one with a sleeping bag, I was happy to volunteer to sleep on the floor, last thing I wanted to do was remember how nice it is to sleep on a really comfortable bed; conditioning is a bitch.

That night all the restaurants were closed, locals kept pointing is in the same direction, to the school where there seemed to be some kind of festival – it was to introduce 25 exchange students from Malaysia – there was much food, singing and dancing. We felt it rude to eat the food, thankfully we bumped into the owner of the hilltop cafe, she took us up to her shop on a motorbike with a side cart, over some really bad roads.

The next day we decided to hike through the island to a secluded beach on the other side, although some parts were thick, nothing compared to taman nagara – we were there before we knew it. Unfortunately the beach was full of rubbish, the weather started to get rough and we headed back quickly.

We took a ferry back to trang the next morning, having felt that there was nothing left to see on ko muk, only one nice beach and a whole bunch of resorts, the locals were great but none of them seemed to host simple accommodation.

I took a sleeper train to Bangkok while the other guys took my advice and headed for tonsai, on the coast near krabi (I was there last trip, great cheap Backpacker place, awesome for rockclimbing, good beaches).

I was on my own again, I felt the comforting breeze of independent travel. I sent out some couch requests for Bangkok.