January 12, 2006
Hello from Thailand! Yesterday we made the ride from Kota Bahru to Rantau Pajang and crossed the border into Thailand. Other than being short changed by a very fast handed money exchanger things went well. We found the train station, boarded a train for Hat Yai and on the way I read what our guide book had to say about our destination (we bought a Rough Guide this time instead of LP). It said "The resulting concrete mess, reminiscent of Bangkok without the interesting bits, attracts over a million tourists each year, nearly all of them Malaysians and Singaporeans who nip across the border to shop and get laid." Reading that, I asked Jodi if she would mind riding 25k when we arrived in Hat Yai to Songkhla where things sounded a bit more relaxed and we could resume our route up the east coast after a rest day. She liked the idea!
In Sungai Kolok, the Thai border town just across from Rantau Pajang, the station was a quiet concrete platform with about 25 to 40 people waiting for the train. At the Hat Yai train station things were moving much more quickly than either one of us would have expected. There were many more people and our 6 car train seemed more like 20 and I could not find the luggage car to claim our bicycles. I walked up and down the platform searching and frantically looking for any sign of them and when I watched the train pull away I was sure our bicycles were on their way to Bangkok Then I looked down where the lovely and talented Mrs. Roberts was standing and with her were our trusty steeds . . . Thank Goodness! Sitting with her was a farang (their word for foreigner) who was an English teacher in Laos and he was telling us how crazy we were for riding in Thailand because the traffic is quite chaotic compared to Malaysia. Just then a porter arrived asking me something in Thai and I could not understand. He became rather agitated and pulled two 20 notes from his pocket. The farang said "he wants a tip." I asked the farang "do you know what is appropriate and he said, "start low and hope he takes it." I handed the porter one of my 20's and he indicated he needed another for Jodi’s bike. I did not have one but had a 500 note. I went to get change and could not find a person to change that size of note. I remembered I had an envelope of money in my panniers and inside was another 20 note. I gave it to him and he left.
We loaded our bikes and prepared to ride. Outside the train station was a similar scene to our arrival in Bali. There were taxis everywhere and people trying to taking us places we never heard of at inflated rates. One guy said he would take us to Songkhla for 400 Baht but we had no intention of riding with anyone. We planned on riding ourselves and that is just what we did. The traffic was slow and we could keep pace with the motor scooters, so to the cars we were just another scooter. If I signaled they would let us in and when there was a traffic jam we worked the gaps to the front. It was all very easy! Just outside of town it began to rain but we kept going.
We arrived in Songkhla just before dark and we did a lap of the city to get a lay of the land and to find the locations of various types of accommodations. I approached three different types and decided on the nicest (it was a fraction of the cost of anything we stayed at in Malaysia and much nicer!).
The next day we had a nice western style breakfast and did some administrative things like; get a map and sell the Malaysia LP. Next we talked about the things we would like to do and how we will run this portion of the trip. We only have a thirty-day visa so we need to make sure we are in a place to leave the country when it expires so we can get another upon re-entering. Word of advice: Don’t pay the money for an extended visa, just make sure you get across to a border country, Malaysia, Laos or Cambodia by the date of expiry on your current visa and then come back across to get another 30 days. The exit and re-entry can be done on the same day within a couple hours. The expats living in Thailand do it all the time. They call it a "visa run". This isn’t stated very clearly in anything we read prior to coming here so we figured this is good info to pass along. Also if you come into Thailand overland like we did they don’t charge you for the visa. I read at the airports it is $60 USD per visa on arrival.
In Sungai Kolok, the Thai border town just across from Rantau Pajang, the station was a quiet concrete platform with about 25 to 40 people waiting for the train. At the Hat Yai train station things were moving much more quickly than either one of us would have expected. There were many more people and our 6 car train seemed more like 20 and I could not find the luggage car to claim our bicycles. I walked up and down the platform searching and frantically looking for any sign of them and when I watched the train pull away I was sure our bicycles were on their way to Bangkok Then I looked down where the lovely and talented Mrs. Roberts was standing and with her were our trusty steeds . . . Thank Goodness! Sitting with her was a farang (their word for foreigner) who was an English teacher in Laos and he was telling us how crazy we were for riding in Thailand because the traffic is quite chaotic compared to Malaysia. Just then a porter arrived asking me something in Thai and I could not understand. He became rather agitated and pulled two 20 notes from his pocket. The farang said "he wants a tip." I asked the farang "do you know what is appropriate and he said, "start low and hope he takes it." I handed the porter one of my 20's and he indicated he needed another for Jodi’s bike. I did not have one but had a 500 note. I went to get change and could not find a person to change that size of note. I remembered I had an envelope of money in my panniers and inside was another 20 note. I gave it to him and he left.
We loaded our bikes and prepared to ride. Outside the train station was a similar scene to our arrival in Bali. There were taxis everywhere and people trying to taking us places we never heard of at inflated rates. One guy said he would take us to Songkhla for 400 Baht but we had no intention of riding with anyone. We planned on riding ourselves and that is just what we did. The traffic was slow and we could keep pace with the motor scooters, so to the cars we were just another scooter. If I signaled they would let us in and when there was a traffic jam we worked the gaps to the front. It was all very easy! Just outside of town it began to rain but we kept going.
We arrived in Songkhla just before dark and we did a lap of the city to get a lay of the land and to find the locations of various types of accommodations. I approached three different types and decided on the nicest (it was a fraction of the cost of anything we stayed at in Malaysia and much nicer!).
The next day we had a nice western style breakfast and did some administrative things like; get a map and sell the Malaysia LP. Next we talked about the things we would like to do and how we will run this portion of the trip. We only have a thirty-day visa so we need to make sure we are in a place to leave the country when it expires so we can get another upon re-entering. Word of advice: Don’t pay the money for an extended visa, just make sure you get across to a border country, Malaysia, Laos or Cambodia by the date of expiry on your current visa and then come back across to get another 30 days. The exit and re-entry can be done on the same day within a couple hours. The expats living in Thailand do it all the time. They call it a "visa run". This isn’t stated very clearly in anything we read prior to coming here so we figured this is good info to pass along. Also if you come into Thailand overland like we did they don’t charge you for the visa. I read at the airports it is $60 USD per visa on arrival.
posted by Kirk & Jodi Roberts at 6:27 PM
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