25 June 2008 - Hat Yai to the boarder

16th June

After breakfast we headed to the train station, our train was due at 10.15am so we got there by 10am as we didn't want to miss it.

14.30, finally the train pulls up, by this time as you can imagine we are pretty fed up. We have been sat on the same seat for over 4hrs and by now we should have almost arrived at our destination. We had to keep reminding ourselves that we only paid 42 baht for the train instead of 280 for a bus so there was bound to be a reason!!

18.30, we finally arrived at the boarder town. By now we were both in foul moods as we hadn't eaten since breakfast and it had been a long day. The train journey had been pretty pleasant although the armed soldiers guarding the train brought home that there had been fairly recent troubles in this area. As we traveled further south in Thailand the Muslim influence was becoming more apparent, instead of temples and Buddhas everywhere there are mosques instead.

We walked 1km to the boarder and crossed with little hassle. All we had to do now was find a bus to take us to the city. We realised we didn't have any Malaysian currency so we went into a shop to change our left over baht up. The shop keeper pointed us in the direction of a guest house so we made our way there. Apparently the guest house was full, by this point Dan and i were at logger heads!! We were both in a fowl mood by this point as we hadn't eaten anything since breakfast and it had been a long day.

We spotted a lady selling pizzas just outside the guest house so we decided to eat before searching for somewhere to stay.

Dan spoke to a guy in a nearby 7/11 who told us to turn right and follow the road and we would find an inn. The road was pitch black and there was no path. Things weren't looking good, after about 20min walking we finally found the inn, it was pretty grim but it was the best option we had!!

We settled into the cobwebbed, dusty room that looked as though it had never been completed. I used the bathroom, and to my horror there was a HUGE spider sat right next to me on the wall. Dan has never seen me move so fast, it was grosse, it had really big eyes, body and legs and hairy was an understatement. Dan came into see what the fuss was about, his reaction was "I'm going to have to kill it as i cant sleep knowing its in there'!! With that he picked up a magazine and shut the door behind him. All i could hear was him hitting the the wall as he was trying to kill it!! I have to say i even dreamt about the spider that night and i turned the light on each time i was in the bathroom just in case!!