Into Malaysia
By longtail from Tha Gib, you follow one pathway in a network of rivers dispersing through the thick mangroves in search of the sea. With Koh Klang on your left, a collection of floating huts passes by on your right. These are the homes of those too poor to own dry land. They make a living from the hull of tiny fishing dinghies that zip across the water, bouncing on the wake of bigger boats. Beyond the fishermen’s’ huts, a group of larger vessels dwarf the houses, even the smallest of these large enough to hold any of the shacks. Behind these, a wall of mangroves lines the bank. The green is unbroken, following another path off into a curve and returning on the opposite bank. It is like a thick line of green oil pastel, drawn between sky and river, mottled and rough, but unfaltering.
You cross the main stem of Maenam Krabi, the Krabi River, to Chao Fa pier. In the morning, the tide is low, and the floating platform has a steep walkway leading up to the pier beyond. The longtail bumps and scrapes into others already tied to rotten stumps of wood. Passengers alight, rocking the boat, and head up the moist wood panelled walkway. Atop the sea wall, two waiting stations of stone seats and blue corrugated semi-cylindrical roofs seat a few islanders, waiting for ferry back to Koh Klang. To end my last journey off the island, I lugged my heavy backpack into a third waiting area, a pagoda where the boat drivers spend their time between trips.
The sky was clean and blue, with only a few whispers of high cloud creeping over the western horizon. Heat and morning mist hazed the view of the two pinnacles of rock standing as towers on either side of the river up-stream.
On the other side of a few patches of lawn dotted with low hedges and bobble-trees, runs Chao Fa road, an off-shoot of ‘Road 1’ as Nou labelled it. Along this road are a conglomerate of hotels, cafes, tour offices, trinket stands, general shops, and restaurants. The buildings range in size and upkeep, from a dirty concrete apartment building above a row of restaurants and convenience stores, to a brick-walled, tiled roof house squashed between two higher hotels with dirty cream paint peeling off their walls. On the corner of the road, a few metal tentacles of a statue stride out of the ground, glinting in the low morning sun. Across the road, a huddle of motorbike taxi men, who would always call out to us as we passed, were stood together with a traffic police officer asking them questions.
Pi Bulan, my host mother, was with me, waiting at the pier before she had to go off to school. I had learnt only days ago that she was a teacher at the school that housed the care project run by Projects Abroad, a small school in Krabi Town. When she left, I thanked her again, ‘Kop khun maah krup’, and she waied. She wandered off across the road to the motorbike taxis and hopped on one of the waiting bikes. She was gone up the hill that held Blue Juice, a guesthouse that had bedded Fiona, Natalie and I almost every weekend in between our stays on Koh Klang and our excursions elsewhere. We had become regulars, and the owner, a happy lady from Bangkok, had helped me organise my travel up to Bangkok when I lost my passport and needed to rush up to the capital for a replacement.
I looked around me. Sat in this pagoda were many of the regular boatmen who had taken us to or from the island. There was the man with a soft, dimpled face, wearing a scruffy top; the cool-dude with his short crop of hair, large sunglasses and swaying gait; another with a bunched up face and furled brows; an older man who hunched over as he hobbled; and a man with three spiky tufts of long white hair protruding so much like a cat’s whiskers from the corners of his mouth and his chin.
At 8.35 Nou pulled in to the pier on the back of a motorbike. Shortly after, I was saying goodbye and jumping into the back of a red Songtaew, Thai for ‘two rows’. This type of van is used throughout southern Thailand as a public and sometimes private bus. It is a converted yute with the back end covered and fitted with two benches, able to hold up to 12 people seated in two rows—hence the name—plus another three or four hanging out the back. We had used one like this each day to go to school, private transport arranged by Projects Abroad. I had also used the public one both travelling to and from Ao Nang and to the Bus Terminal and back. With just me sat in the back it was spacious, but with eleven others and their bags of shopping, the space becomes cramped and, on a hot day—every day, basically—stuffy. The van took me to Krabi Bus Terminal where I bought a ticket to Hat Yai and ten minutes later I was waiting on my bus.
It was no VIP, but the seats in front of mine had been ripped out, so I had plenty of leg-room. The journey to Hat Yai takes four hours by public or government bus—my preference over the tourist buses for safety and novelty: I was the only foreigner on that bus—and stops at a small service station half way. I bought a bag of watermelon and a bag of pineapple for 20B a piece. Another perk of taking the public bus is that it takes you to fooderies untouched by the tourist-influence price-doubling elsewhere in Thailand. The fruit bags came with a little sachet of sugar granules mixed with flakes of bright red: chilli sugar. I tasted a pinch with a piece of watermelon and, though I wouldn’t have it all the time, it didn’t taste too bad. The kick from the chilli came at the same time as the refreshing sweetness of the watermelon juice. Interesting.
At Hat Yai, I was bombarded by taxi drivers and bus hailers, trying to find out where I was going, how I was getting there, and if I wanted a ticket for that. I pushed through, approaching instead a counter. I knew it couldn’t take me to Kuala Lumpur, but I thought the woman behind it might be able to help me. She directed me back to one of the pushy taxi drivers, who pointed across the street. The lady at this new desk was unhelpful and refused to keep my eye contact for longer than a few words. Struggling to communicate with her, I found out only that the bus went to Kuala Lumpur. Good enough for me.
I walked off for lunch around the corner down a side street, soi 21. I arrived at a small establishment with no Enlglish menu. The sole cook and owner understood ‘fried rice’ and ‘chicken’, but not much else, so I was soon chow downing on a hefty plate of that.
I spent the next three hours in the tour operator’s waiting room, biding the time until 5.45pm when another Songtauw pulled up outside and the man now behind the counter waved me over to it. Inside sat an Indian, a Pakistani, a Kashmiri, and two Malays. Others hopped on as we drove a little through Hat Yai. They were complaining about the lack of English speakers in this area, the Kashmiri describing how he had used a cigarette and a lighter to demonstrate his request in a sort of role-play puppet show when using English had failed. He asked me what was so great about Krabi—he had been in Phuket, a more tourist orientated area—and I told him about teaching English at a school through Projects Abroad.
“We need more people like you here,” he proclaimed, “there’s not even a sign in English around here. It’s all squiggly lines.”
The others chuckled.
At the central office of our bus company, a secretary checked my passport and filled out my Thai immigration form. I waited a further forty-five minutes before our bus turned up. It was a luxurious bus with wide, cushioned chairs that leant back generously. For the 590B I paid, I was surprised. I had half expected a forty-plus seat bus with no reclining and little leg-room.
At the border an hour later, it was barely ten minutes more before I walked out the other side into Malaysia, ready to board the bus again with my passport stamped. It seemed we were the only ones there, with our sixteen passengers filtered amongst four or five booths. They scanned our luggage but there was no metal detector and I saw no screen on which to see the x-ray. After the stress and waiting at the Cambodian border, I expected more. Not that I was complaining though. Happy to have the ordeal of entering a country with an emergency passport turn out to be non-existent, I settled down on the bus again and awaited my first Malay meal.
As we drove into Malaysia, we passed a military checkpoint. One of the soldiers peeked into our luggage compartment, without a torch (it was very dark outside), and headed back to a nearby shelter where his friends were lounging on benches, enjoying a cigarette.
On the road, it was nice to see signs and billboards in jumbled English. I couldn’t understand a word, but at least I could copy the writing with ease should the desire arise. They use the English alphabet here, making a nice change to the scribbles of Bangla, the peaks and curves of Khmer, and the exotic tendrils of Thai.
Nine o’clock in the evening and we pulled up at a food court. It was almost empty and many of the stalls had already closed up. Those left open had trays of oily curry, fried chicken and wrapped rotis on display. I ordered a few different dishes with rice. For the equivalent of £1.40 I got a mound of food. And there I was worrying that Malaysia was going to be expensive. After dinner, I ventured to the toilet to brush my teeth. Down a colonnaded path stood the toilet block. A row of urinals opposite a row of cubicles on the other side of a row of sinks. The place was spotless and derelict, and smelt of cleaning fluid, a nice change to the rotting sewage smell of most Thai toilets. Soon after, I was back on the bus, ready for some rest and preparing myself to wake up in Kuala Lumpur with no itinerary other than a train to catch at 11.30pm the same night.