Travelogue 2023/4 Satun (Thailand) - Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)

Satun

We stayed for two weeks in Satun, that small town in a remote corner of south Thailand. This time it started less quiet and dusty than we were used to. The 27th Master Athletics Games were being held here, with participants from 13 countries - mainly Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Iran. For that, a grand night market had been set up with countless food stalls - nice - and a stage with loud music that blared through the whole city until late at night - not so nice.

During the first week, we shared our resort with 22 civil servants who had come from Bangkok to issue passports. Our receptionist had only just managed to keep a cabin for us. It was a young group who chatted very quietly in the evening before going to bed early.

There were also more foreign tourists in Satun than in previous years. Up to 10 a day. Because the boat to Langkawi only went once a day now, people from eg Krabi had to spend the night here instead of being able to continue the same day.

It didn't matter to us, we had wonderful days, where our main concern was where to drink coffee and where to eat.

There was no sleeping in, from half past six there was a concert of birds trying to drown each other out. One with bright melodies, the other with screams.

We took morning walks through a spooky mangrove forest, where crabs and mudskippers moved through the mud of tidal streams when the tide went out. We walked through the countryside with plantations of rubber trees and oil palm trees. We passed karst rock formations where monkeys were swinging between the trees.

Other mornings we had a choice of several nice coffee shops. Only the opening times were quite irregular so more than once we stood in front of a closed door.

For lunch we usually went to one of the two vegan lunch restaurants: Chinese buffet with lots of tofu and seitan dishes.

Twice a local friend took us out for lunch. Then we were picked up by a car with a driver and came to restaurants where we would not have been able to order something vegetarian on our own. Really something different.

In the afternoon we sat on our porch or by the pool. No shortage of animals there either. In addition to the various house cats, there were squirrels, iguanas, birds of prey, lapwings, sparrows and butterflies. A little further on was a large bright blue bird, not a kingfisher, but what was it?

At half past six the sun set and from the distance came the sound of several mosques, just out of sync. It seemed as if they were singing a quadrophonic canon. Moments later, the sound of thousands of crickets and a few frogs with deep bass voices began.

We cooked dinner at home a few times, in the kitchen of our resort. But my favorite restaurant is a curry restaurant where the waitress recognized us after three years, and even knew what my favorite dish was.

That was typical of the many heartwarming friendly smiley Thai we met.

From Satun to KL

In the last 8 years we have crossed the Thai-Malaysian border 6 times. Each time in a different place or with a different mode of transport. A new border crossing could still be added to the list.

The first stage was a very short one (as we also started with short stages in Kerala) of 40 km to the Thale Ban National Park. There we stayed in a beautiful spot in the shadow of the huge wall of a karst mountain. A stream with some waterfalls ran through the garden. In the garden there were coffee plants that had grown into trees and then had been cut back. The flowers smelled wonderfully sweet.

The owner had arranged a car for the next day to take us across the border. The car had both Thai and Malaysian license plates; the driver spoke both Thai and Malay, and he knew just about every border official and police officer we met along the way (and there were quite a few, but they were all equally cheerful and friendly).

We crossed the border at Wang Prachan, and were dropped off 20km further at Padang Besar station. There we took a slow train south. The local trains also run quite fast here, up to 120 km/h. But after fifteen minutes we heard a few loud bangs and the lights and air conditioning went out for a while. After that we barely trudged through the beautiful landscape at a walking pace. We missed our transfer and ended up arriving in Taiping two hours late. There had just been a tropical downpour. All we could do was looking for our hotel (which we still knew from 8 years ago, and luckily they still had room) and getting a bite to eat.

The next day all trains to Kuala Lumpur were already fully booked, so we had to take the bus. Unlike the train stations, the bus stations are located way out of town, so we lost a lot of time with pre- and post-transport. The bus itself was spacious and comfortable and took a nice route through the mountains.

All in all, it had been a couple of long and tiring travel days. But luckily we still had four days in Kuala Lumpur to recover. The pleasant hotel room with a rooftop swimming pool did help. So we had plenty of opportunity to enjoy the excellent coffee and food, and to explore hidden backstreets in this mega-city.

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How the journey began: Amsterdam-Dubai-Mangalore-Kuala Lumpur by lowcost carrier and narrow-body

How we got to Satun: The Jungle Railway (MY) and Pattani Sultanate (TH), by train  

Practical information about Satun: Lily's Mini Travel Guide | Satun, Thailand | Border crossings Malaysia - Thailand

Travelogue 2023/3 The Jungle Railway (Malaysia) and Pattani Sultanate (Thailand), by train

The Jungle Train

The main railway from Singapore to Bangkok runs along the west coast of Malaysia. But there is a branch that takes a more central and eastern route. It branches off at Gemas and rejoins the main line in Hat Yai (in the south of Thailand). At the time of construction, this was still largely jungle, hence the nickname. The center and east is still the less developed and more conservative part of the Malaysian Peninsula.

Gemas

Gemas is a small provincial town with three x three blocks of shops. Cars drive around all the time, hardly anyone walks here. Yet there was a decent hotel and a vegetarian restaurant - only open for lunch, but they were willing to cook something for us. We saw the most extraordinary phenomena when we took an evening stroll: thousands and thousands of swallows had perched on every telephone and electricity cable that hung over the road, and also on many edges of facades. Always at exactly 15 cm distance from each other. In the twilight you saw all those little black balls with a white belly sitting next to each other. Fascinating.

The first stage was to Kuala Lipis, about 275 km in 5 hours. This railway line was recently refurbished, and new a/c trains were running. Still diesel, still single track.

With about 60 km/h we drove through a green world. Many rubber and palm oil plantations, some neglected. In between were plots where nature immediately blossomed. Streams with swirling brown water, and pieces of flooded land. The rainy season had just ended. ...nearly endless palm plantations... Sometimes on both sides so close to the track that the branches touched the train. It seemed as if you were actually inside the plantation, as if you were walking under the palm trees.

Kuala Lipis

Kuala Lipis once was a gold mining town. And the old center still has a wild-west feel. The British made it the capital of the state/sultanate around 1900. When the railway line came to town in 1922, development took a leap and a handful of colonial buildings were built: railway station, British residence and state mosque. And a row of stone houses in the main street between the station and the river - in your mind's eye you can still see the cowboys and covered wagons driving through.

After independence, the capital moved to the coast and Kuala Lipis became less important. Urban expansions look very unplanned: separate areas where a mall and houses are built, at a considerable distance from each other.

We walked around a bit. Along some roads lay a narrow strip of jungle. One step into the jungle and it is dark, uneven, the soil full of smelly decomposing organic material, and the noise of a thousand of insects. Two steps into the jungle and you risk getting lost.

The second stage was to Gua Musang, about 75 km in 2 hours.

Still plantations along the way, but more and more wild green in between.

In the last stretch, straight karst mountains appeared in the landscape, with bare steep rocky sides, sometimes sloping slightly forward, bushes and trees in cracks and on top.

Gua Musang

Gua Musang has almost the same layout as Kuala Lipis. Three old streets between the station and the river, and new neighborhoods at a considerable distance from each other, all geared towards car traffic. Only the colonial buildings are missing. Instead you have the karst mountains that rise vertically, a dominant one right behind the station.

On the platform of the old train station we turned right, heading south. At the end of the platform, we went down the stairs and crossed the railway. A path led into a very small kampong of shabby wooden houses. It almost seemed deserted, but there were some children milling around, watching us shyly. We followed the path between the houses, also in a southerly direction. We crossed a stream via a narrow concrete dam. Shortly after that we turned left and crossed the stream again via a slightly larger concrete dam. I thought it was too narrow, until I found a stick to keep my balance. Now we were just 10 meters from the rock wall, with a jagged edge of jungle in front of it. There was a sort of path leading up between the gigantic trees. With the help of ropes you could go further up. Immediately surrounded by huge leaves and fallen branches. There was a ladder that you could climb to go into a cave. But we didn't. This was already a beautiful piece of jungle walk, however small and short.

⇒ If you want to make this walk, make sure to assess the risks.

Early in the morning for the third leg of the Jungle Railway, we boarded the night train that had left the Malaysian-Singapore border the night before. This was an older train that wobbled and rattled more. We wanted to have breakfast in the dining car, but the toast had already run out. It was still too early for fried rice, moreover it was not vegetarian. So we enjoyed the view with a cup of coffee. The landscape with the rising sun and rising morning mist was beautiful.

We rode out of the mountains and into the flat delta. Suddenly we were riding between green rice fields. After 5 hours and 200 km we reached Kota Bharu, a big city. Heart of the conservative Islamic northeast. You saw many facades inspired by Arabic motifs. Malay, Chinese and Arabic were the most commonly used languages ​​on facades and signposts, while English and Tamil had receded into the background.

It took a day for the city to unveil its charms to us. There were still pieces of old kampong between ugly high-rise buildings. Some houses were old and dilapidated, others still looked well maintained. It was wonderfully quiet and peaceful. A few houses must have been villas in their day: large, beautifully designed, with hexagonal extensions and verandas. Now sadly somewhat neglected. They would just be salvageable if someone would pay attention to them now. But a little further on their fate had already been announced: new houses.

Pattani, in the deep south of Thailand

From Kota Bharu we entered Thailand. Trains no longer run on this stretch of railway line, so we had to take the bus for an hour. The border was a classic: first the formalities to leave Malaysia. Then walk through no man's land  across the border river, parallel to the unused railway bridge. Then get the forms and stamps to enter Thailand.

In Sungai Kolok we got back on the train, to Yala (120 km in 2 hours).

⇒ If you want to take this train, make sure to assess the risks.

For centuries, Pattani was one of the Malay sultanates. Its heyday was in the 16th century. In the 18th century it was conquered by Thailand. For a long time it remained Thai in name but actually independent. At the beginning of the 20th century it was divided by England and Thailand into a Thai and a Malay part. On the west side, Thailand also gained Satun, and it gave up its claims on other sultanates - which became part of British-occupied territory and later Malaysia. This was a treaty between England and Thailand, the Malaysian sultanates who were involved had nothing to say.

Thailand introduced Thaiification programs in the part allocated to them, which did not go down well and resistance movements arose that wanted autonomy, especially in the former Pattani. At the beginning of the 21st century, they were taken over by ISIS-like groups that want to establish an Islamic Caliphate, have become more violent and aim for chaos and lawlessness, in which their criminal activities flourish. They are now also turning against the local population because they consider them not strict enough in their observance of islam. Police officers and posts, Buddhist monks and monasteries, teachers and schools, and trains and railway lines are particularly targeted by attacks.

Despite that, daily life is generally quiet. It is a pity that the official travel advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is "red", which only further isolates the area. Red here cannot be compared to the red for Syria or Afghanistan, for example. As an outsider, only the heavily armed soldiers who travel on the train stand out. (*)

We had been following the local news closely for a while. Currently, it seemed relatively quiet and safe for foreigners to travel through Pattani. We made two train journeys with a stopover in Yala.

 

Yala

Yala is a vast, quiet, green city. There is a large district with all provincial institutions, built in circles around the city pillar. The roads are quiet and wide and lined with trees. The spacious layout means you have to walk quite a distance to get around.

The city pillar is located in a temple in the middle of a round park with fish ponds. Feeding fish is popular, and the fish will swim towards you as soon as you stop on the bank. Hundreds of mouths snap above the water. The rear fish push so hard that the front ones are lifted above the surface.

Bells hang from the temple and tinkle softly in the wind. Inside, a few people are doing puja. Pieces of gold leaf flutter from the statue of a monk.

Everything looks peaceful and quiet. Muslims also feed the fish, even though it is a Buddhist tradition. And from under a headscarf the big, warm Thai smile radiates just as bright.

From Yala we took the train to Hat Yai (another 120 km in 2 hours), where the eastern branch rejoins the main line from Singapore to Bangkok.

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(*) 6 weeks later the Dutch government changes the travel advice from “red” to “orange”. But throughout 2023 there were still quit a number of attacks and bombings on police posts and the like. 

How the journey began: Amsterdam-Dubai-Mangalore-Kuala Lumpur by lowcost carrier and narrow-body

How the journey continued: Satun (TH) - Kuala Lumpur (MY)

Practical tips to make this trip: Lily's Mini Travel Guide

Travelogue 2023/1 Amsterdam-Dubai-Mangalore-Kuala Lumpur by lowcost carrier and narrow-body

From Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with one-way tickets booked separately, with low-cost airlines, with small planes? Yes, you can, with stops in Dubai and small airports in South India.

Amsterdam-Dubai

A one-way ticket to Dubai with Transavia was so cheap that we didn’t mind the early departure. Although I wasn't so sure about that when we were waiting at the gate at 5AM. We had spent the past 1½ hours looking for security and immigration counters that were open. It makes sense that not everything is open at night, but there could have been better signage...

It was strange, flying for 7 hours in a narrow body aircraft without service. But the staff was very friendly and everything went fine. We just had not expected to be dropped off at a low-cost terminal in Dubai. Kind of an old shed. No metro here, as in the shiny terminal across the tarmac. It took a while to find out how to take the bus into the city, but in the end that worked out well.

At dusk we walked the last bit to our hotel.

Deira

We concentrated on Deira, the old town on the north side of the creek. Well, not all was old, our hotel was at the site where the fish market used to be.

Across a major road was the Gold Souk, which is a maze of ancient streets and lanes.

You have the hypermodern Dubai with skyscrapers and shiny malls. You have the new construction like in our neighborhood, which is quite tasteful. You have the 60s-80s buildings along the main streets in the old city, ugly concrete buildings of 3 to 4 floors that contain all those gold shops. And you have the small alleys behind them where they forgot to demolish the houses from the time they used mud as a construction material.

We walked a bit along the gold shops that were on the tourist route, where you were constantly harassed, and then entered the smaller streets of the perfume market and the textile market. It was very pleasant and peaceful there. We were admiring the colorful dresses in a shopwindow when a lady approached us and said that this was a great store. Under her black robe you could see the edge of such a colorful dress. When I made a remark about that, she opened her black robe wide to allow herself to be admired.

In the area in and around the Gold Souk, most residents, shopkeepers, restaurant staff and gold traders are from Kerala. We got talking to a salesman who came from Kasargod - the first town in Kerala that we want to visit. We immediately got his cousin's phone number.

All in all it was a nice trip around the back of the Gold Souk.

The great thing about Dubai is the mishmash of half the world you see. Tourists from half the world, workers from half the world, everyone with their own clothes and their own habits. An Arab lady all covered in black; a Philipina in shorts and a tank top; a stout lady in an African dress; a Russian with too flashy clothes and too much make-up and too bleached hair.

Food is also available from all over the world, we ate Indian and Iraqi.

Dubai-Mangalore

For this route we had bought a one-way ticket from Air India Express. It was only a three-hour flight, again with a 737, but due to time difference and delays, we arrived in Mangalore at 6PM. It took a very long time before we could enter the country. Not because of bad will, but because of ignorance. It seemed that so few foreigners entered the country here that the officials were unfamiliar with the procedures and the equipment.

Once in the city and in our hotel, we were a bit overwhelmed by the huge transition from organized Dubai to the total chaos of India. After six years we had forgotten how dirty everything is, how everything once broken, stays broken, how big the holes are in the road and that there are even bigger holes next to the road, how you are constantly submerged in noise and air pollution. Mangalore seemed to have all the lesser sides of India, without the mysticism of Junagadh for example or the atmosphere of a city like Mysore.

Mangalore

The next day we were able to discover a few gems in Mangalore.

In the morning we walked through the oldest district, where it was very busy with carts and lorries loading and unloading goods in the narrow streets, to the river. We took a ferry to the other side. There was a long and narrow peninsula between the river and the Arabian Sea. It had a village feel, there were more cows, goats and cats on the street than cars, and the houses seemed to be built on dune sand. We zigzagged through narrow alleyways until we reached the beach: miles of white sand. Birds and fishermen hunted for fish.

In the evening we visited the third oldest mosque in India, almost 1400 years old. Built in the year 22 of the Islamic era, only 5 years after the death of the Prophet. This could happen so quickly because of the existing trade routes between Arabia and the Malabar coast. The oldest wooden part was somewhat hidden behind a newer hall. An old man said that women were not allowed to go to the back. But when I got there and got talking to some of the elders, they were okay with me to go and fetch E. She made an impression by knowing the name of the father of the sultan who renovated the mosque. Together we admired the ancient architecture and lavish carvings. Very impressive.

Trichy-Kuala Lumpur

We traveled by train and bus from Mangalore to Trichy (*).

We had selected the flight from Trichy to Kuala Lumpur with AirAsia because it was a day-time flight. But after our booking it was canceled and we were transferred to a night flight. The small airport of Trichy was easy to reach, quiet and well-managed. It had as many flights to Dubai, Singapore and Kuala Lumpar as to Indian cities. On board the Airbus 320, another narrow-body, the East Asian flight attendants caught the eye. And the uncomfortable chairs. Suddenly four hours of flying was a long time. Of the three flights, this was by far the least comfortable.

It was an interesting experience: with one-way tickets booked separately, with low-cost airlines, with small planes from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. All in all a successful experiment.

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(*) How we traveled onwards from Mangalore: North Kerala Coast by train

How we traveled onwards from Kuala Lumpur: The Jungle Railway (MY) and Pattani Sultanate (TH), by train

Travelogue 2018/3, On familiar grounds (Penang & Satun) (Malaysia & Thailand)

Penang, Malaysia

 

We stayed 6 days on Penang, Malaysia. We’ve been here before and again we enjoyed the great facilities and the variety in cultures. We paid tribute to all three population groups.

We visited a large Chinese temple in the mountains, a mix between a building site and an amusement park.

We visited the floating mosque, a mosque built on stilts over the sea. It was a  peaceful and serene place.

Everyday we visited Little India for a touch of the real India. The sari shops,  Bollywood music blaring from the dvd shops,  grocery stores with all Indian ingredients and spices, ladies in sari and jeans walking hand in hand, restaurants where the food is better than anywhere in India.

An inherent part of Penang’s history is its colonial past. We visited a guided tour around the Protestants cemetery. There were 15 people listening to the funny and knowledge guide. Lots of little stories about Penang’s history and its inhabitants. One of them was the Scottish lawyer James Richardson Logan, who invented the name Indonesia, as he believed its people had the right to have a name that was not made up by or connected with its Dutch colonizers. It wouldn’t be until early 20^th century that “Indonesia” was picked up by the independent movement. And so Indonesia stays with us this trip, just like India.

Penang was as cloudy as Sumatra, but much warmer, in the low 30s. Two and three years ago we saw nothing but blue skies here.

Satun, Thailand

This was the fifth time I went from Penang to Thailand. And again I found a new route and a new transport mode. This time it was the super fast ferry via Langkawi. Despite the long wait on Langkawi it was an easy and relaxed route.

As soon as we arrived in Satun, walking to the hotel, we looked for things we recognized, things that were new, things that had changed, things that were gone. Considering the dusty old town it was, surprisingly much had changed. Fortunately not in our hotel. That was as pleasant, quiet and comfortable as we knew it.

Qatari, Indonesians and Malaysians have almost always been very friendly and helpful to us. But the radiant heartiness of the Thai exceeds it all. The famous  Thai smile still is a joy to see.

We were often called at and greeted by passers by. Sometimes when they were on a bike. Like these three young people on one bike, shouting “hello”. We cheerfully waved back at them. The two girls on the backseat did the Thai greeting with hands folded in front of the chest while making a small bow. And they did so in perfect synch. On the back of the moving bike.

As far as understanding goes, it is the opposite. Very few signs are in English and English is hardly spoken. It takes a lot of sign language.

Our favorite lunch restaurant was gone. A search around the new, relocated market was in vain. We inquired with the neighbors of the shed where it used to be, with a picture of the woman, pointing at the former place, and looking puzzled. After some talk amongst themselves we were put on the back of a motorbike and driven to the new location!

Our friends in Satun, the owner of the hotel, the lady of the restaurant, the girl of our favorite coffee shop (who worked somewhere else now) all looked very pleased to see us and they all gave us food.

And so we enjoy having a coffee on our veranda, taking a walk in the countryside or the mangrove forest, cooling down by the pool, reading a book, eating a delicious Thai curry.

At last the skies turned blue and sunny and it got seriously hot. We were lucky to have a clear sky during the lunar eclipse. We saw the shadow of the earth slowly cover the moon that got more and more red, more and more round (in the 3d sense) and in the end looked like a semi-see-through egg with the rabbit inside.

PS Preview of the upcoming Satun info sheet *link*

Satun is a small provincial capital in the far southwest corner of Thailand. It has a definite end-of-the-road feel to it. A dusty little town where nothing ever happens. On the surface.

8km further south is the port and jetty of Tammalang. It has ferries to Langkawi and Koh Lipe, but for neither island this is the main gateway. So Satun sees very few tourists passing through. You may see some people living in Malaysia on a visa run or having their yacht maintained at the wharf. And there’s a hand full of western men living here with their Thai wife.

Satun is part of the Islamic south of Thailand, that used to be part of the Kedah Sultanate, until that was divided up between Thailand and then British Malaysia. Satun has none of the troubles the other (southeastern) Thai provinces have. It is largely Muslim but with a strong Thai influence. People speak more Thai and Malay than English.

The Rohingya: A people hidden in the jungle

Visiting the Thai-Malaysian border

This was real jungle with lots of trees that sprouted up to 50 meters straight up to catch a little light where their crown expanded. Thick lianas and parasitic plants growing around it. Withered leaves of half a meter mixed with bright red leaves covered the ground.

The trail was held in place by shallow roots, except for a stretch that was washed down, where we had to climb. There the vines and roots came in handy to hold on to. Traces of wild boar, thorny rattan, large butterflies, loud high-pitched chirping of insects - the forest was full of them.

We walked along a path through the Thale Ban National Park in the far southwestern corner of Thailand. According to the sign this was an evermoist forest, almost but not quite as impenetrable as the tropical rain forest that we had seen further south in Malaysia. This was an inhospitable area of swamps, mountains and jungle. That's why we had crossed the border with a cargo boat on the Andaman Sea.

But now we were near the only land border in the region, a small road with little traffic and certainly no public transport. The last 20 kilometres we had hitch-hiked with a border guard in uniform, in a big pick-up truck on his way to work. The National Park was two kilometres from the border with nothing but jungle between.

It was shocking, but not unimaginable, when we read in the newspaper a few months later that exactly here they discovered secret refugee camps where Rohingyas had been detained, extorted by traffickers and left for dead.

The boat people, refugees

Thailand and Myanmar share a long border, and some 150.000 Karen have been stuck for 30 years in refugee camps just across the border in Thailand, 1500 kilometres to the north. They are now a major destination for cultural visits and volunteer work by Western tourists. In contrast the Rohingya from western Myanmar are virtually unknown. They are not accepted because their religion is different from the majority, the Buddhists. They cannot flee over the border with Thailand through the jungle, but need to sail across the Andaman Sea. Their goal is Malaysia, where Muslims are the majority. But often their boats land in southern Thailand, where on their way to Malaysia they fall into the hands of human traffickers.

At open sea, their boats were chased or towed away by the Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian coast guard. In May 2015 the case received so much international attention that Malaysia decided to allow them in temporarily.

Visiting Rakhine state

We were especially touched by this case since seven years ago we were in Rakhine, the Myanmar region where the Rohingya come from. For a short time the area was accessible when Myanmar was just beginning to be more open and the regime sought rapprochement with the opposition and the world. But soon a new domestic conflict was sought and found in this minority. Although they have lived in Rakhine for many generations or centuries, partly descendants of Persian and Arab traders, partly migrants within what was one British colony in the 19th century, they are now seen as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Looking back, it is astonishing that at that time we did not recognize the region as Islamic. Apparently they already had to keep a low profile. The streets of Sittwe were dominated by monks, nuns and temples. The scarce tourist did not bring prosperity to Mrauk U, which was clearly a dead poor corner of the country. Cell phones had no cover in Sittwe, Mrauk U did not even have a land line with the rest of the world.

Mrauk U was an ancient capital of a 16th century empire that stretched over parts of present Bangladesh (whose proximity was illustrated by imported cookies in the store) and the current Rakhine State. There were a lot of temples and pagodas of that time left, located half way between the village and the fields, sometimes dilapidated and overgrown. Again and again you'd see another temple on a hill or around the corner. The setting alone was stunning, but the chedis themselves were also beautiful.

We walked around, occasionally accompanied by groups of children who should have been at school. Further away from the village there were no more children shouting "bye bye" or calling after you, but vast fields and women who walked with baskets on their heads. There wasn't a meter of paved street, not a wall of stone. All was wood and bamboo and dirt yards.

A bizarre circle

This last paragraph of my 2008 travel diary, and the paragraph from my 2015 travel diary this piece started with, join a bizarre circle around two places that we visited in ignorance, and then briefly made the world news. Only to be forgotten again.

Amsterdam, May-July 2015, June 2016

Travelogue 2015, week 5-6: The Crossing (Malaysia - Thailand)

The Far North

The Thai Phusam festival is celebrated much more vigorously in Malaysia than it is in India. Our hotel was fully booked and we had to leave the final day of January. The tourist trail would be the ferry from Penang to Langkawi, and from Langkawi to southern Thailand. The business route would be the highway to Hat Yai, the central city of the peninsula, in the area advised against by the Foreign Office. But we preferred to stay as close as possible to the west coast of the peninsula anyway. That’s how we ended up in Alor Setar, way off the beaten track.

Alor Star is a city in limbo. In some ways it is a large village, with stray dogs instead of cats, plots of green waste land, detached wooden houses on the approach roads. At the same time huge buildings are constructed, like the second highest telecom tower of the country (actually very stylish) and the ugliest concrete shopping malls and parking garages. It was poignant to see how the immigrant labourers lived, in shanty camps of corrugated sheets.

When we approached Alor Setar in the bus, we saw a blue dome over the skyline, with typical Iranian tiles that are uncommon here. No Iranian mosque was mentioned in the travel guide, and we couldn’t find it, until I looked for “blue tiled dome” and found the website of the company that designed it for a rich local business man. The design was inspired on Iranian mosques and the ultimate version thereof: Samarkand. They had flown in Iranian materials and Iranian craftsmen to build it.

We had to take a taxi to get there. The place was surprisingly big for what a private person built. Two wings from the main building created a fore square with fountains. The white mosque with the blue tiled domes was impressive indeed.  It was in the details, like the carpet, chandeliers, woodwork and floor tiling that you saw it had not had unlimited funds like say the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi.

It was most interesting to walk around this deserted place – it was a Sunday morning, and here the weekend was Friday – Saturday.

The Crossing

All started well. We hauled a taxi to the bus terminal and got on a bus to Kangar. It was a medium sized bus taking the country road. Long straight roads along canals with rice fields in the background. We made good progress, not stopping for boarding or disembarking passengers.

At Kangar bus terminal we inquired for a connection to Kuala Perlis, where boats to Thailand should leave. No busses, they told us. It turned out: no busses here, but they departed from a parking garage underneath a shopping mall in another part of town. That sounded too unsure, so we took another taxi. That dropped us in front of the customs building in Kuala Perlis. Classic: you had to go through immigration in the building to get to a fenced off part of the quay.

The officer would not stamp our passports: he said we’d have to find a boat first. Outside were four wooden cargo ships (about 2x12 meters in size). One of them was being loaded with large bags of rice or wheat. We gestured to the loader. Yes, he’d go to Thailand. No, he wouldn’t take us, he was cargo.

The other boats were idling. After a while a guy showed up who spoke some English. He yelled to a man aboard one of the idling boats. Yeah, he’d go to Thailand if the boat would fill up with passengers. Or if we’d charter it. The price for that was a bit steep though.

Slowly it dawned on us there was no (longer a) regular service from here to Thailand. Neither was there a stream or even a trickle of tourists or locals using this route. We started to wonder whether this would work out…

Obviously, nothing was happening any time soon at our quay, so we walked balk into town and found a place where we could get some lunch. And consider our options. It didn’t look like the boat would fill up with passengers.  Back to Kangar would be a gamble too. The only overland road this part of the peninsula went through a salt water swamp and national park, and it wasn’t clear whether there would be traffic, let alone a bus or a minivan.

Best choice would be to charter the boat. But we didn’t have enough money for that, and we had already discovered not all, not at all, ATM’s are linked to the same network as the Dutch banks. And this small town seemed to have two ATM’s only. But we were lucky: one of them did the trick and we had money in our pockets.

Back to the quay. Now it was totally deserted. All boats were gone. Nothing happened…

A little further downstream I could see another quay with boats similar to the ones that had been at ours earlier. But that was there and we were here. I decided to have a look. I could leave our custom’s area through a back gate. Through some cargo shed I got to the other quay. There was not a lot happening either, but there were boats and one of them was being loaded with insulated fish storage boxes. A guy who spoke some English came to my help. He shouted to the guys on the boat. After a while the conclusion was they were willing to take us.

We went and got our exit stamp. Then via the quay and the back gate back into the country, through the cargo shed and via another wooden boat onto ours. We climbed into the wheelhouse, well, it was more a wooden dashboard built around a car steering wheel that was connected by a long axis with the diesel engine in the hold. The captain sort of knelt around it and off we went. First slowly out of the river, then faster into the open water. The Andaman Sea. We had a strong headwind and white foam capped the waves. As long as we had a steady speed, the boat was stable. Whenever the captain turned the gas down, we wobbled and swayed. No fun. In the distance we saw Langkawi’s silhouette and closer by some smaller islets of lime stone rock covered with jungle.

After an hour in the deafening noise and exhaust fumes we reached land. In a river mouth a concrete jetty held two large ferries. We were dropped off at the foot of some steps leading up. Some forms, photos, passports, stamps – and we had entered Thailand. The terminal was a more serious business here, because it had ferries to Langkawi, ticket counters, shops, dual time clocks and an exchange bureau. We changed our ringgit for baht, so we had some pocket money.

Taxi and motor-taxi drivers told us there was no transport into town. Soon enough they were proven wrong, when a songtauw pulled up. That is a pick up truck with two benches in the back, usually riding fixed routes. This one had a lot of cargo in the back that it had to drop first at another, smaller jetty 1km upstream. Here were some cargo vessels similar to the one we had arrived on. After the drop he took us into Satun town. We had a spectacular view over fields, a river, a huge rock forming a mountain, the same way these lime rocks form islands in the sea.

At had been 8 hours, very exciting at times, and we had to recover from it all.

The Deep South

We had dinner next door. No vegetarian dish on the menu, the waitress spoke no English, miscommunication between staff and management – welcome to Thailand. Still we managed to get a decent green curry.

We sat outdoors and watched Satun go by. It really had an end-of-the-road or frontier-town feel to it. There was no through traffic as there was just one road connecting Satun to the rest of Thailand. The deep south has a Muslim majority, and we saw more headscarves here than in Alor Setar. The Malasian people had been very friendly and helpful enough. Over here t was more laid back and everybody radiated that legendary Thai smile.


The Gleam Resort has ten bungalows in a neatly kept garden with a swimming pool at the end. The rooms are well designed and maintained. It is immaculately clean, the room is pleasant and the bed is big and soft. The veranda has a couch made of an opened up oil drum. Decoration is inspired on America in the ‘50’s and yaughting.

The place was very quiet. In the middle of the night there was absolutely no sound at all – no dogs, no church bells, no traffic, no generator, no a/c, no nothing. Call to prayer was the first sound in the morning, followed by early birds and crickets.

This was one of the most beautiful places I ever stayed. Sure, some hotels have better equipped rooms, but they are less tasteful. Some resorts are surrounded by spectacular nature, but they are too isolated. Some places may have both, but they would be so expensive we wouldn’t feel at home.

It was so comfortable, so green, so quiet – and yet so close to town you didn’t feel locked in. You could just walk into town for lunch or a shop. And that town was pure Thai, with just the occasional foreigner.

It was doubtful we’d find a place as good as this further north, especially since it would only get more touristy, and that is usually not to our liking. So we decided to stay longer. Much longer.

Some mornings we’d take a walk into town or into the surrounding countryside. The most spectacular walk took us into mangrove forest, just a km from home, and beyond some fish ponds to a small hamlet.

Lunch we had daily in a small veg restaurant. Every Thai town has one, but it can be hard to find. First, to get across the question, given we don’t speak Thai. Second, not many people know it. Third, to understand the answer, given they don’t speak English. Fourth, to actually see it even when you stand in front of it. This was a tiny place in the corner of a shed. What gave it away was the red letters on yellow background. They always have those. The food was delicious, varied, healthy and dead cheap.

For coffee we had our regular spot too. A small bamboo take-away stall with a young woman hidden behind the counter. It was a delight to see with how much care and attention she prepared every order. A spoonful of this, a dash of that, stirring, mixing, pouring it into a huge cup or bag filled with ice, packaging it in a paper bag. She wasn’t very talkative. Below her gleaming scarf she had thick painted eyebrows and eyelashes black as night.

Afternoons we’d sit by the pool and read. By now the skies were blue and it was about 33 degrees. Celcius.

For dinner we alternated between home and town. The food wasn’t as superb as in Malaysia, and ordering could be difficult, but all in all we were quite happy with it.

Some night we went to an open air pub that had a stage and a house band. They were pretty good. The singer liked to do covers of Western songs, from The Carpenters to Adele – not easy. She was accompanied by a guitar player and a percussionist. And then there were five staff, whose main task was to fill up our glasses with coke and ice cubes from the side table. So there were us two, the three musicians and the five staff…