Sam & Pete Hit the road

went to penang – lazy days – non event.

So we rocked across the border from Malaysia to Thailand without any problems. Didnt get shot and didnt get locked up which is always nice. Also havent died in a road accident which is always a nice way to end the day, but i will get to that in a second. Did have to bribe the officials at the border to let us through but whats new in Thailand – and it was only 20 Baht which is like nothing so good luck to them i say. 

 The difference between Malaysia and Thailand was INSTANTLY evident. The landscape is much more interesting to watch than Malaysia – which was really boring.

Ok  – So. Let me begin with the driving.

Singaporian and Malaysians drive like physcos. But Thai drivers make them seem like old ladies on the way to church… the slow calm and collected, slightly swerving ones. Malaysians have sort of a share and share alike road system whereby they agree to drive ON the bichaman road - but refuse to acknowledge lanes. The road is there to share man – dont let the system tell you WHERE to drive or WHEN to change lanes. My goodness – it is so amazingly scarey – or it was. Unfortuantly we are used to it all now. So yeah they sorta just weave in and out of lanes whenever they feel the need and the traffic just sorta flows around each other. Whoa man its just really chilled driving bro. FOR THE LOCALS.    Ok now Thailand. Thats a whole other story. IF one WANTS to acknowledge a bichaman road by driving on it that is a good start – because whats a gravel cliff edge between friends, really i mean? Now the REALLY advanced drivers stay on the correct side of the road, especially when they are travelling at 90km/hr in a 60 zone and the oncoming semitrailer is only 20metres away.

 There arnt any advanced drivers in Thailand- to my knowledge.

Basically as a Thai driver you acknowledge that 3 cars/trucks or 2 buses and 3 motorcycles or… any other combination of as many vehicles as you like really can fit sideways across a road…. ever played “frogger”? or… “space invaders” even. Thats a start for the visualizations.

So this is the part of the blog where my mum gets up to hang the washing out and I mention *with a cough* that for quite a few of these hair raising trips (one of which i video taped for “oh you’ll laugh at this all later” prosterity) i have been sitting in the back of essentially and open air ute. Some times standing on the back foot step up bittys…. yah. Thats me in blue up the back there…

Organised tour….. ahem…

And then there are the motorcycle habits which are SO SCARY but sometimes cute…. but i’ll leave the photos to demonstrate that – pete has one of my favs in his blog above, but heres another:

Anyways – in general I like Thailand better than Malaysia and i cant really put my finger on why  – just do.  

Nikon si Thameratt – totatly spelt that wrong – was our first Thai town we stayed in – everyone keep raving about how cute and lovely and quaint and friendly this town was – i found it really boring. The locals were really friendly but i suspect because they themselves were bored and we were a novelty. This was our first real taste of Thailand and a TOTAL shock to the system. Throughout Malaysia almost everyone spoke at least SOME english so we totally survived – plus were able to communicate with locals enough to learn some of the Malay language ourselves. So we kinda rocked up in Thailand unprepared for the fact that NO ONE in the town really spoke English even semi-fluantly. Wacko. So then there was this random beeping noise in our room and we thought maybe it was the smoke alarm battery going flat (yeah right like they have smoke alarms in Thailand – oh how very smartypants she is now, like a week later ). A series of halerious rounds of charades with hotel staff and many many minutes later we did figure it all out. But it was all very embarresing and taught us a valuble lesson. The entire travel group is now transfixed by my phrase book – or at least they were for a day…. to be continued when i find more coins…

 – Sam