We had an overnight stopover in the southern city of Hat Yai. It was such a curious little place where many Thai-Chinese lived. We found an odd little coffee shop/international music school/business office - it was odd because it was like a dolls house without a front so you could see upstairs and there was a lovely parrot in the back + the iced coffee was great!

Deciding to stay an extra night was a good idea as we had a long overnight journey of around 14 hours to Kuala Lumpur ahead of us. Hat Yai was a city of squares, the roads seemed to be in blocks which made it easy to navigate and the markets were full of knock off goods including the CAD software which usually costs a fortune in England - the Microsoft office suite for Apple Macs would come in handy!

In a way Hat Yai was a bit annoying in that you had the taxi guys pestering you to the point where you would want to punch them! The Tuk Tuk's were differently styled to those in other areas of Thailand and they were very cheap. Hat Yai was a good stop over and worthwhile to get us used to different people and settings ready for Malaysia.

The 14 hour train journey was strange - it was a great way to see the changing landscape as we headed into Malaysia. We had to get off at Padang Besar to pass immigration - I took a look at my passport and the realisation of our journey had set in, I never thought I would see those stamps in my passport in my lifetime!

It seemed like it was rainy season with lots of flooding and as I looked out of the window there was a lot of banners and bunting around as the Malaysian elections had just taken place, an election that was full of controversy with accusations of the ruling party using fraud tactics to gain more voters. It was one of the first times the country could have seen a new party take control - though this never came to fruition - we were worried about arriving in Kuala Lumpur as there had been mention of some protests.

Once we arrived in Kuala Lumpur all seemed ok though it was only 6am! It's funny arriving in places just before sun rise - we took a taxi to the Petronas Towers (a building I have wanted to see for some time!) - the towers were still lit up and what a sight they were - shimmering towers of glass that were joined by a cool modern looking bridge - it was hard to imagine people working in there - we sat while the sun came up admiring such architecture.

Kuala Lumpur was a very busy place, the traffic lights seemed to last for half an hour! Then we came across breakfast - Roti Prata a sort of Indian flat bread that was served with a curry sauce - it also came with tea - TEA! We both screamed with joy, oh how lovely it was to drink a normal cup of tea! The Roti Prata was so good we ordered another one to take on the bus with us to Singapore.