Hey everyone

Today was... Travel day! Hmm.

We travelled from Krabi (thailand) to Penang in Malaysia. We were up and ready to leave at 8:30am and spent all morning travelling down through Thailand, and all afternoon travelling down through Malaysia. We stopped for lunch at a very strange place just before the border, and you'll be glad to know that everything went smoothly as we crossed the border (we got new stamps in our passports!).

Penang is an island with a huge bridge connecting it to mainland Malaysia. It turns out that Malaysian drivers are just as bad as Thai drivers. The traffic moved really slowly on the bridge but this still meant you had to accelerate as much as possible in the space you had (this included our minivan driver). Cars weaved in and out of each lane and all too often we were inches away from a car or bike trying to squeeze in front or behind us, or beside us (who needs white lines when you can fit in more lanes). Just like in Thailand, minimal effort (none at all) was given in making way for emergency vehicles to get through. An ambulance that started a few cars behind us when we got onto the bridge was still a few cars behind us when we left the bridge (half an hour later).

We arrived in Georgetown, Penang, at about half six (after putting our clocks forward one hour - we're now GMT+8) and the somewhat run down city looked like nothing compared to the beaches of Krabi or the jungle of Khao Sok. Our hotel, Hong Ping, was 'adequate' and in chinatown. We sorted our stuff out and all went out to eat at the 'Red Garden', a massive outdoor food court with a whole range of cuisines to offer. After wandering round the different stalls, Christina decided to play it safe by ordering... Egg fried rice (70p). Alex was very slightly more adventurous and ordered... Mango fried rice. The food was good and cheap and we had a nice time so we couldn't complain.

After dinner, we went up to the 'penthouse suite' - one of our group got this room, but its definitely nothing like what you would imagine a penthouse suite to be like. The room was just about bigger than ours, but it did have a big rooftop balcony (complete with huge scary boiler). We got a couple of Chang beers (thailand's beer of choice) and a deck of cards from 7-11 (thailand and malaysia's answer to Tesco Metro... on every street corner) and had a great evening playing card games.

The girls of the group were told to cover up (shoulders and knees) as it was seen as 'too sexy' and scary malaysian men might get scary ideas in their heads. We were told stories about girls being followed by men on mopeds, which didn't add to our love of Penang.

But we decided on a time to meet in the morning, headed to bed and hoped that tomorrow Penang would provide us with some fun. Xxx