Pulau Pangkor

Well I can't sleep so this is the most productive thing I can think of doing without leaving my bed. Laptops are great aren't they.

Anyways, I left Kuala Lumpur headed for beach and relaxation. The monsoon limited me to the west coast of Malaysia. I picked Pangkor since it was described as being more lowkey than any of the other places on the west coast. I don't know how you heavily promote something as being lowkey but that's what the government is trying to do. It was pretty lowkey actually.

I took the bus to Lumut to catch the ferry. We stop in Lumut and these Scandinavian girls ask the driver about the ferry terminal. He says 5 minutes. I assume, as the girls do, that this means in 5 minutes we will go to the ferry terminal. I could tell there were others left on the bus besides these Scandinavian girls. The driver gets back on the bus and tells us to get off. Turns out the other people on the bus were European tourists as well. Stupid tourists. I thought there were natives left on the bus.

I end up spending the next few days with the Scandinavian girls. We got along but had only lowkey fun. They were waitresses from Sweden but waitressed in Oslo. One was Vivian and the other Tess I think. We shared a triple and went to the beach and ate at restaurants together. I ended up getting burnt the one day I spent at the beach. It was hardly even sunny. Not a bad burn though. It was pretty cloudy the second day and the girls decided to leave. I ended up deciding to leave as well. It was a nice beach though. It just wasn't beach weather. I decided to just cross over into Thailand as soon as possible. I really don't know why. I was getting a little tired of traveling. I'd been traveling for about 5 weeks at this point and it was just a random trip with no particular destinations or things to see. Plus I didn't want to see very much since I'd imagined I'd be back in South-East Asia at some point.

I ended up in Georgetown that night on Pulau Penang. Nice town and I could've spent more time there. I was only in Little India though. That was the only place I saw Indians eating with their hands. My 6 hours in India outside of trains didn't expose me to much. The next morning I went to catch the bus to Hat Yai, Thailand. I ended up missing it because I was supposed to go to the ticket booth where I got the ticket and not to the place where the people who run the station told me to go. So I had to buy another ticket and wait for 3 hours at the bus terminal with my book. If only I hadn't had to lug around a heavy backpack with me everywhere I could've seen a bit more of Georgetown.