Penang Visa Run

Penang Day 1

We’ve been in Thailand just about a month and that’s all we get from immigration. So we had to do a visa run. It’s the biggest racket ever. I would gladly give the allotted amount of money to each individual who profits from this racket if my ass could be spared the 10 plus hour van ride from Krabi to Penang. I now feel like my butt is where my neck used to be.

And it makes Ryan grumpy.

We had a busy evening yesterday as we had to get our stuff over to Keira’s, meet her landlady, go meet with the manager from Princess Divers and get our tickets squared away for the trip. And Ryan had arranged with Gee at Hippo Divers to meet with computers and back-ups to do a little trading.

Ryan’s not figured out yet that there are kinder ways to wake me up than pulling at my toes or jerking my leg. It makes me grumpy and that’s how I woke up this morning.
We trekked into town and had some breakfast at P.P. Bakery then tried to steal some free wifi from our old hotel, but it was down. We headed for the ferry. It promptly left the pier at 9:00 headed for a 90 minute crossing to Krabi. The Krabi coastline is gorgeous – lush and dotted by little islands. My Son Krabi van service picked us up at the dock in Krabi to take us to a shop from where we got another van which took us to Hat Yai. In Hat Yai we had a layover which allowed us to hit the 7/11 for some snacks. From there we got another van that took us to customs.

Customs was great. We first passed through what must have been an old defunct checkpoint. It had all the look of a checkpoint, but we drove straight through. We were a bit confused – we’d been given paperwork to fill out and I was fairly certain a few agents needed to put stamps in my passport. About a mile or so later there was another checkpoint. The van parked and we were told to go to kiosk 4. This was Thai immigration checking us out of Thailand. Just like coming in, I gave the agent my passport, stood where I was supposed to stand and waited forever for him to fiddle on his computer. He gave me back my passport without saying so much as boo to me. We got back in the van, drove 100 yards, got out of the van and proceeded through Malaysian customs. God forbid they put it in the same building. I mean, you don’t have a choice. You can’t go through one without going through the other. You can’t stay in the no man’s land that is the 100 yard stretch of concrete between the two buidlings. What are you going to do? Check out of Thailand and not check into Malaysia? You don’t have a choice!

Once through Malaysian customs where this customs agent also did not say boo to me, we played musical vans based on our destination in Penang. We were kicked off the somewhat comfortable van onto a much less comfortable and smelly one. This van was the one that finally dumped us off at Banana Guesthouse, Chulia Street, Penang, Malaysia. I’m not sure why we had to play musical vans because both vans ended up at Banana Guesthouse.

All of the vans were highly lacking in shock absorbency and leg room. They did have a wee bit of air conditioning which helped cut the mugginess. Ryan read a whole book and I finished the stupid Dan Brown book I was reading. I’m glad to be done with him – only really liked Angels and Demons. Now I’m back to Richard North Patterson.
We arrived at Banana which was one of our possible destinations. It is a one stop service for all you Malaysian needs – room and visa. It was with a huge knee-jerk reaction that I did something that every fiber of my being told me not to do. I gave my passport to the hotel to take to the embassy to get the visa all squared away. We’ll get them back tomorrow afternoon with the visas all squared away. It goes against everything I know, but everybody does it. That’s how it’s done. I keep telling myself that at least I have my French passport. Banana showed us our room, sat us down and had us fill out the paperwork for the visas, took our passports and our passport photos, arranged our return to Phi Phi, took our money and it was done. Now we have a day to kill.

Penang Day 2

After a very late sleep in, we left the room around lunch time, grabbed a map from the hotel lobby and randomly headed out. We ended up at the mall where we had some lunch and walked around a bit. The mall was massive and as it turns out, we only saw half of it. One level was completely dedicated to electronics – mostly computer and/or cell phone stuff. At the end of our tour, we hit the supermarket to find Cadbury’s and also found large bottles of shampoo and conditioner and a new toothbrush for me.
Our passports were due to be back from the consulate at 4:00 so we took a break in our little tour to retrieve them. A very small little hiccup when Ryan’s passport ended up in the “wrong” pocket or drawer or whatever caused a huge panic in my head as I had “don’t ever ever ever ever give your passport to anyone” running through my head. But it all turned out fine and both our passports were back in our possessions with shiny new tourist visas.

It wasn’t quite dinner time yet and I didn’t want to stay in the room with no windows so we went back out and wandered around aimlessly again, ending up at the chocolate factory. It is, of course, my idea of heaven! We were toured around by a really sweet little “gramma type lady who kept opening bins and giving me chocolate. How could I but think she was the best?

Dinner was a repeat trip to the fabulous Indian restaurant we’d stumbled into at 10:00 p.m. the previous night. We’d shared a wonderful vindaloo on night one and this time shared a tikka masala. All that with vast quantities of delicious naan.

Penang Day 3

Our 4:30 a.m. wake up call was a 4:00 a.m. rap on the door. And at 5:00 we were on the road again. We are reversing the course we did on Tuesday. From Banana to customs – first Malaysian, then Thai. The line at Thai customs was insane, but our driver found us a shorter line by lining us up as though we were cars. We’d have been there for two hours otherwise. I peeked at the screen while Ryan was going through customs because I was curious what takes them so long to process somebody. I still don’t know what takes them so long, but scanning Ryan’s passport brought up a “file” on him with previous scans and pictures – every time you go through they take a little picture of you.

From customs we went back to Hat Yai to the same travel agency we’d changed vans at on Tuesday. Now we’re on the van to Krabi. We finagled ourselves the front seats this time so we have a little extra leg room and can avoid being bent like pretzels and sandwiched between two seats.