We'd had a great time in Bangkok and hooked up with an excellent chap, Martin...who was a proper world traveller and is now based in India and has been for 25 years. Martin was very good company and joined us wandering Bangkok. We actually stayed very local, we wandered Chinatown and ate at the local food stalls. This is the best way to get a feel for Bangkok, just keep walking and use your local food stalls. The food is excellent and cheap and so was the local g...

The Thai scenery was beautiful and again we came across agricultural flatlands, if you got bored with the scenery you could eye up the amazing birds. I am of course talking about the feathered kind and we saw Herons, Storks and Egrets amongst others I couldnt recognise. The farmers had a great way of scaring of the birds and rodents that may eat their crops, they wouldnt bother wasting time putting Worzel Gummidge scarecrows up but used gnarled bark from the bana...

Finally we got on board the train to bangkok..this time the carriages were Thai and much better designed than the previous ones we'd been on, good size seats and bunks, good windows and plenty of space. We were a bit tired and did nod off a few times. The northern malaysian landscape was more agriculural and we passed paddy field after paddy field. Occasionally we'd come across those magical mountains that look like they're giant termite hills and shoot straight ...

We boarded the ferry to Georgetown and it was beautiful, sunny and sailing on clear waters. It had taken an age to get a taxi and we'd even asked in Kentucky Fried Rat if they knew of any place to find one.....no was the answer...but shortly after, Mrs. lady came out and told us she'd drive us there!!!!.....I said I'd pay her, but she said no !!!.........how's that for friendliness. When she brought the car round, there was no way we'd get in. her boyfriend was a...

I'm delighted to say that the train from Kuala Lumpur to Penang was very good. It was clean and tidy, the bunks were nice although we were on the top bunks which were a bit smaller than the bottom ones. There was a buffet carriage attached and so you could have a sit down, chow on some Pot noodles before heading to the carriage to get some sleep. There were even decent ladders to get to the top bunks unlike the Indian ones which required you to have some knowledg...