Malaysia and SingaporeWe caught a minvan from Hat Yai to the Malaysian border, which we actually crossed by foot. It felt like something out of a WWII movie, passing through no-man's land with its barbed wire and armed guards on the other side, and we couldn't help feeling slightly nervous as we trudeged up to the immigration desks, clutching our passports. We cleared immigration ok, and caught a bus from the Malaysian side to Kota Bharu, which is well-known for ...

Koh Pha-Ngan and Songkran at Hat Yai To get to Koh Pha-Ngan we travelled by the budget option, the night boat.  This is no passenger ferry; rather, a freight boat that happens to carry a few people as well.  When we arrived at the dock at 9pm there was a hive of activity loading up the boat with supplies for the island: fresh produce, drinks and bottled water, sacks of rice and lots of miscellaneous objects.  Upstairs, the 'passenger' cabin consisted of...

Penang and Langkawi, Malaysia Things got off to a wet start in Georgetown on the island of Penang. After finding ourselves a guesthouse to stay at, we went in search of an ATM to get some Malaysian Ringitt, and got caught in a torrential downpour which lasted about an hour. Sightseeing was off the cards that afternoon. So we took shelter and we eat our tomato sandwich picnic as we waited for the rain to clear, and then had a bit of a damp wander round the old ...

Bangkok to Hat Yai The flight from Mumbai to Bangkok was great - we were back in Western modern comforts and made use of all the freebies available on the plane. We took full advantage of the free wine, orange juice and softdrinks, as we'd had 6 weeks of drinking water and not much else - the stewardesses must have though we have drinking problems! Our flight landed at 10PM local time on 10th March; we caught a bus into the city centre and wandered down th...

Madurai to Mumbai (via the beautiful beaches of Goa!)Our train journey down to Madurai wasn't as bad as we'd feared. We both had the upper berths in our compartment, which are fixed so we were able to stretch out on them any time of the day, and being quite close to the carriage roof they gave us a bit more privacy in a male-dominated carriage! We kept ourselves occupied chatting to each other and fellow passengers, reading and listening to music, and fla...