14 April

The jungle train was an amazing experience we sat near a Chilean who had traveled much of South America, worked in India and was now backpacking South East Asia (SEA). Unfortunately our expected plans to travel South America were impeded in a sense due to him informing us that it was significantly more expensive to backpack or tour South America, which we thought was comparative to SEA.

We continued the train ride with various photo opportunities, time to read the lonely planet and take much needed uncomfortable but grateful naps. In total the train ride was 8 ½ hours, from there we took a bus to Koto Baru where we had booked accommodation the evening before. According to the lonely planet Bungarai Backpackers was a well rated accommodation although " the bathrooms had seen better days". They were spot on with the latter although the springs of our bed had also seen better days. But then again I had pushed the price down from RM 35 to RM 20, this gave us more to spend during the day and evening and considering we seldom spend much time in the rooms it was worth it.

We dropped our bags and headed for the local attraction, a night market with goods and food. To be honest this was the best night market we had visited for our total stay to date. We arrived there with the calls for prayer and a man holding a voice amplifier, clearly in charge and acting so also, informing us that the market was closed until prayer ended. After 15 minutes the people started arriving from prayer and the man declared all businesses open. We snaked through the stalls to form an opinion of what was on offer. The dishes were dirt cheap ranging from RM 0.50 to RM 4 (R1.25 to R10)! We tried at least 4 dishes, ranging from pancakes with mince, blue rice rice with spices, chocolate ball, vegetable roles, samoosas and a piece of cake.