So, first off we discovered you actually can sleep two to a bunk if you're good with being cozy. After a couple of trips to the bathroom Crystal decided that climbing up and down was less than interesting and crawled in with me instead. We managed to sleep the rest of the night in a shared bunk, with me waking at daybreak and spending the next hour staring out the window as Thailand passed again. We saw some of the largest rice paddies I had ever seen, along with a few palm oil plantations. I could have sworn that I also saw a few elephants outlined in the dim light, but never saw one in the open, so I can't be positive it wasn't a trick of the light. Saw a few more temples hidden in the trees and on the mountains, optimal places to expect Buddhist temples. As we closed in closer to Malaysia the number of mosques also increased, though the ones we saw tended more towards the functional look than the ornate.
We arrived in Hat Yai around 9:00. We hit the ground on a dead run, trying to reach Satun in time for the early ferry. Hat Yai station was a reasonable size, but far smaller to what we encountered in Bangkok. It was more of a large way station than the full hub our prior one had been. After exiting, we took off across the street to a small hole in the wall with a taxi sign outside. There Barbara bargained for a taxi to take us to Satun, settling finally on a price of 1600 baht. This means an hour and a half drive through the Thai countryside cost us half of what it cost Crys and I to get from the airport, 20 minutes from the hotel. If only I'd known then how much you could bargain for those things!
The drive was nice. Hat Yai appears to be a very large city, with far fewer tourist than Bangkok hosts. Most of the signs were in Thai, which meant I had zero idea what any of them said. The road ranged from small blacktop to small highway, from busting cityscape to unspoiled looking jungle. There was an issue when we finally arrived in Satun with the fact that our driver wanted to drop us off at a tour booking place, and didn't speak any English at all. We finally threw enough words back and forth to get him to understand we needed to go to the port and catch the ferry.
The port was small, and after arriving we discovered that due to the train's late arrival in Hat Yai we had missed the morning ferry. So we arrived at around 11am to discover we needed to wait until 1:30 to leave. By this time the small breakfast we had eaten on the train had worn off, so we wondered into the dining area to see what we could find. The Muslim ladies running the cooking area were speaking Malay, which is extremely similar to Indonesian. It was good to be back in an area where I could understand at least some of what was said around me! Thai is a very tonal language, and it has proven tricky so far for me to even remember basic words. Indonesian I find I pick back up the basics every time I'm around it, which is nice.
Lunch for me was a fish drop soup and some rice. Crys had a lime coconut milk soup that was tasty as well. We finished up with some cold drinks for desert, iced coffee for Crys and Barb and a strawberry smoothly for me. With that we prepared to say good by to Thailand.
Or so we thought. We made it through immigrations and were hauling our bags towards the gate when Barb realized she didn't know where she had placed her ticket. She did a mad search of her pockets and bags to no avail. We made a brief attempt to convince the ticket collectors to let her on anyway, to no avail. No ticket no ride. So with 15 minutes left before we set sail, Barb trucked frantically back towards the ticket office to plead her case. She had her receipt and there was only one lady selling the tickets, so she knew Barbara had purchased a ticket. Apparently there are no protocols in place for lost boarding passes. At $10 a piece Barb would would have been happy to just buy another, however the ticket lady was insistent there was probably another way. With less than five minutes left until departure, Barbara was growing ever more frantic, as we're Crys and I, who were waiting at the entry ramp with our stuff, hoping we would not be forced to hang out another few hours till the next ferry. Finally we saw Barb come rushing up the path, sheepishly admitting that at the last moment she realized she had placed her boarding pass in the edge of her bra and had then proceeded to forget about it. She handed over the pass, we boarded the ferry and were finally departing for Malaysia.
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