Sun 17th Dec – Krabi (Thailand) -> Penang (Malaysia)

A month into my time off, I have my first border crossing. It’s an extremely long day, about 9 hours in the car. I have a terrible night’s sleep, have fever and a weird but painful ear ache.

My grouchiness is not helped by one of the Brits (not the coughing one, the other one) starting breakfast at our scheduled departure time (7am). This is infuriating, as we sit in the van and wait 20min for her to eat, knowing we have a large travel day ahead. When we stop at a shopping centre for lunch before crossing the border, the guide implores us not to be late because our current Thai van and our Malaysia van will both be waiting for us. She is again, incomprehensible in a small shopping centre, 20 minutes late. After pulling this every day for the last week, I am furious. I confront her and ask her to be more prompt, telling her she is wasting many people’s time. I don’t think our guide is willing to do this, as we rate our guides at the end of their trip and I have been told it impacts some part of their annual renumeration… She initially just walks away from me. This is a response I haven’t seen much from an adult and is underutilised given its physical comedy impact. I request an acknowledgement and she shrilly says “we all have needs, I don’t know why you are picking on me, mind your own business”. For the next 12 hours, she turns her back to me whenever we are together, which is again comedically intriguing in a group of five. I believe I have made a positive change in the world though, as she is on time for the two meetings we do have later that day.

Penang itself seems really, really cool. Being an island, it was heavily used for shipping trade back in the day, and this has lead to an accumulation of different cultures. There are Chinese, Malaysians and Indians. Penang’s colonial buildings are prized and protected. As we drive in, I already know I want to return.