Part XI

Songkhla

Another day, another nation, another language, another alphabet...

Having had my fill of Penang, I slipped across the border yesterday and am now in Songkhla in the muslim south of Thailand. Songhkla is a laid back university city situated on a peninsular. It's got a nice beach, not spectacular but theres a very pleasant palm lined boulevard. There are no tourists here, there are a few old codgers at my guest house though. It's more a place older foreign dudes come to live for a while rather than hoards of backpackers or the tour bus masses. Can rent houses here. I found out about it from the strange old german fulla in Sumatra. My guest house is run by an old dutch woman. Virtually nothing is in english here and no one speaks it. To make matters worse, Thailand uses sanskrit so I can't even read what the word is, let alone translate... it's all just meaningless squiggles. No problems though, I got dropped off right where I needed to be and managed to get food and water with little difficulty.

I was beginning to wonder about the place when I arrived to the smell of sewerage, the scene of marauding dogs and associated excrement. The smell seems to have passed and I haven't seen many dogs today, maybe they were holding council. Although, my room smells a bit odd, I've tracked it down to the paint. Its a nice big room though and costs less than my cell in Penang. Theres not the continous racket of motorbikes that plagues Penang either... just the hideous sounds of the karaoke bar down the street. Most of it's in Thai but I head one fulla destroy a Scorpions song (Thailands favourite german rock band! Probably the only country that listens to them...) and some girls attempted Zombie, good attempt considering the Cranberrys singer struggles to stay in key anyway.

I got some crap directions from the dutch woman to the internet cafe but couldn't find it so went to the beach instead. On the way back I asked the woman I bought a pork bun off (not up with the penang variety, more like welly variety) where it is. She tried to draw a map, then got a friend to dub me there on his bike. Sweet!

Also a wicked bonus! I found a stationers and saw the Rotring logo in the window. Rotring make the best ink pens money can buy and I've coveted them for ages. I bought a set for about $45, they're about $120-$150 at home, or $75 for 1 pen!

The trip here was cruisy as. Expressway all the way from Penang to the border, then good 4 lane highway all the way to Hat Yai, where I changed to a another bus. The border crossing was pretty cruisy too, and it costs nothing for the visa, better than bothering to organise a visa before hand. Was very much a spur of the moment decision to come up here, was going to go south and do a loop around Malaysia but from what I heard, it's just more of the same but probably not as cool as Penang anyway. Then it occured to me that I'm near the top of Malaysia anyway, can always see more of Malaysia if I've got time, got to get back down that way for my flight out.

Cool, theres a school procession going past playing drums and other percussion instruments.

Here's what went on in Penang since the last chronical, that I didn't get around to sending.

Penang

After a couple of rums, note* only 2, I decided it would be cool to find a vantage point to check out the city by night. After consulting with the guesthouse management, it became apparent there's no road up Penang Hill. No worries though, Mike jumped on the back and we headed off up the hill to my temple in the jungle. The road was very skillfully constructed, it afforded absolutely no view of the city the entire way up! We wandered along the path to the temple, which wasn't too difficult, despite the fact neither of us brought a torch. The atmosphere there was O for awesome although there isn't exactly a panoramic view of the city. So I did a complete set of Qigong and Mike did some Karate. On the way back we stopped in at a fancy restaurant / conference centre I think it was. There was no one about as it was closed, so we wandered into their courtyard. They had a good view of the city.

The route back goes past the state mosque, which is impressively lit up at night. Alas, some guys had inconsiderately fallen off their motorcycles, right where I wanted to take a picture! There were people standing around and a dude lying on the road with blood all over his face so I figured it wouldn't be prudent to stop there. I popped down a side road hoping for a good photo but no luck so kept on, trying to navigate back to my digs. Unfortunately the massive 64 story Komtar building (which makes a good nav beacon) is not well lit at night. After some time I recognised where we were, which was heading in the opposite direction to where we should be. Very close to the snake farm tmple I couldn't find in fact No worries, knowing where we were it should be easy to get back. Ah, no... ended up on the expressway heading to the end of the island in completely the opposite direction. Not the first imte I'd done this exact same manouver either! Got it sorted in the end and got back about 2am. Mike was getting pretty sick of it by the end, not surprising really..

The next day was sight seeing day. Headed up to Batu Ferringi and had a beer at the beach. The only other people there were some fat old people and they were playing music that made the Breeze sound up beat. Checked out the butterfly farm. There were all sorts of interesting critters there. A cage full of scorpions, which were really hard to rouse, blowing at them would get a bit of a response but not much. Really wanted to stick my hand in... The stick insects were awesome, a lot bigger and more sinister looking than the ones at home. Cruised past the durian orchards.. ugh.

Another day.

Snapped some good photos while walking around the town under the influence of royal stout last night, then went shopping. There's Chinese buddhist prayer shops all over the place but I found the Warehouse equivalent of a Buddhist supply store! The place was huge and had all sorts of brass buddhas and the like. Some were 2 metres tall. 35000 ringgit will get you an impressively large brass water feature for your temple!

There is a once grand derelict building a couple of streets away. It comes complete with bats, creepy trees and the ground is crawling with yellow striped centipedes. Cant get upstairs though cos the floors all rotted out. Got dealt to by mozzies there though. Something odd happened to my nose cos it went hard and numb... strange. The old christian cemetery down the street from it is pretty cool. Its really creepy. While I was there at 10am it was dark as due to the thick canopy of frangipani trees planted there. All the graves are covered in green moss and creapers. Had a torrential downpour while I was there but no biggie, some old timer had the forethought to have a dome built over his grave.

Went to the mosque today. I was outside taking photos and this dude who was riding down the footpath on his scooter, came up and told me I could go in. Figured why not, so took a look. I was walking around, camera in hand looking like a real tourist and this fulla told me off for being where I shouldn't. 'twas ok though, another fulla showed me around the place. I had to wear a blue coat though. He showed me the family tree of prophets including my biblical namesake Harun, aka Aaron, bearer of the rod.

I've started posting photos online, so this is where you'll have to go to see them in future. http://www.flickr.com/photos/86997343@N00/ next thing I'll have a blog... scary thought! Nah.. then no b'stard would read it : )

The pork buns here are delicious! Not like what they try and fob off as a pork bun at the vege market in Welly.

I saw a fulla fall of his motor bike today. Was funny as. There was a horrendous noise, so I looked around just as this bike goes flying past in a shower of sparks followed by this dude, arms flailing, doing about 50k on his @rse! Didn't seem to suffer too much harm. He leapt straight up, gestured at the car behind him not to run him over and rode off.