I was looking through my Yahoo "sent box" and found some travel descriptions from my time in Asia and was wondering if anyone (besides me) could see the fun in reading about others traveling experiences? I think it would be nice for first timers in Asia to get the low-downs on different places ( NOT drunk, tall tales of barhopping, but impressions of life "On the Road" in this wonderful continent) and hopefully entertaining for the rest of us too...

Here goes...

Traveling Diary - Malaysia

My one month tourist visa was up so I went to Malaysia to renew it. The train trip to Hat Yai was 13 hours, and though slower and less comfortable than the air conditioned V.I.P. buses, still my favorite mode of transportation. They sell food and cold beer and the view of the landscape rushing by, as seen from the open door of the train, seems more real and alive than through the dirty glass windows of a bus. Occasionally a woman or a man boards the train, selling fried chicken, fruit or some tasty Thai dish, and having sold what she or he could, gets off at the next station. Having reached Hat Yai, I turned down the taxi drivers offers of driving me to the border for the cheap (!?) prize of 600B. and despite the motor cycle taxi (20B.) driver who insisted that there was no mini buses going to the border in the weekend (but that his friend would take me there for next to nothing) made him take me to them. Paid the 40B. minibus fare, and left 10 minutes later for my one and a half hour leisure cruise. Took another motorcycle taxi out of Thailand, and after having convinced a stern looking Malaysian official in a suit that my old and worn passport was not a forgery (the plastic front had torn) returned to Thailand. Minibus back to Hat Yai, and with 8 minutes to spare, enough to buy beer and cigarettes, boarded the train back to Nakom Pathom.

Sitting on he train I scribbled down the following letter (which gets more and more illegible as the hours went by).

Sitting on the stairs of the train, feet hanging over the edge, drinking a beer and smoking yet another cigarette, wind in my hair, wearing my shades, man, I feel good. Outside the train, slowly gathering momentum, appears the shanty town of the poor, the buildings appearing so flimsy I fear they would collapse should I stretch out my hand to touch them. Strange how poverty always appears with the same ugliness wherever you see it in the world. Chickens on rooftops, a child playing with a dog in a dusty deserted road. I'm 5 minutes out of Hat Yai, and the beer, sleep deprivation and countless images are starting to work their magic. I remember sitting on a train like this from Hat Yai, years ago, writing a letter to an old friend, and I realize that my fascination of these images and my love for traveling, the sensation of being very much alive, has not diminished with the years, but merely taken on new meaning and depth. (though still with the nagging realization that something is missing, lurking just beneath the surface of bliss)

The panorama has changed, I now see trees covered in vines and thick vegetation. The undergrowth makes it impossible to see further than a few meters ( probably just more trees I tell myself) and the telephone wires beside the tracks are the only things disturbing this image of untouched nature.

(At this time I popped open another beer and, for a couple of hours, just enjoyed the beauty of it all)

Back on the stairs, why, ever again, pay first class tickets when you know you will end up sitting here?

Watching the hot burning sun give way. Dark tanned children playing in a red-brown mud colored river (The same color as the soil and dirt I have so often , involuntarily, eaten in the dry season sitting in the back of pickup trucks / Song Tao's), cattle, and endless green fields of rice, having the color I remember as one of my earliest recollections of living in Thailand. Saw thunderless lightning in the distance till I got bored counting them, and had all in all, what could probally be described as a quite enjoyable day / night.

Me!!!! I like reading this kind of story!!!!!!

Guess 1 out of 3 is not THAT bad (..as compared to 0 out of 3). I plead guilty as charged on the "accusations" about me writing long entries. I know, but I fear it is not a flaw I'm willing / want to correct. What some might call "blabbering", I call details, and this is what I enjoy when writing / in works of literature.This is still a free country, at least last time I checked, and if you don't like reading long entries you hereby have my permission to skip mine (..without hurting my delicate feelings). Thanks for your feedback, and I hope you don't take this reply to them in a negative way...

Enough Said.