On the road again
The phone rang at 5.45 - time to get up. At 6.20 the minibus arrived at the resort to whisk us back to Malaysia. It was tipping down with rain and continued to do so until almost lunch time. We stopped along the way to allow the driver to catch up with family and friends!!! As we arrived in Hat Yai the driver took so many twists and turns that we had no idea where we were. By this stage we’d dropped off all the other passengers and we were the only ones left. Then he pulled into a vacant lot and Andy and I looked at each other with angst. The driver kept going and popped out onto another street. Just a shortcut, but definately chilled us!
We then had to change minivan in Hat Yai and had lunch in a department store - not the safest of places in this part of the world, but post coup things are much more stable.
Then down the coast to Yala through unmanned checkpoints - symbols of conflict where the lack of soldiers surely indicated the hope of a solution. Only the checkpoint nearest the border was manned by relaxed looking soldiers.
We had to walk across the border into Malaysia and made a big deal with the kids about the point where you are no longer in Thailand and you’re not in Malaysia either. Quickly through and onto a local bus into Kota Bharu. Despite the border crossing being uneventful we had to go through a police checkpoint and saw a guy being frogmarched into the Police Box for questioning.
Once in Kota Bharu we found a pleasant enough place quite quickly, went out to the night markets for dinner, stopped Jeremy from mauling the cats (a favourite passtime), and got the kids back to bed. The kids were fascinated by the frog on the front decking type area which was calmly eating insects while people wandered by. We then escaped and daringly went across the road for a beer. We could see the lobby of the guesthouse and they knew where we were so we felt sure there would be no problems. Our tired little babies don’t tend to wake up anyway.