Almost as quickly as we went through it. Following our beautiful, inspiring journey through Myanmar, we only spent a grand total of ten days in Malaysia — where to head to, given so little time? After Kuala Lumpur, the thriving megalopolis which was no more than an arrival point for us, we quickly made our way to Pulau Perenthian Kecil (small Perenthian island) before exploring Penang and its bright, exploding mishmash of cultural heritages.
We met up with Salome and Fernando, two old friends of Ladina’s, in Bangkok, the capital of the kingdom of Thailand. And after an evening of plotting and scheming, we all decided to head straight to the heavenly tropical islands of the South. So we made a run to the train station, dodged the touts trying to enlist us in an travel agency package, bought tickets in a sleeper train to Chumphon, came back under heavy rain in the evening, discovered inside the carriage that our tickets had been issued for two days hence, ran to the controllers, argued at the counter, changed our tickets for seats in a later train, sat down in the station hall to play Yatzy, and finally, boarded our train bound south.