So, we've made it to Thailand and have started a new chapter of our adventure!

We left Penang smoothly and got a bus up to the north of Malaysia. In the interests of avoiding the eastern side of the Thai southern peninsular, which the foreign office advises against travelling to, we headed for the east coast of northern Malysia. We managed to find ourselves on a comercial dock, with lots of fish being unloaded from boats and officially left Malaysia at a tiny border checkpoint booth. We boarded a small cargo boat that was taking some vats of fish into Thailand and which took us around the coast over the Thai border. At the port on the other side, we officially entered Thailand. From there we got a bus to Trang, a fairly uninteresting town that gave us our first taste (literally) of Thailand.

We stayed a night in Trang, since it was evening by the time we got there and ate at some hawker stalls in the market. The next morning, we boarded a train to Bangkok! You'll see from the map that this is quite a long way. The journey took the afternoon and all night - a pretty decent sleeper train, actually. Early in the morning, we found ourselves in Bangkok.

We immediately checked in to a hostel recommended by the Rough Guide - very basic, but decent enough and incredibly cheap - and slept a bit! We're slightly ashamed, but we went next door to a very western cafe and had a very western breakfast. In our defence, we've had a very low-fibre diet and just weren't in the mood after the long journey and three weeks on the go for another rice breakfast.

We've had a good day in Bangkok, spending quite a bit of time catching up on sleep, lazing in the room and most of the rest of the time in the Great Palace and its associated temple.

We'll now be in Bangkok for a couple more days before we head east through Thailand on the most adventurous part of our trip! Before that, we need to get visas sorted for the countries involved in that leg. No photos with this entry, I'm afraid, as we can't upload them in this internet cafe.