Dec 23...Planes, trains and automobiles

We wake up to discover Salmon, the young fellow who works at the hostel has bought bread, peanut butter and jam for us for breakfast. We fuel up and head out to see a bit of the city and see if we can arrange air tickets to Koh Samui or Phuket. We discover that KL is much better in the day light and it also has some of the best shopping we've ever seen! We vow to spend more time here on the way back, pick up our stuff at the hostel and head to the train station. Kuala Lumpur has a great transit and road system. Everywhere we went there seemed to be endless amounts of highway under construction and buildings were also going up all over the place. As it turns out our overnight train to Hat Yai in Thailand is sold out for the next 2 days. This is a big disappointment. It also means we would miss the Full Moon party on Boxing Day on Koh Phangan. We once again try to arrange air tickets to Phuket or Koh Samui and even consider staying on Penang in Malaysia for a couple of days until we can get on the train. We also decide that if we're gonna miss the party we may as well just go ahead with our original plan and go to Koh Lanto or Koh Phi Phi first. No reasonable air tickets are available and we didn't want to commit to the train tickets in two days just yet so we have lunch and take a taxi to the bus station. This is crazy, the bus station is hot as Dante's inferno and there are about as many people including a legless fellow begging on the sidewalk. The good news is there is space on a bus heading north to Butterworth and it leaves in a little over an hour (4 pm). We make the decision on the spot to buy the tickets and are very happy to be on our way again. We spend the next hour on the street watching the vehicles and folks of Kuala Lumpur go by. Scooter's are the vehicle of choice here and it's amazing how many people seem to fit on them. We've seen scooter's with mom, dad and two kids and the evening meal weaving thru traffic so fast that we couldn't bear to watch. Nutty stuff. Our bus ride thru the northern part of Malaysia is amazing. We pass thru endless lush jungles and palm plantations. At a reststop an old fellow got on the bus and he and I started to chat. He had a great command of the English language and I soon found out he had just returned from Toronto of all places! Then all sorts of other folks on the bus started chiming in and it seems everyone's been to Toronto! Crazy! We arrive in Butterworth at 10:30 pm, it's dark, raining and we're let off at what appears to be a pretty nasty part of town. We wander over to the train station convinced we're gonna get mugged and we walk thru the doors figuring we'll be spending our night there on the wooden benches. I guess we were looking pretty forlorn and this fellow who works at the train station with the name Segga stitched onto his blue uniform shirt approaches us with glossy black hair, a big smile and a "Can I help you?" It turns out Segga has a place for us to stay and he will take us there and bring us back for the 6:10 am train. Sean's got a "good feeling" about this guy and I'm just thinking about all the guide books I've read that tell you to stay away from these sorts of offers. Moments later we're crammed into his car and I'm feeling a little more comfortable but not convinced we're not about to meet our maker. We arrive at a hotel, check it out, agree on a price, unload our stuff from his car and don't I see a bit fat rat in the sewer as we cross via a plank. Nice. Mental note: stop looking in the freakin' sewers. In Raquel's words the room was "pretty ghetto" but the door locked and it felt suffieciently safe. I think we had Pringles for supper that night.