Sitting at the bus station with our new compadres the time flew by and soon enough we were all aboard the local bus headed for Kota Bharu, it wasn’t until we were about 45 minutes into our journey that I realised time was getting on and the border must have a closing time… After some frantic searching through our lonely planet books and trying to work out the hour time difference we resigned to the fact we probably wouldn’t make it and if we did the Thai border would have shut an hour ago… Suddenly the taxi ride offered to us didn’t seem like a bad idea and what the taxi drivers knew and we didn’t was how fucking slow the bus was…

We arrived at Kota Bharu bus station just after 4 pm, the border – an hour away – closes at 5 pm, we strapped our packs on and started to walk in the direction of a guesthouse.

A mere 50ft from the station we found a wicked guest house called KB Guest house that offered us a cheap 4 person room with 2 massive beds and a short walk in the morning to catch the bus to Rantau Panjang where we could cross the border into Thailand.

Everyone was feeling hot and tired from the journey so we settled into our room and got sorted. Georgie was hell bent on making the best of a bad situation and convinced us all that we should go in search of booze and get ourselves hammered… Being a small city close to the border Kota Bharu wasn’t exactly buzzing, it’s mainly used buy tourists as a transport hub and it is a very very muslim place, but under guidance by our guest house owner we set off under a very heavy sky in search of a mysterious Chinese liquor shop…

We found the place but it seemed to be closed with a giant sliding garage door pulled across and a lone Indian man banging on it and looking through a gap, as we approached he knew exactly why we were there, the same reason he was. He got chatting to us telling us all how beautiful our white skin was, while all the time banging and shouting at the door, he told us the Chinese woman inside was eating her dinner and very slow, feeling a little bad for disturbing her we were about to leave when a small 6 x 8 inch hatch opened up and through it poked the booze that the Indian fellow was craving, with his help at translating we got a super cheap bottle of vodka and quickly made it back to our guest house.

Georgie still trying to get us all wankered decided to start up a game of ring of fire… It didn’t quite happen but we did manage to drink half the bottle while trying to teach Sam the rules… We settled instead for a game of shit head and more sociable drinking speeds.

Leon and Sam were a pair of wicked people and we all got on like a house on fire, driven by the far too cheap vodka we set off to see the only sight in Kota Bharu… The night market. It was around 10 pm but for some reason the night market was closed, by now all this staggering had worked up a ferocious hunger so we popped into a Chinese shop to by what I though were wasabi peas… They turned out to be just dry, hard, tasteless peas and our hunger became even more intense!

Everything seemed either closed or closing except one place… Pizza hut!

When the lady asked for Sam’s name he gave her his surname, Brown which she confused with “prawn”, this had us falling about laughing and when she asked for Georgie’s name the reply she got was the spice girls. 15 minutes of drunken chatter late the lady emerged from her window and called “ Mr Prawn… Mrs Spice Girl”… Oh how we laughed and so did she…

Armed now with pizzas the size of manhole covers and a bag of beers we retreated back to our rooftop terrace to watch pirate a movie and eat ourselves silly… Of course the DVD froze just before the crucial last 5 minutes which left our little gang of pisshead completely miffed… No more beer, pizza or even a conclusion to our movie we headed off to bed…

yle=”letter-spacing: 0px; font-size: 13px; “>We all woke up in the morning in good time considering, had breakfast together which consisted of the finest banana roti ever, chatted to another traveler who had just got around the new Thai visa regulations of 15 day stay by applying in town before the border, it took 2 days but he got 2 months and filled his time while waiting by playing online poker which turned out to be his main way of financing his travels.

Especially now our pre arranged Thai visas are worth their weight in gold, giving us as many 90 day stays as we want (for those that don’t know and are BRITISH, google “Thai consulate hull” and its a multiple entry catergory “O” tourist visa valid for a year)

The bus was hot but not too bad and we were soon at the border, it’s a fairly long border to walk in the midday sun but it’s a painless one and within 20 minutes we were across into Thailand once again!

The walk however to the bus stop was not as simple, it was a good kilometer and in that heat it nearly killed us, this is where we said goodbye to Sam and Leon as they were going to try and hitch all the way to Krabi… We however had places to go and people to see so we caught a minibus… A hot and cramped four and a half hour minibus to Hat Yai to begin our new career as travel writers.