Once on board Ligeia went to investigate how we could get outside once we left the port so Mindy might feel better. Ligeia found a person in uniform, greeted him in Malaysian and told him about her “travel companion” who always gets sick on boats and so we needed to know how we could be outside when she gets sick. He asked how many of us there were and when Ligeia told him “only two”, he told her to follow him and pointed up to the first class section of the boat. After collecting there things and getting Mindy out of her seat we followed what turned out to be the engineer of the ferry up the steps where the man told us that as soon as we left the harbor he would let us outside onto the back deck. We were the only ones up there too:
As promised, within minutes of leaving the harbor the engineer ushered us to the back deck which we had all to ourselves save the occasional smoker every once in awhile. Mindy instinctively went to her usual corner.
While there we took in the gorgeous scenery of the area including so many islands of all shapes:
And there were some views with no islands at all – simply water and sky.
The best news of all is that Mindy, although having felt queazy at times, did not get sick. Wow, if we could just travel first class all the time!
And as you might expect by now, we stopped many times, picking up soldiers a couple times, picking up other people and once just so the driver could get someone sitting at a table on the side of the road to sign something. Once in Hat Yai, the driver stopped for the two women in the front seat to get out and then pointed to Mindy and gave her a stern motion to get out. After some confusion we collected our things, climbed over the crab box and got out onto the street. We were happy to have arrived.
We took the first hotel we could find, despite it being quite expensive for Thailand. We were tired and just felt like treating ourselves one last time before our mini-vacation to Malaysia came to an end. We enjoyed English channels on cable TV for most of the afternoon, had a nap, surfed the wifi and in the evening, we went out in search of some dinner. We happened to stumble upon the night market of Hat Yai, so we can say we did at least one touristy thing in the city.
Tomorrow, we head back to Chiang Mai to get back to the grind. As always, thanks for reading and we’ll write again soon with more adventures!
Love,
Ligeia & Mindy :):)
Anonymous
sounds like you gals had lots of fun… WUV WUV WUV