So on with the story, After the shower, we boarded the bus to Hatyai. For anyone looking to bus between Thailand and Malaysia, you must stop here. This is the final city before the border and all buses come to an end here. You can book a bus from Phuket to Penang, but you will still stop here to change buses. You will catch a 6am bus that will then cart you off across the border and to Penang. I think our entire trip was about 1000Bhat (for like 17 total hours of transporting between the two cities)
A bit about the buses. The first bus we took left at the latest time possible...somewhere around 9:30. We had already researched this option well in advance and since it was cheaper than a plane and planes to Penang just weren't in plenty, we would actually save time if we took the bus for that crazy amount of time. Our bus was a two story affair. We were on the top story. Immediately, before the bus even pulled out, they started playing a comedy show on a large 30 something inch television mounted at the front of the bus at the highest possible volume to best entertain the transporting visitors. What they were thinking? I haven't a clue. If you are going to take a bus for 6 hours in the dead of night you should be prepared to sleep on the bus...Not be bombarded with flashing colorful lights and obnoxious raucous laughing through out the entirety of the trip. Now someone just needs to tell this to the Thailand bus systems. I managed to get some sleep. Though whether it was from the state of the shower or the fact that I went to sleep with my hair wet, I became disastrously ill and in addition accumulated an ear infection.
We arrived in the wee hours at Hatyai and waited for our transport company for our trip across the border to open ( about 6am) wherein we went and slept on their benches inside. We got on out bus more or less around 9am.
This bus is more like a van. Extremely similar to the vans you might take on a tour booked in Thailand to see their sites, like Tiger Temple and the floating market. It had three rows of seats plus the captains chairs and it was nice and cramped.
At the border, you have to exit the bus and officially check out of Thailand. Get your passport stamped have the van checked, you know the whole nine. You rejoin the bus on the other side of the Thailand border. And then you cross about a mile or so of land and then check into the Malaysian side. It is a slight bit more difficult affair on this end, where they have you remove your bags from the van in order to scan your belonging for threats and then they proceed to stamp you and send you on your merry way. Once reunited with the van there was one final check where a military guard approached every vehicle and inspected their occupants one last time.
I want to say that around 2pm we arrived in Penang.
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