After getting back on the mainland we made our way through the ferry complex of shops and restaurants and followed Maps.me 10 minutes to the local bus terminal. We boarded the local bus at 2pm (times clearly marked at the terminal) for 6MYR back to Khota Bharu, which took about an hour and a half through all the small local towns and villages. The bus stopped in the middle of town and we walked 2 minutes to our pre-booked room at AA guesthouse. We had a private room but it was very hot, the wifi didn’t reach the room and there was no communal area to sit. After sitting in the stairwell for a while to sort out some stuff online we eventually gave up and decided to get the local bus (1.50 MYR) to the Aeon mall for some cool aircon, to try to get more data on our sim and for really just somewhere to go. We wandered around and ended up getting pizza at the food court before going back. After a quick walk around the city we just had a quiet night back in the room due to there not being much to see or much open.
In the morning we checked out of our accommodation and left our luggage at the bus station left luggage for 2MYR so we could go out and about as we didn’t need to leave until the afternoon. We got another bus this time to KB Mall to check out a local coffee shop we had seen on trip advisor and to hopefully use their wifi. We found the Arnold cycling café in the mall which was done up well and had lovely coffee and cheesecake. We used this time to book hostels for Borneo before getting the bus back to the bus terminal. After grabbing our luggage we boarded the 27 bus (1.60 MYR) to the train station in Walut Besut so we could finally board the jungle sleeper train! This was the start of a multi-phase journey as we were trying to get to Melaka on the opposite coast on a budget.
We found our carriage and our designated bunks, both lower bunks, which were very spacious and comfortable (we had booked our train tickets online at the beginning of our Malaysia trip, changing when we were getting it due to it being fully booked and rerouting our trip). We enjoyed the journey watching out the window, talking and playing cards before trying to sleep. This unfortunately didn’t really happen as I was conscious that we weren’t the last stop and needed to be aware of where we were and when we were going to get off. I didn’t need to fret though as there were members of the train staff that came to wake individuals up before their stop to make sure they were ready to go.
We arrived into Gemas at 6.30am and then bought tickets to Tempin (16MYR) for 7.30am train, which took about 25minutes. From the train it was then a 10 minute walk to the bus station, where we boarded a Pancrame bus 1A to Melaka Sentral (12 MYR) and took about an hour. We bought coach tickets from one of the terminal booths when we found the right bus and a time we wanted for heading into Melaka town. The terminal had a range of restaurants but it ended up being a MacDonald type breakfast morning before getting on the Bus 17. When we arrived at a stop as close to our new couchsurfers home as possible we got off and walked down the street to find her place which was a whole other adventure.
Alex
Comments