Day 151, Sunday 3 June 2012, Kota Bahru.
Two more sleeps
It was a really noisy night, lots of people walking up and down the paths making lots of noise till all hours, so a lousy sleep was had, I had been on a pretty good roll with the sleep too damnit. I was up at 6.45 and met Daniel in the reception area and we walked down to the wharf at Coral Bay to get the ferry back to the mainland.
It was a good run, not too rough and we were there nine. Before heading back up to Kota Bahru (KB) we had a final roti chanai then went our separate ways. Daniel was going to hitch and I was going to try and find some other travellers and share a taxi. After half an hour of waiting and interrogating people as they came past I ended up getting a taxi on my own to KB, it was about $20NZ for the 75km journey so not outrageous. This is a job I would be good at !
The hostel I had to chosen to stay at didn’t exist any more and it appears a lot of the cheap ones are closed for the season – or maybe just closed ? so I ended up staying in a hotel at vastly more than I wanted to pay. But it had awesome broadband so I didn’t mind too much, I did catch up on blogs and then went walkabout.
Loved this shop.
And these bikes.
Not sure if was just a Sunday thing but all the sites in KB -museums, grand palace etc were shut! So I wandered around had some lunch and then found the only place in KB that retailed booze. KB and the north east of Malaysia is quite a strict muslim region.
I bought a bottle of NZ Pinot – it was not bad.
In the afternoon it rained so hard I could not here the music from my laptop. From my window.
After a couple of hours of wine and Youtubing I went for a walk out again to find a Chinese restaurant for dinner, the Chinese generally sell beer where the Malay’s don’t. I found a decent place and my last big Tiger and a very nice chilli chicken meal before wandering back to the hotel and snapping some graffiti on the way.
I didn’t do much else after that.
Where is Phil now? 
That’s a good price for the taxi from Kuala Besut back to Kota Bharu. I read that the pricing is assymetric and getting down there costs a lot more than getting back. I guess I’ll know soon.
That sounds about right… more of an opportunity for discounting on the way back to. I took an un airconned cab back, heaps cheaper – and the window winds down 🙂
We managed to get Kota Bharu to Besut for RM40! The driver lived near Besut and he was on his way home. The return back to Kota Bharu is placarded at the jetty at RM50 but we’ll see what we can do 😉
damn rm40 is excellent ! I think the three of us paid 26 each. I got 45 for the return…
Bummer about the diving, but I heard the snorkelling is fabulous there, should have done some myself.