Our border run to Penang, Malaysia

Border runs are part of the journey of any traveler who wishes to extend their 30-day tourist visa in Thailand. If you are in southern Thailand like us, you have two choices - go to Ranong, Myanmar (around 1500 baht) and get a 15 day extension or go to Penang, Malaysia and get 60 days (around 4000 baht). If you come by plane, you will automatically get 30 days, so that's another option for those who can afford it! Two weeks ago, we went to Myanmar. I was waiting for my employer to get together all the paper work I needed in order to ask for a Non Immigrant B Visa. When they provided me with it, I was ready to go to Malaysia.We left at 21:30 by mini bus and drove all night. There was only 6 of us in the van which was nice - last time, when we went to Myanmar, the bus was full with 12 passengers. Early morning we woke up to cross the border and eat breakfast. After exiting Thailand and entering Malaysia, we went to the embassy and left our passport there so they could arrange our visas. We arrived at our hotel in Penang, Malaysia, around 10:00 in the morning. We rested until lunch, at 12:00. After that, we had all afternoon and evening to ourselves. We really enjoyed visiting Penang. We visited a few of its beautiful temples.We walked around little India (I was very tempted to by a Sari but restrained myself).

We watched an interesting show outside one of the temples.

We visited a Mosque too.

This is what I had to wear in the Mosque. The material is so thick, it doesn't breathe at all and I became very hot and sweaty in a couple of minutes (the smile didn't last!)

Chris in the Mosque.And then went for dinner. Because this wasn't included in our border run package, we walked around quite a bit before deciding where we wanted to eat. We selected a restaurant which had typical Malaysian food, which felt like the smartest thing to do. When we sat down, we got offered tea and peanuts while we were making our decision. We selected two meals (crispy noodles with shrimp and sweet and sour pork). We asked and they said the rice was included with the pork dish. The noodles were quite disappointing, but the meat was nice. After eating, we received our bill. It was shocking! They charged us for the tea, the peanuts, the rice, added tax and tip! We didn't even have enough money on us to pay the bill! It was frustrating! We ended up leaving all we had and walked out, feeling like we had been ripped off. Without any more money (I'm exaggerating, we could've changed some bahts into Malaysian riggits but we had just spent so much we didn't want to spend anymore!) we simply went back to the hotel room and called it a day!!

The next morning, we had breakfast, checked out, had lunch and we left around 12:30. We went to the embassy first where everyone received their passport with visa stamp. We drove all day until 18:00 when we stopped for dinner. We were dropped off at our apartment around 23:00, very happy to be home and to have our visa permitting us to stay a little longer in the Land of smiles.