After finishing trekking in Bukit Lawang we quickly high tailed it back to Medan to catch our ferry to Malaysia on the 5th. We made it on time no problem. Maybe we could have even taken it slower. The ferry was supposed to leave Medan at 10:00 but they didn't start revving the engines until about 12:30 and we finally left at 1:00. We had finally gotten used to "Indonesian time" by this point so we hardly even noticed.

A four hour ferry ride took us to Georgetown, Malaysia. Biking off the boat was quite a shock. Malaysia is well developed compared to Indonesia (especially Sumatra) and the buildings were clean and impressive. Another interesting thing we noticed about Malaysia was the multi-national atmosphere. Malays, Indians and Chinese make up the population Georgetown so there was an interesting variety of food and signboards all mixed together. Alas, we could have stayed longer in Malaysia but time constraints prevailed and we loaded our bikes on to a mini-bus that took us three hours to the Malaysia - Thai border and then one more hour on to Hat Yai.

Malaysia, it could be said, was ahead of Thailand in the development game, but these days it is hard to tell. The Thai economy is on a growth spurt again after sputtering for a few years in the aftermath of the 1997 financial crisis and it is easy to tell.

We stayed in Hat Yai for two nights. Hat Yai is Thailand's third biggest city and is quite an interesting place. Lots of Chinese food and shops (more than ethnic Thai) and also quite a few Muslims. One of the things I had counted on was the degree to which culture spills over borders. On the map the boundaries between Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia are clearly marked but in reality the people living in this area have a lot in common and don't really fit the stereoptypical mold we might have of their country's citizens. Pretty interesting.

In Hat Yai we mostly did some errands and spent two nights under the same roof (which is a welcome relief after changing beds for almost a 7 days in a row). Our errands involved getting Sarah a new pair of glasses (she lost her old ones while diving into a fast flowing river after our first day of trekking) and getting some bike repairs done. We were amazed with the bike shop that we came across. The bikes they were selling were top of the line (better than ours) and the mechanic knew what he was doing (better than us). Very fortunate considering we are now leaving for a 10 day ride through a much more rural area of Thailand.