Drive to Krabi Day 1

Drive to Krabi Day 2

Drive to Krabi Day 3

Drive To Krabi Day 4

Drive to Krabi Day 5

After breakfast, I had some time to walk around the area nearby Aonang Villa.  Surprisingly I discover a board showing 50% discount for massage from 10am to 2pm.  I guess business must be very slow in this low season period. In fact I had been offered 20% discount on massage previous day at Aonang beach front area.

Zheng Er enjoying breakfast before we head back to Hatyai at 10.00am

Group photo session.

We took the same way where we came from few days ago, highway 4.  But this time, we by passed Trang town and head over to Khao Pubpa for lunch.

Some poster at the restaurant telling the story about the development around the area long long time ago.

After lunch, continue our journey back to Hatyai via Phattalung.

Along the way, we stopped by some local stall along the highway selling these delicious pineapple, some call it crystal honey pineapple.

Car 3 finally decided to buy the antique coffee table, luckily it fit nicely to my truck.

We reached Hatyai about 4.30pm, check in to hotel and some member continue their shopping and massage activity.

At night, we had our dinner at this popular duck noodle.  As usual the portion is rather small and you need at least 2 bowls to fill up your stomach.

The stall operates from 5.00pm to 4.00am morning.

The location of the stall is a bit off the main street, it is located at a dead end alley.  The land mark is look for Regency hotel, from the hotel entrance looking towards Lee Garden Plaza, there is a small lane on your left hand side ( next to Regency open car park ), the stall is located at the end of the walk way.

There are 2 stalls selling the same duck noodle, I cannot tell which one is better and original.  Maybe you can try both.

Besides duck noodle, there are a numbers of other choice as well.

After dinner, we moved on to the famous street in from of Lee Garden Plaza for some dessert.  To be honest, the price is rather expensive for road side dessert, 50Baht ( about RM5)  for Lin Chee Kang where you can get it at less then RM2 in Malaysia.

Drive to Krabi Day 1

Drive to Krabi Day 2

Drive to Krabi Day 3

Drive to Krabi Day 4

Drive To Krabi Day 6

Meet with the rest of the members at Rawang area 7am. Since some of the team members are late, we decided to have out breakfast at Rawang rest area instead of Tapah rest area.

Depart Rawang rest area about 7.45am and reach ChangLun about 12.30pm.

Refill our car fully before crossing Thailand border, currently petrol in Thailand is selling about 30Baht per litre.

After refill we head to this Mini Café to have our lunch ( the food here is just filling up your stomach since crossing the customer may take hours during peak season )and prepare all the border crossing documentation.

All you need to do is pass your passport to the counter in the café, they will prepare the Thailand immigration white card with all the necessary information. Please make sure you check all the passport before leaving the counter. Please take note that you need the sign the white card as well.

You will also need to purchase Thailand insurance here ( There are a lot of places providing the above service, even just beside Thailand custom, but this place is the most convenient as they have a huge parking space.). It will cost you less than RM20 for 1 week 3rd party insurance coverage in Thailand. Please take note that your Malaysia insurance does not cover any risks while you are in Thailand, please check with your insurance agent on the 1st party coverage while you travel in Thailand.

We left the mini café about 1.30pm and proceed to the Bukit Kayu Hitam check point few KM away.

Traffic is slight heavy and it took us about 30 minutes to cross Malaysia check point and proceed to Thailand check point. As usual, park our car at the car park besides the custom building and proceed to immigration.

Once you stamp your passport, the car owner may proceed to the custom counter to obtain your vehicle import permit. ( They will not entertain you if you had not got your passport stamped) . Hand over the car registration card and your passport at the custom counter ( In the middle lane of the custom building – if you see somebody carrying our Malaysia Pink color car registration document, that’s the custom counter ) and they will print out the vehicle permit, proceed to the next counter just few steps in front of the custom counter, sign the document in front of the office and hand over the document to them.

Once the above procedure completed, you may proceed to drive your car over to the counter where you handed over the vehicle permit moment ago, the officer will hand a copy to you, please have a quick check to make sure it is indeed belongs to you. ( Please keep the copy safely as you need to return it to Thailand custom when you are coming back to Malaysia ).

Sawadee krup, welcome to Thailand.


Please take note that the Thai time is 1 hour behind us, it is recommended to adjust your watch, alarm and handphone ( especially if you use your hand phone as an alarm ) to local time once your cross the border to avoid miss communication.

It took us about 20 minutes to clear Thailand procedure and we proceed to Hatyai.

We reach Hatyai about 4pm and proceed to enjoy the local food, shopping and massage.

Little Princes is very excited about the trip.

Zheng Yuan and Zheng Ni at Changlung, refilling before we cross the border.This is the mini cafe where you can get all your immigration and insurance documentation done.

We are staying at Regency Hotel, right in front of the hotel is a restaurant selling famous roast piglet.  They are actually preparing it by the road side.

In front of the famous Lee Graden plaza where the night market located, we found this stall selling a lot of kuih, I strongly recommend the ” Ubi Kayu” with coconut milk. It cost about 20-30Baht per pack.

As usual, the night market is crowded with Malaysian due to Malaysia public holiday, you just feel like you are in Malaysia.

At night, Car 8 bring us to a seafood restaurant about 15 mins walk from the Hotel. To be honest, I don’t know the name and the location of the restaurant.  Apparently this shop is patron mostly by local Thai, there is another restaurant right opposite this shop serving mostly Malaysian.  I believe this is because the restaurant opposite hanging out banner in mandarin and english where it can attract non Thai speaking visitors.Car 3 cannot decide what to eat.

Crab?Sotong?
Prawn?
Wonderful meal and everybody enjoy the food.  The crabmeat fried rice is the best that I ever had or may be I am hungry after a long drive.

A slow walk to the hotel, we discover a lot of food stall along the road side selling different kind of foods.  We had identify a duck mee which we will try once we back to Hatyai from Krabi.

After dinner, continue shopping at the night market, massage and zzzzzzzzzzz

Drive to Krabi Day 2

Drive to Krabi Day 3

Drive to Krabi Day 4

Drive to Krabi Day 5

Drive To Krabi Day 6

After 12 hours drive yesterday, we had a good night sleep, wake up at about 9am, breakfast and bring the kids out to enjoy local tuk tuk, a very popular mode of transport at Hatyai.

Do some last minute shopping at Hatyai before we proceed back to Malaysia.

We reach home about 10.30pm.

It is a very enjoyable trip as we got to see a lot of different places form south to north, west to east Thailand. Most of the places we went are unknown to foreigner, it is not so commercialise at all = money well spend.

A long 12 hours drive from Bangkok to Hatyai.

We stop almost every 2-3 hours for short break, lunch and petrol.

Reach Hadyai at 7.30pm, dinner, check in to hotel and zzzzzzzzzzzz

No Morning call, enjoy breakfast at hotel and proceed to last minute shopping and massage.

Left for lunch at Sadao about 2pm.

Due to heavy traffic, both Thailand and Malaysia custom was very busy and it took us 2 hours to cross the border.

The procedure of crossing the border is quite similar where all the passenger must get down from the car to get the passport stamp. The drive must drive the car passing through the customer, hand over the car entry permit ( you need to get down from the car to sign the form and a log book – just park in front of the custom office at the end of the drive through lane ).

After you hand over the car entry permit, you may park your car at the parking space and return to the immigration office to get your passpost stamp. Once everything done, your may drive your car out of the parking and directly to Malaysia custom.

Duty free shop is on your right hand side and the price is 1 of the cheapest I encounter.

Passing through Malaysia custom is a breeze. Passenger do not need to get down from the car, just drive to one of the immigration lane, get the passport stamped, pay the toll ( ya, after no toll for 5 days ) and proceed to custom check, just answer the question by the custom officer and welcome back to Malaysia.

We reach Changlung about 7pm Malaysia time, dinner and proceed back to Kuala Lumpur.

It is a wonderful holiday and next year plan is in the process.

So, is it expensive to travel by car to Thailand ? A member”s Toyota Avanza used about RM300 fuel to cover about 1800 KM in 6 days, Toyota Innova about RM400, Toyota Hilux about RM400, Pajero 2.4 Auto RM700.

The price of petrol is about RM0.50 more expensive than in Malaysia but travelling in the speed of 90 – 110km/h proved to be very economical.

Drive to Koh Samui – Day 1

Drive to Koh Samui – Day 2

Drive to Koh Samui – Day 3

Drive to Koh Samui – Day 4

Drive to Koh Samui – Day 5

Check out early, breakfast at hotel and proceed to ferry pier to catch the 10am ferry. As I mentioned earlier, it is good to purchase the return ticker if possible so you don’t need to queue up again. In our case, we did not manage to get the return ticket from Donsak but we are so lucky that the Als Resort and Raja Ferry under the same owner, we manage to get our vehicle ticket from hotel.

Arrive at ferry pier about 9pm, proceed to the ticketing office to obtain the boadring voucher by showing the ticket that we bought from hotel. After that, move to another ticketing office opposite for passenger ticket ( I wonder why they don’t have it in 1 office ? ).

We board the ferry on time at 10am. Good bye Koh Samui.

We arrived at Donsak about 12pm and proceed to Nakhon Si Thammarat for lunch. Since everyone missed the A & A restaurant, we head back there for lunch.

After lunch, we proceed to visit the oldest temple with about 1500 years of history call Wat Phra MahaThat.












After that we proceed our journey to Hadyai via Songkhla ( Highway 408/407 ). Our plan was to visit the mermaid statue at Songkhla, but one of the member’s car having a engine over heating problem. Luckily the driver dicovered the increase of temperature and stoping by the road side on time before more damage done to the engine. A quick check discovered that one of the radiator host was broken ( It was replaced with new host before the trip ), a temporary host was used in order to move the car for another 50km until we reach a town where spare host available for replacement.

Total damage, 150Baht for radiator host from Isuzu ( modified to suit Pajero ), 200Baht labour. Paid the bill happily and proceed our journey.

So lesson learn, even new parts could fail you. Bring additional spare parts. The incident delay us for 45 minutes and its too late for us to visit the mermaid. We reached Hadyai at 7.30pm, checked in to hotel and proceed for dinner.

Again, wonderful dinner and good massage.

Drive to Koh Samui – Day 1

Drive to Koh Samui – Day 2

Drive to Koh Samui – Day 3

Drive to Koh Samui – Day 4

Drive to Koh Samui – Day 6

Breakfast at Tapah rest area follow by lunch stop at ChangLung, the border town before crossing to Thailand.

We reach Changlung at about 1pm, prepare our boarding pass and car insurance at a restaurant/rest area ( short drive after Changlung town with a huge signboard ” Mini Cafe “.

Just hand over your passport and car registeration card to the counter and they will prepare all the necessary document to enter Thailand. The cost is RM1 per passport and the insurance depending on the car types and duration of stay. A minimum 9 days insurance for a saloon car cost less then RM20.00.

After everything is ready, proceed to Bukit Kayu Hitam check point for custom clearance. Passing through the Malaysia custom is very simple, just drive to the available counter and hand over your passport ( Passenger does not need to get down from car ). Once its done, we proceed to Thailand border where we need to park our car at the parking area and everyone must get down from the car and proceed to the immigration office. Once the passport is stamped, the car owner must proceed to another counter in the middle of the drive through lane to obtain a car entry permit. All you need to do is hand over the passport and the car registration card to the officer and he/she will print out a copy of the car entry permit to you.

You must proceed to the next counter in front of you to hand in the car entry permit to another officer ( The officer will ask you to sign on the car entry permit ), once you hand over the car entry permit to the officer, you can now proceed back to your car and drive through the custom, as you pass the custom, the officer will return the car entry form that you submited early on, please have a quick check to make sure that you collect the correct car entry permit.

All done and Sawadee Khrap, welcome to Thailand.

For your information, Thailand has an hour different time zone with Malaysia. 2pm in Malaysia is 1pm in Thailand. It is adviseable to adjust your watch to local time to avoid confusion.

About 45 minutes later, we reach hotel Mayflower Glande, Hatyai at about 4pm. Check in to the hotel and we proceed to enjoy the food and shopping as well as good massage after a long day drive.

As usual, the food is good and price is very reasonable.

Drive to Koh Samui – Day 2

Drive to Koh Samui – Day 3

Drive to Koh Samui – Day 4

Drive to Koh Samui – Day 5

Drive to Koh Samui – Day 6