On my last day in Kota Bharu I spent a lot of time at the local franchise of a big international fast food chain, trying to use their internet for my travel plans. It was horribly slow though and the location rather noise, resulting in me deciding to leave the next day and doing the preparations elsewhere. In the afternoon Nik took me for a ride around town. We stopped at a Chinese temple that features one of the biggest Buddha statues I’ve seen so far.

Travel guides, either printed or online, pretty much agree that there is not much to see in Kota Bharu. And right they are. One of the few sights is the big central market, conveniently located near the hostel. I went there with two fellow backpackers I met at the hostel. The market is, compared to the one in Melaka, a dirty and smelly hole. One of the butchers had sense of humour though and handed me his axe to give chopping bones a crack.

Yesterday an 8h bus ride brought me to the north-eastern part of Malaysia. It was another of these really comfy buses, definitely not the worst way to travel and definitely better than any train I’ve seen in SEA. At a time the ride got a bit painful when they started playing some Malay pop music. Worse than anything the 90s ever brought forth. We stopped twice, once for lunch and once at at mosque.