Options 2

This morning I got up far too early. Hatyai doesn’t get going before 10am. I had breakfast in a small Chinese cafe that ten years ago would have been open to the street, but now shelters from the heat behind a plate glass window and air-conditioning. The tiles and the furniture are the same though. There is a photograph on the wall, amongst the many frames of foreign bank notes. In it the owner as a young girl, in the same cafe, poses with her father and mother. The next generation - three girls, all ugly like their mother, but more so due to their youth (ugliness becoming a lesser sin in the old) - now work there too. Thinking of their existence, with at least three generations working day in day out in the same small shop, made me feel free.

I visited three travel agents. Changing my flights is not possible - far too complex. Buying a new flight is possible, but at least US$450 without taxes, so too expensive.

I decided to go to Kota Baharu, but then that proved inconvenient - not impossible, but a long wait would be necessary. So I took a bus to Penang.

As I crossed the border in to Malaysia it felt like the right thing to do. A homecoming of sorts. Strange.