I just returned from my trip to Penang yesterday evening, a much longer trip than I expected and I have quite a few things to talk about: On 14th January, I awoke quite early in the morning and set off for Bangkok, initially I had to try and get my new passport from the British Embassy there and then continue my trip to Penang. On the train to Bangkok I phoned the embassy to see if my passport was ready to be collected and they just told me that my passport was still being processed at the moment. I explained on the phone that I was travelling that day and I needed it urgently, they just replied that they would try to complete it quickly and phone me when it was ready.

When I arrived at Bangkok train station, I had just 90 minutes to go before my train left for Butterworth (Penang) and the embassy had still not phoned me, so I decided to go to the embassy anyway and find out what was happening. I arrived at the British Embassy at 13:45, just one hour now before my train departed, I went to the consular section, looked inside and it was full of people waiting to be attended to. They have a ticket machine at the door where you get a ticket with a number to be called to the counter, I quickly got a ticket, looked at the number, then looked at the number being displayed and attended to at the moment and my number was way down the queue. I managed to find a spare seat, sat down and was watching how slowly the people were being attended to and thinking to myself "I am going to miss my train today, what do I do now?"

Still sitting there in the embassy and now feeling a little depressed at the thought of missing my train and the extra money that it would cost me for a visa overstay and to change my train ticket, when behind one of the counters a quite attractive lady appeared and looked around the room, spotted me, smiled and nodded her head to me, then turned around and left the room again. I thought that it must have been someone who worked at the embassy who knew me, although her face was vaguely familiar, I couldn't recollect really knowing this lady, but thinking about her was a pleasant distraction from just sitting there, thinking about my situation and getting more depressed. About two minutes later, this lady appeared behind the counter again, looked directly at me and smiled again, but this time she waved her hand and beckoned me to one of the counters, as I got closer to the counter, I could see that she had a couple of passports in her hand which she gave to the person on the counter, smiled at me again, turned around and left the room. The gentleman behind the counter dealt with me immediately, he had two of my passports in his hand, both old and new, and they had arranged for me to jump the queue.

I quickly checked and signed for my new passport, thanked them and left the embassy as quickly as I could, grabbed a taxi on the road outside and managed to get back to the train station with a good twenty minutes to spare, so I had a much needed cup of tea at my regular tea stall in the station there and now started to relax a little. I looked at my new passport whilst sitting drinking tea and memorised the new number, issue and expiration dates, this is a habit of mine I like to keep these facts in my head. About ten minutes later I went to the train, found my seat, stowed my case, sat down and took my leg off which was a little painful now after my dashing around, then really started to unwind as the train started to pull out of the station.

So this was the start of my last trip to Penang and it really started off quite well. When I have written on my blog about the British Embassy in Bangkok before, I have always been complaining about them, but this time they really went out of their way to help me. So giving credit where credit is due: Thank you! To all the staff that helped me at the British Embassy in Bangkok on that day.

More about my legless trip to Penang on my next post! Cheers for now, Legless.