This idea sparked off during our pillow talk last month on planning a short trip for the family. Last year we went to Hokkaido and it was epic. Baby ABC loved the driving adventure to the unknown land – travel and learn at the same time. So, this year, as Baby C’s intensive ballet training schedule were only released towards the last quarter of the year, we didn’t plan anything until recently. As all flight tickets price were rocket high due to the year end school holiday, we, then, thought of driving either to the north or south of Malaysia. Then again, we thought, why not drive further to the north or south to the neighbouring countries – either Singapore or Thailand. Hmmm, we have done Singapore many times and therefore, ya…. why not try Thailand….And so it all began…our plan went wild and it became a “Self Drive Trip from KL to Thailand”.
First on the To-Do list was finding a comfortable home for the family trip. The online scouting starts with narrowing the dates, the location, the budget and finally we found this nice newly renovated place via Airbnb. We enjoyed the Airbnb last year while in Hokkaido as we can do some laundry and also perhaps prepare simple meal for the family – which we find it more suitable and convenient when traveling with young children. Simple menu with egg and bread will keep them happy before leaving the house to scout for food. Some famous dining place will require queue and hungry kids = angry grumpy kids. On the other hand, the laundry enable us to travel a bit lighter and this keep mommy happy as dirty laundry will not pile-up like a mountain when we get home. Thus, this year family trip, we opted for Airbnb with facilities of washing machine and kitchen at the least. Parking lot availability is one of the criteria we look out for during the selection process.
Next on the list, find the place of attractions that would be suitable for the family. We turn to the powerful, most knowledgeable “Uncle” – Uncle G. Yes, you are right – Uncle Google! We found this write up and finally shortlist the place of attractions covering the travel dates.
Accomodation – Done!
To-Do list in Hatyai – Done!
Next – How to get there???? Oops! It’s not as straight forward as driving down south to Singapore. As we read more – we became more caution that we may missed out any important details and since we are unfamiliar with Thai language, there might be some challenging unexpected events crossing the border…. We became more wary and conclude that since the immigration and custom is not open 24 hours, we have had to start our journey as early as possible. Based on our usual self drive either to Penang or Johor, we normally start our journey around 11am. Due to the unfamiliar procedures that might occur, we caution Baby ABC that we have to stick to our plan and leave the house by 7am. The total distance from KL to Hatyai is 534km – averagely 6-7 hours without long stopover. But, that would be tiring and since DH prefer to drive all the way, rather than switching with me, we decided that we shall be stopping over Ipoh for breakfast and then lunch in Penang or Kedah before crossing the border before night fall.
Planning went well and we started packing few days earlier. As the packing process starts few days earlier, I find it less taxing and enjoy the process though. The excitement begins during the planning stage and increase as we move into packing stage…. We usually bring a big transparent container and fill them with water bottles, lots of snacks, and some disposable containers for messy food on the road while travelling on the road and we did the same this round. The transparent container gets filled up quickly with lots of snacks!!!
Packing – Done! Ready for the Big Day!
Well, well, well, guess what – Baby B was too excited about the driving trip to Thailand that he couldn’t sleep the night before and woke up at 4:30am. Not only did he wake me up at 4:30am, he also mentioned that he had earlier finished his book and slept only for an hour before he was wide awake. He then have to wake me up….oh no….I need my beauty sleep, so, I pester him to back to bed and luckily he did….
We woke up around 6:40am (after activating the snooze for 40 mins, which means 4 times…hahaha! Gosh, it was so arduous to get up. Anyway, we finally got everyone out of bed and rushed to prepare to start the journey…. We finally manage to leave the house at 7:35am. Not bad at all.😅
First pit-stop :Ipoh for breakfast. We reach Ipoh around 9:45am and went for Dim Sum breakfast at Ming Court Hong Kong Dim Sum. The Dim Sum were great! We will definitely come back for more!
We ordered 16 different items and it was yummilicious. We came to this Dim Sum place before if not mistaken – perhaps it was 7 or 8 years ago. We used to dine at Foh San (which is located right opposite Ming Court). This time, we decided to give this place a try – really glad we made this choice!
With happy tummy and also some take away to fill our crave perhaps on the road, we continue the journey again at 11am. As the after meal drowsiness kicked-in, we decide to stop at the McD for the Wednesday’s half price latte deal. We got our self 3 lattes on the go and some snacks for Baby ABC and hit the highway 1pm.
We crossed the Kedah border around 1:15pm.
Truly excited as we have completed more than half of the journey. The excitement was mounting as we get closer to the Thailand border and wonder – would we be able to pass the immigration smoothly? As we get closer to Changlun, there were lots of signages along the roadside on the availability of Insurance services booth. These booth also assist on completing the immigration forms as well – RM2 per person. As we drove 7 seater car, the insurance charges were RM24. We also got ourselves a sim-card, which will come in handy for the usage of Waze and Google Map when we crossed the border – RM23 for 9-days unlimited data. There’s vehicle inbound and outbound forms – ie TM2 &3 to be completed and that cost RM4 each.
The owner of the booth were very friendly and they guide us on the Step-by-Step clearance of Immigration and Customs – definitely very helpful for first timer like us. The traffic were not bad at all and it wasnt as bad as we were told that it could be few hours queue. The clearance of immigration and custom took us around 55 minutes.
Step 1 : Clearance at Malaysia Immigration – luckily no queue and we brisk through with just presentation of the passport to the officer via the driver window and all passengers remain in the vehicle.
Step 2 : Clearance of Thailand Immigration
At this point, all passengers will required to alight from the vehicle for screening – image and thumbprint were captured individually. The documents presented are the passports with the immigration clearance white card, TM2 & TM3 with the Vehicle insurance document. TM2 will be collected and TM3 is acknowledged and stamped to be returned for our safekeep and to be forward upon departure from Thailand.
Step 3 : Custom clearance of the vehicle
All passengers remain in the vehicle and only the owner of the vehicle coupled with the passport of the owner, insurance documents shall be presented at the counter.
The whole clearance process was smooth and we cleared everything within 55 minutes – considered very good. We drove off excited and ready for our adventure searching for the accommodation to “Check In”!
The whole experience is better than expected and we will definitely do this again! Yeah! We DID it!
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