Mission: Beat Their System, Part III

The bus slowed down and Kady and I were instructed to exit and "go that way to hotel". No one else exited the bus and we wasted about fifteen minutes wandering around with all our luggage trying to figure out what they meant. Eventually it became apparent we were going to have to walk across the border into Malaysia. We tried to gather information about how to get to the bus station to get a ticket to Penang. That's when we found out we were about half an hour too late... we had missed the last bus leaving for Penang from that station. We would have to go to a farther station.
A nice Thai man who was crossing the border to get the cheaper Malaysia gasoline gave us a ride to the taxi stand. These taxi drivers could charge us anything they wanted as they were the only taxis and they knew we had hit a dead end. Their prices reflected this knkowledge. We protested and haggled and Kady waved her arms and pointed. We were angry and feeling defeated. It had started to get dark shortly after exiting the bus, but it was decided we would walk (well, perhaps storm off was a better description) as every time we have done this to "cool off", a better opportunity has presented itself. Which it did about thirty seconds later when two of the taxi drivers standing by as Kady argued with the main driver had flagged down a tour bus headed to the next bus station where we would be able to get a ticket to Penang that night.

I'll always wonder what their "cut" was.

This bus was a luxury hotel on wheels which bucked a little against my principle of doing it "our" way, the "local" way. But man that air-conditioning was soothing. And we were still under target, pricewise.
This bus ride was less than 20 km but they somehow managed to drag it out over two hours. The drivers mocked us by immitating our voices as we expressed concern to one another- concern that perhaps there was a huge misunderstanding or we had just been "sold" to these drivers. But the old rich-looking Westerner sleeping to our right provided a constant source of placation until we finally arrived at the station. The station where, if we had arrived 20 minutes earlier, we could have purchased a ticket directly to Penang for a few dollars and left immediately.
But instead we had to wait an hour and a half for the midnight bus. The midnight bus to Butterworth that would maybe- just maybe- get us to the ferry to Penang before it closed at 2am. We could break even. We couldn't beat their price at this point- too many things had gone wrong. But we could feel vindicatied in matching their price against all the odds. And the character that had been built within us that day- well, that really is priceless right?
Right?

Every sign we saw for this town was spelled differently so it will remain nameless in this blah-g. But it is a Muslim town in a Muslim country and a town that is notoriously hard on Western women. And there Kady and I were- two Western solo-travelling women feeling naked with our exposed shins and forearms in a sea of women in hijabs and frowny frowny men.
I stared at the ground while Kady somehow got into a discussion with a mulleted Muslim man who claimed to be a rockstar. She got in an argument with him after he said that even though he regretted the second wife, his wives liked the situation.
"No, they don't," Kady said. And she stood her ground.

I drifted in and out of sleep on that bus as I watched the clock. I had to subtract 27 minutes from the clock to know the real time. We arrived at the Butterworth station where the bus clock announced the time as 2:12... minus 27 minutes...is 1:45 am! We had fifteen minutes to get to the ferry!!! We were so close we could taste it. We got our luggage and raced to the ferry. We arrived breathless, hearts racing after 50 or so steps, to find a sign with scribbly symbols on it. The Indian man standing there looking just as dejected as we felt explained that the ferry was inexplicably closed until 5am.
A lot happened over the course of deciding whether we would be stubborn and wait til five am or just take the overpriced taxi to the front stoop of our hotel. There was plenty of arm-flailing and pointing on Kady's part.

In the end, we accepted defeat with a sigh. In an attempt to hedge one more point in there for team Kady&Summer, we offered the nice Indian man a free ride in our taxi.

Yes, their system beat us that day. It threatened our sanity and our friendship and almost broke my arm. But we are, uhm, better for the?... at least we?... our character?...

... well at least someone got a free ride out of it.