Never take a bus to Alor Setar to cross border from Thailand… unless you are pretty confident of things.
You do not get a satisfactory or complete answer however hard you try to find on net, in forums, twitter and everywhere else about taking a bus from Hat Yai to Alor Setar, a comparatively less popular place in northern Malaysia. Try in Hat Yai. Go to bus station (also known as Bor Kor So)….
Result?
No direct bus for Alor Setar. Even though the place is big enough to have an airport, a …

Reaching Hat Yai (a.k.a. Had Yai) was no fun.
Though I could speak to a couple of people in the train for 2 minutes, people in my coach were a bit hesitant and not too keen on interacting with each other. After all we were all strangers to each other.

Hat Yai railway station.
Before the train could even halt, hordes of travel related touts entered our coach. Since this sleeper coach is full of foreigners, they

A typical bus stop at Dubai
Fully air-conditioned, spic and span, spotlessly clean, sparkling insides…  Don’t you think it’s too good to be real ? But well, this is an evening in Dubai, supposed to be peak hour in any city of the world. And no, this was not a Friday, their usual holiday.
The bus fare is 2 Dirhams (their currency) for any distance you want to travel. All the buses and the bus stops are air conditioned. There is a route map inside the bus and at the bus …

Contd from Golden Temple.. ..
[We saw all kinds of people at the temple, all with a different hope and faith. Our next stop was Wagah border.]
As I have mentioned earlier, the city of Amritsar is very small. The distances are very less; in my language walkable. You hardly see a taxi there. Shared autorickshaws are available for Rs 5/- only for a distance of upto 2 Kms. From the Golden temple, we took an autorickshaw for Bus depot. No, not the sharing one.
The bus to Wagah border via Attari was …

Contd. from.. ..
[I had mentally prepared to see three major landmarks in Amritsar before getting back. We reached Amritsar at 10:30 AM.]
The moment we got down, horde of rickshawalas and autowalas surrounded us to take us to hotels. New to the city, lack of direction and short on time forced us to take one rickshaw to one of the hotels from his list. Knowing well about the trap I asked him how much commission he gets. “Rs 20 for ordinary room and Rs 50 for an AC room” prompt came …

Contd. from.. ..
[We too went to our sleeper berths and slept. I guess, the bus must have started at around one after filling up the rooftop and giving that family a double sleeper seat.]
I was in a tee and jeans. During night I felt cold, but didn’t have anything except for a filmsy cotton shawl. Hey we had not planned to go to Amritsar, where sometimes the temperature goes down as low as 0° C.
I was oblivious of how many times the bus had stopped but when I opened my …

Contd from ….
[We were asked to assemble at 9 PM at a place which was 1/2 kilometer away. By the time we finished booking it was past 8 PM. We had to have our dinner, refreshen ourselves and proceed towards the assembling place.]
We reached the assembling place sharp at nine. We were made to sit on stone benches under trees in a small triangular park along with other waiting passengers. The touts of different travel agents were bringing in many more passengers. It was fairly dark with lights coming …