My next task was to find a way to get to Bangkok. I needed wifi or a phone and a tiny Malaysian rail station wasn't looking too promising, so I started walking to Thailand. Apparently almost no one walks across the border because the guards and car drivers seemed sort of amused.
Getting into Thailand was pretty easy. Finding a reliable wireless connection so I could check rail schedules was not. I tried to ask customs officials, but no one spoke English. Eventually I found a brochure listing all the trains from the border town and there was one headed to Bangkok in just two hours! On the downside, the train was scheduled to take 24 hours. Yuck. That meant I would miss my flight to India.
Without internet, I could not use my laptop to call AA to change my flights. Instead, I had to get the local AA reservations number for Thailand and convince someone to loan me their Thai cell phone. The AA number wasn't hard since I had packed a giant list just in case. The cell phone was trickier, but the 4th border guard trusted me I guess. He showed me how to call Thai numbers and I was connected to American Airlines! Except she spoke Thai. I don't. I was on hold for 15 minutes while she found an English-speaking agent and the border guard wondered why I was using all his minutes.
Eventually I was able to push back all three upcoming flights, but I lost my business class seat on two of them. I got a flight to Mumbai at 1:15am local time on the 22nd. Then because I have no Indian visa, I have a flight to Amman at 5:15am local time on the 23rd. Then I have a flight to Tel Aviv from Amman later on the 23rd. It's not going to be fun having horrible flight times, camping out in the airport, or flying coach on a business class ticket, but it's better than no flights at all.
After confirming all my flights, I had an hour and a half to get back across the border and try to get a ticket for the train. Leaving Thailand was pretty easy. They didn't seem to care that I had never even left the customs house. Malaysia was much more skeptical. They wanted to know why I had left Malaysia for less than an hour, why I was walking, and where I was going. When I told them I wanted to go to Bangkok, they were even more confused. It took a very long time to convince them that I was an innocent tourist just trying to get to the Bangkok airport.
When I finally got back to Malaysia, I semi-ran to the ticket counter. I explained the cancelled train and wanted to transfer my ticket to the new train. Surprisingly, this wasn't hard for him. Then I had to get into the immigration line again (since I was leaving Malaysia and entering Thailand.) Again, leaving was easy. Malaysia doesn't seem to care about you leaving the country, which I guess makes sense. But now it was Thailand's turn to try to reject me. When he saw I had already entered Thailand that day, he wanted me to wait until tomorrow. I explained that I went to Thailand to make a phone call and he acted like it was the worst excuse ever. It does sound pretty bad, but it was the truth. I showed him my rail ticket and he let me in.
It was just in time because the train started moving less than a minute after I boarded it. Woo! What a day.
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