This trip happened in May 2010 when I had work attachment in Kelantan Malaysia. I hope it wasn't too late to share. It was one day trip at the weekend and I think it was so interesting and fun.
This weekend trip just involved my sister, her boyfriend (now already husband) and me. They visited me at the hotel I stayed and we planned to visit few places in Kelantan. We heard a lot about Rantau Panjang so our first destination was to that town. The traffic jam in down town Kota Bharu cause us much time to reach there. So we took about 1 hour and half time drive to that place.
Rantau Panjang is a town which has duty-free shopping area. We saw a lot of shop lots and many people busy with shopping. It was interesting when seeing the shops selling a lot of fake brand like Levi's Jeans, handbags and clothing. I noticed some people came to buy the big mattress which they called "toto". The mattress was packed in a really nice case. I like the idea of the case.
I am not really fan of buying fake stuff but the food was attracting me a lot. They selling a variety of snacks, nuts, dried food and fruits. We bought a few packs of sweet tamarind candy, fish snacks, pistachio nuts and some other snacks, I can't remember all of it. The pistachio nut was really really good. Oh yeah, her boyfriend bought some Batik fabric for gifts.
It was cloudy and the temperature was little bit high humidity in that area. We got sweat when we walked around the place about an hour. Since we knew that town is the major border crossing Malaysia-Thailand. He had an idea to take us to Thailand border. Few friends of him advised us not to go there because of the Thai riot recently but we took a chance to have a good lunch there. Anyway there has a Malaysian immigration office in the middle of the town and we can drive to Thailand legally. The idea of crossing the Golok river was awesome!!. I have been to Bangkok in 2004 by flight but this kind of trip was much more fun.
The pictures below was a view from Malaysia border. I did not have any idea how much depth the water was and it looked like that we can walk about 20 steps to cross the border. We need to cross by boat so the cost of the boat was about RM 3 (approx USD 1) for each person or you can get cheaper as low as RM1. It depends on people who were taking you there. That bald head guy who was charged us and took us there.
We were in the boat crossing to Thai,
Yeay! I stepped on the border. The sun ray was hitting straightly on my face that's why I looked like moody
When we reached the Thai borders, one of us required to leave the ID card, register the name and state the purpose of travelling at the guard house. The guard house was built under the small roof, a table and a Dell laptop!!. That was funny! It just located beside the signboard where I was standing in the picture above.
There were few men waiting with motor bikes to transport us to the town. We told them that we want to have lunch at good thai restaurant. The thais know where the good restaurant was so each one of us had to ride with the men. I snapped some picture while on the motor bike. If you notice, you will see me in the side mirror taking pictures with my camera phone. 
The town was so quiet, no traffic and there was no people walking along the street. I guess because of the riot just happened and the people just stay home for precaution. I saw a lot of them ride the motorbike on the street and only just one or two cars on the road. I have little bit scary. I found there were many entertainment places like bars and karaoke along the street. Finally we reached the restaurant - "Hj Hussin King" restaurant. Sound like middle eastern. haha!
Thai tom yam, som tam (papaya salad) were my favourite so we ordered it with rice and some other food. The thai cuisine was great and the price wasn't so bad. Around RM20 for 3 people.
We planned to explore more about the area but I couldn't have much time so we decided to go back to the border. After having lunch, we waited for the motorbike man to bring us back to the border. All those guy were nice, they rode us around to see the town area, train station, schools before we returned to the border.
The picture below was a Golok river which a view from Thai border
We were heading back to the Malaysia border...
We drove back to Kota bharu around 6 pm and we had no idea what was the next destination. Wakaf Che Yeh was on the list, but I wasn't really excited about the shopping things. We met his old friend (local people) and he suggested us to see the longest sleeping Buddha in Southeast Asia. What?! The longest in Southeast Asia?!! I never knew this... I was excited to see it. His friend guided us to the place. It almost getting dark when we reached there. The temple was quiet and very clean. No monk, or people. I got few shots of the sleeping buddha. It was 40 ft long and sooo huge! Actually that statue was not closing his eyes but he was laying on the bed.You can see clear picture at this site, somebody took better pic in daytime. but mine was below; We entered inside the building and there were lot of buddha statue standing behind it when we were walking around the sleeping statue. I can't take the photos since there was so dark in the temple. This was great experience and I still hardly believe it that Malaysia has something to proud in Southeast Asia.
The last destination was Wakaf Che yeh, nothing interesting, maybe it was about people selling almost same stuff I found in Rantau Panjang. After few minutes round the shop lots, we stopped at the restaurant to have some dinner.
I really enjoyed this one day trip.
