The Train to Malaysia Still Has a Change of Train in the Middle of It
There is no Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur through train any more, and everybody still books one. Here is what actually happens at Padang Besar, and why it is still the best crossing in the region.
There was a time when you could buy one ticket in Bangkok and get off in Kuala Lumpur. That train is gone, and it has been gone for the better part of a decade, and yet people still turn up at Hua Lamphong asking for it with a printout in their hand.
The trains still run. The romance of a single through service does not. Here is what is actually on the ground.
Last verified 1 August 2026.
Why the through train ended
Malaysia rebuilt its northern rail line for electric trains, and the rolling stock and electrification standards on the two sides stopped matching. Once they stopped matching, a train could not physically run through. So the Bangkok to Butterworth service ended, and what replaced it is a change of train at a station that happens to be called the same thing on both sides of a border.
That station is Padang Besar. There is a Padang Besar in Malaysia and a Padang Besar in Thailand, and they are adjacent but separate, and the gap between them is where you spend the most unexpectedly tense ten minutes of the journey.
What crossing by train is actually like
You get off the train, you walk through Malaysian immigration, you walk a short distance through no man's land, and you walk through Thai immigration. Customs for both countries is in the same complex, which means the rule everyone forgets applies with full force: you take all your luggage with you, including the bag you were hoping to leave in the luggage hold.
Allow about ten minutes, generously, and more if the queue is a Saturday queue. It is a small station with a steady stream of local cross-border traffic, not a checkpoint designed to intimidate a nervous tourist.
You do not need to book a connecting Thai service in advance, if you are going to Hat Yai. The SRT runs a shuttle between Hat Yai and Padang Besar on the Thai side with padded third class bench seats, and it is a turn up and go service. It takes roughly two hours.
You buy the Thai portion at the Thai station, and you can pay in baht or ringgit. Which is a small thing that saves a specific and annoying twenty minutes of hunting for a working ATM on a walk that is not long enough to justify that problem.
Getting to the other side
From Penang, you take the Komuter from Butterworth to Padang Besar, and it runs close to hourly through the day. This is the route most people want and it is the least interesting one, which is a fair trade.
From Kuala Lumpur, the ETS from KL Sentral takes roughly five hours. Note that it does not stop at Butterworth, so if your plan is KL to Penang and then the border, you are changing trains in KL, not in Penang.
Once you are through, the onward connections are easy. From Padang Besar in Malaysia, the ETS runs south to KL. From Hat Yai on the Thai side, you have trains north, plus the minivan and bus network into the deep south.
Timing the connection properly
Arrive in Padang Besar with at least an hour of slack before your onward departure. Not because the crossing is slow, but because a delayed Malaysian train eats into a fixed Thai timetable, and the Thai side has far fewer departures to absorb you.
And check the Thai exit before you commit to the train. If you are heading to Koh Lipe, the last speedboat from Pak Bara is a hard deadline, and a train delay has a way of finding it.
The road alternative
There is a road crossing at Sadao and Bukit Kayu Hitam, and plenty of van shuttles running between them. It is faster and it is cheaper and it is also the crossing where the informal taxi and tout economy is most alive.
Approximately twenty crossings exist between the two countries, and roughly seven of them are open to ordinary passport holders. The rest handle cargo or specific categories of traveller. Nobody is going to send you to a closed post unless you have made an unusual choice.
My honest view
The train is still the best crossing, and not by a small margin. The immigration is in a station rather than on a road, the paperwork is short, the change of train is a ten minute walk rather than a queue of taxis, and you arrive in Hat Yai in the middle of the city rather than on the edge of a car park.
The only part people find tedious is the change itself, and the reason it is tedious is that there was a time when it did not exist. Plan for one, and it takes ten minutes of your life, and then you are on a bench seat heading south with the window open.
