The joy of buses
So right now I am sitting in a little coffee shop in Tanah Rata in the Cameron highlands. I arrived here just a couple of hours ago and can already tell i’m going to like it here but rather than talk about the place I’m going to talk about my adventures on buses!
Now I really don’t like taking buses, even at home, I much prefer taking trains. You never know where to get off when you’re on a bus route you’re not familiar with and i usually spend the entire journey jumpy with nerves, staring out of the window trying to see something I recognise. Yes I’m a freak, I don’t care!
So yesterday I decided to pop into town as I was already bored of the beach after one and a half days and I was in dire need of bookshops. I would have settled for a second hand book exchange but after wandering up and down the main street of Batu Ferringhi and finding nothing (I realised later that there is actually a shopping mall just a little further down the road, past the holiday inn on the way to Georgetown. someone reading this might find that useful at some point…) I decided to catch the bus into town. All fine and good, I spent about half an hour browsing in popular, bought a couple of books and popped into the air asia office to see if i could change my flight (I couldn’t). Then time to go back so I make my way to the terminal at Komtar and wait for the no. 101 bus, which I took into town. 20 minutes later and it still hasn’t turned up so i decide to hop on the scummy little local bus instead of the nice new air conditioned one (but it’s the same price? what?). After a couple of minutes of being on the bus, I realise that they intend to drive around the bus station in circles, shouting the destination through a megaphone until they can pack as many people on as possible. I am standing with sweat dripping down my legs (did i tell you it is HOT in penang??) squished between a bunch of school kids and some smelly men. I fall out of the bus an hour later vowing to wait for the nice new air conditioned bus next time….
So this morning I get up early to catch my bus to the Cameron Highlands. My bus leaves at 8am and the bus station is quite a way around the island so I have to get a taxi to the bus station. We get there at 7.55 am, the driver shoves my bus ticket at me and points in the general direction of the buses and then buggers off. Queue me running up and down with a panicked expression trying to find the right bus (turns out i had the right one first time but the person I asked said it wasn’t! then i got told off for being late!). Once on the bus I start to do my usual trick of second guessing myself and worrying that the bus is going to the wrong place or I won’t know where to get off, etc etc. so i spend most of the journey in mild panic. This isn’t helped by the fact that the bus seems to be broken and we stop in Ipoh for about an hour while various people come over and pour things into the engine while the driver seems to get very angry and shouts at them (obviously i can’t understand what’s going on). The bus chugs up the hills at about 5 miles an hour with the engine making a horrible grinding noise and i’m convinced we’re going to start rolling backwards… then as soon as we’re going downhill we speed up by an insane amount and fly around the corners at breakneck speed. i’m being flung from one side of my seat to another and by this time convinced that the driver is a maniac. We finally pull into Tanah Rata about 3 hours late and I am so glad to get off that damn bus!
Anyway I’m here now and a bit of trekking and chilling out is in order. Maybe there will be more updates!
January 15th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
I think transport and all those little things make you realise how fortunate the western world actually is for these things. We take so much forgranted through the norm. The problem here though is that the western world has gone too far with things. We expect things that shouldn’t be expected. We’ve lost respect, culture, tradition and manners. Although they may not always exist in Asia at least they have the time to develop and get to that point. They haven’t overstepped the mark. Taking the rough with the smooth is all part of the fun. I’ll be back in Thailand for February and I have the yacht to use if you care to join me. I’m falling in to stagnancy again. I need to get away. The rat race is just not me.