Some of you may know the story of how I lasted two whole days as a pizza delivery boy. I jacked it in because I couldn't stand trying to find places in the dark. Keep that one in the back of your mind while you read on. This is something I penned in Kota Bharu but never bothered sending until now.
The Roads, Part II
I took what I expected to be a soft option for getting around Malaysia on my week off: I hired a car. Armed with a zero-detail highway map and the city maps from the Lonely Planet, I headed for Pulau Pinang (Penang Island), straight up the motorway.
No worries, you may think: just get on the highway to Ipoh (along the way) and you're set. But no. The Malaysians like to give you a challenge. I think it all stems from their concept of service, or total and utter lack thereof. (See the book "The Malaysian Concept of Service", one of thinnest in the world, alongside "The German Book of Humour" and "British Cooking At Its Best".) Example: I missed the first turnoff because it wasn't signposted. Come to the second one at a roundabout. Big sign: Ipoh motorway, straight ahead. Now, there's a flyover running through the roundabout so you can't see until too late that straight ahead is clearly not the right way. Turns out the flyover was the motorway and I was meant to turn right.
So that's half an hour of my life gone but when I do get on the motorway I'm sure it's all okay from there. Pity it wasn't actually the motorway and I was meant to turn off soon. But being in the far right lane, and given that there wasn't any warning about the off-ramp, I missed that, too.
An hour later I'm finally on the damned thing once and for all after travelling the back roads. By nightfall I'm coming up to the island and get stuck in traffic. The plan had been to leave at 2:00, but there were check-out problems (they wanted me to pay! Can you believe it? I'd ordered room service every morning and all and they expected me to pay! What's worse is the Bank also expected me to pay, even though they had booked me in, and chosen one of the most expensive hotels in town to boot), so I didn't leave until 3:15. When I finally got to Penang, I saw the big sign for GEORGETOWN. Great, I thought, follow this and I'll be there in a jiffy. But then the Georgetown signs stopped, the road forked and by 8:00 I was cruising around a one-way streeted nightmare with an inaccurate map trying to find my hotel in a foreign city, with foreign language road signs, in the dark.
I could practically smell the pizza.
Part III: Cross Country
Driving across the peninsula is a real pain in the arse. The highlight was probably when, after a couple of wrong turns, I was happy to be on what I took to be the east-west highway. There was even a signpost for Kota Bahru (destination). Two Ks down the road the road just stopped. Yeahhhhh.
They're a lot more laid back out here, though. Sure, there are some riced-up P-platers doing 130+ and overtaking on blind corners, but on the whole everyone just cruises along. At around 50 in a 110 zone. Where overtaking is difficult. And then when you do get past you come up to a lorry or a truck doing 20kph up 10% hills. With blind corners. I don't want much. Just an overtaking lane every so often.
I was advised the 400-odd kilometre journey would take anywhere from four to six hours. One guy even said to go back to KL and get a bus. In the end it was around six and a bit. With no navigator to talk to and only my MD player to keep me company, I was pretty nutty by the end of it.
For the record the main roads were in good nick. The back streets were a little dodgy, but it's kinda cool cruising by cows, seeing elephant warning signs, and crossing jungled mountains. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of this stuff because I just wanted to get the hell to KB. And at the time it just didn't seem peculiar enough to stop for. Now I wish I had. Oh well.
PART IV: Merang
I was then faced with a drive back to KL in a few days time. This was too much - the long distances, the solitude, the crappy MD-car kit, the crippling driver's seat of the Proton Wira and the aspiring Alex Yoongs - so I left the car at KB airport (and, even though they have an office their, Budget fined me for changing the drop-off point) and hired a guy to drive me to Merang. This, despite a sizable cash outlay, was an excellent decision.
Merang is not exactly on the main highway and by now I'd realised that my map was as useful as a 1:100,000,000 topographical of the moon. Besides, it was cheaper than a hire car as well as more characteristic. This thing was a 1950's-vintage Mercedes with ample ventilation, original interior finishes and a partially renovated dashboard (ie, stuff was missing but hadn't been replaced). It also came with a couple of Poms in the back seat, one of whom proceeded to lecture me about motorcycles in Vietnam. She also managed to make clear, in that polite unspoken way that the English have, that I clearly didn't know anything about two-wheeled transport in KL, because she'd been to Hanoi.
No wonder the English lost their empire.
