Since I’ve been back in KL for over a week now, I guess it’s time to write something about my experience on Redang with the turtle conservation program. I started writing this just now and it’s become huge, I think I’ll break it up into several posts.
So, I’ll start from the beginning.
The turtle conservation program on Redang Island has it’s own private beach, Chagar Hutang…wait, too far foward… We need a geography lesson for Malaysia first. Malaysia is made up of Peninsula(West) Malaysia and East Malaysia. These are completely separated geographically. KL is located in the west of West Malaysia. My destination was Kuala Terengganu which is located on the east coast of West Malaysia, approximately 8 hours by bus away from KL. See the map below already, its great and also shows the route of the bus from KL to Kuala Terengganu (my educated guess at least);
Thus, I set out on a Thursday morning to Chinatown in KL where the long distance bus station is located. I didn’t have a ticket so got there early (around 11am I think) and set about arranging a ticket. This is not so difficult at the bus station since there are roving sales people all over the place asking you where you want to go. If they work for a company selling tickets to the place you want to go, they will eagerly guide you to the promised booth. Thus, I arrived at a booth selling tickets to Kuala Terengganu(hereafter “KT”) and as lonely planet had informed me, shelled out 30 beans for a one way coach ticket leaving to KT at 10pm that night. However, they didn’t actually give me a ticket, well, it was a ticket of sorts, some scribbled notes about price, time and destination, at the time I thought it was a bit more like a ticket IOU but I thought nothing much more of it. Anyway, they told me to be back at 9pm, so, I left and set about spending 9 or so hours in Chinatown while I waited for my bus.
12:30 – 8:45 —-uneventful time. watched Pan’s Labrynth in the backpackers I stayed in when I first got to KL(great movie actually), loitered about, lost my combined flashlight/pen/laser, that’s it…oh and ate some rambutans…
8:45 arrived and it was time to head to the bus station and wait for my bus. Arriving at the booth I had patronised earlier, I presented the ‘IOU’ ticket eager to claim the official boarding pass. The service was a bit slower this time around, and only the low level spruiker type workers where nearby. They looked at the IOU and then went over to the boss who was sitting down nearby. They chatted for a bit too long which made me think there was some sort of problem. After that, the boss beckoned me over since she deemed me not important enough of a concern to interrupt her seated rest. Wanting to find out what the problem was, I went over and she said “so we’ll put you on the midnight bus ok, no tickets left for the 10pm one”. I was pretty annoyed since they had originally said the 9pm one was sold out and to get the 10pm one. Also, I had been loitering about the area for 9 hours and was thus not going to take this injustice! So, I politely but directly told them that I needed a 10pm ticket and reminded them that they had sold me one(I now found out that the IOU was like a tentative statement of agreement to trade). So, the boss said to have a seat and one of the workers went off to work something out. In the end, a 10pm ticket was found and it was all good, I don’t know what the initial problem was but I’ll definitely try to get a proper ticket when paying next time.
By this time it was about 9:30, so I sat around for a few minutes and learnt some Malay words from the people selling tickets, the only one I can remember is “gila” which means crazy/mad. So, it got to around 9:45 and I thought I should buy some snacks for the trip and then head to the terminal. I boarded the coach at about 9:55 and so was expecting it to be taking off reasonably soon. Anyway, 10pm rolled by and the bus was less than half full and no driver in sight. An African family(from Sudan I later found out) hopped on around 10:10 and with four kids were suitably snacked out. Looking at their rations compared to mine, I realised that I may have underestimated my needs for the 8 hour journey. Basically, they had twisties and as we all know twisties are great and I felt I needed some for the journey. Whatever the reason, I decided that with the bus still quite empty and with no driver to be seen, I should venture out to a nearby 7-11 to get some additional supplies. Around this time a guy hopped on to check peoples tickets, so, I thought I would have no time to go and expected to be leaving quite soon. But another 5 minutes passed and still nothing was happening, the twisties were calling and my dietary desires had to be satiated. So, I approached the ticket guy and told him I wanted to go to buy some snacks and would be 5 minutes, I asked him if this was ok and after checking his watch he said “yes, but be quick”. So (leaving my bags in the luggage hold and my initial rations on my seat) I hopped off and jogged down to the 7-11 which was within sight of the bus. I went in and efficiently paid for and purchased some Twisties (Original Cheese flavour of course), a bottle of Lipton Green Iced Tea and some Chips-Ahoy cookies. Feeling relieved with twisties and lipton green tea in hand, I exited the 7-11 and proceeded to walk on the road back towards the bus which was still visible where I had left it.
However, looking at the bus I noticed that the luggage compartment door was closed (the 7-11 was close but not exactly a stones throw away, perhaps a few hundred metres away) so I thought I should pick up the pace and that the driver was perhaps ready to roll. Although the ticket guy knew I would be back soon and I thought I should be safe, nonetheless I decided to speed things up.
Just after making this sensible decision, I saw the door on the bus close and without delay observed motion of either the earth or the bus wheels rotating (it turned out to be both). At this point, I may have muttered a profanity and proceeded to run up the middle of the road waiving – snacks in hand – at the bus, which had luckily set off in the direction I was returning from. Since Malaysian public transport doesn’t usually bother with the formal rigidity of designated stops, my desperate motioning of the driver were enough to cause him to slow down and let me (re)board in the middle of a three lane road.
The seriousness of the trouble that I would have experienced had I missed my bus, and thus said goodbye to all my things, did not really hit me. I have a strange naivity when travelling and nothing that bad has really happened to me so far. I think it has something to do with submitting to “The Way”, I recommend you try it. Anyway, I was more struck by the comic nature of the entire event and was relieved to be Twisties in hand on my way to KT.
You can see in the picture below my elation at having caught my bus with adequate rations in hand! Yay, peace! or V for victory in Asia.
Ok that will do for now, Pt.2 should cover a little bit about the trip on the bus (nothing interesting really) and then some things about KT I guess.
