It's that time of month again. Yes,
that time. After 30 days, it was time for another visa run. This time instead
of going to Burma for 15 minutes, I went to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the
weekend. The trip to Burma was about 24 hours round trip. This one took about
that long to get to KL. It started off the same as the last trip, a taxi (pile
into the back of a pick-up truck) from the resort I’m staying at to the pier, but
the weird thing is both times there was a sobfest of a group of British guys
talking about how much they would miss each other. I thought they were going to
cry. It was uncomfortable. What happened to a fist bump, see ya later, and then
facebook comments until you gradually fall out of touch? Maybe it’s the full
moon parties. I don’t know.
The next step was the overnight boat to the Thai mainland. Now, the best strategy to ensure a comfortable 26 hour journey that includes cargo transport boats, minivans, and buses with no toilet is to eliminate any sense of hunger. Eat as much street food as possible. The more questionable the cleanliness of the food stall, the more delicious the food will be. I mean, why would anyone eat from a dirty little wagon next to a garbage pile, if it wasn’t absolutely Michelin quality. They just don’t get the stars because of politics. So after a couple of pretty good street kabobs,
From the pier in Surat Thani, another truck took us to a tour operator’s office. These people were way too militant / loud / bossy for 5:30 in the morning. “Shoes off! Shoes on the line! Where you go?! Bags there! Wait there! No shoes inside! My bathroom cleaner than your shoes! You want wear shoes, go to bathroom outside!” So the dude went outside, put on his shoes, and walked around the corner, assumingly to pee on the side of their tour office.
Next we split up into groups based on our destination and piled into vans with seating for about 12 people no larger than five feet tall. Fortunately only a few people were going to Kuala Lumpur and we were all able to awkwardly stretch out a bit for the 6 hour ride to the bus station. It would have been a couple hours less if we hadn’t kept stopping apparently for the sole purpose of our driver to smoke cigarettes with people along the way. Most of the times he didn’t even say a word. He’d just stop, get out of the van, walk over to the nearby building, talk to whoever was there, smoke a cig and come back with no explanation. At least after the first few he started letting us out to go to the bathroom and at the last stop before the bus station we even got to eat some really terrible food. When we got to Hat Yai to transfer to a real bus, I was a little too eager to get away from the van and left my Kindle behind. Much to the thanks of the lady at Konsortium bus company, it would later be returned to me on the way back.
For the final leg of my journey to KL, I rode a double decker bus that I summarize as follows:
On a scale of 1-10, zero being a kick in
the nuts by a mule and 11 being the delicious strawberry ice cream of El
Bolson, Argentina, the bus gets a D+, make it C-, what the hell.
The good: Seats were relatively comfortable, it didn't
smell bad and the driver didn't kill us. Here is my view from the front of the bus and the start of a scooter race.
The bad: SLOW. We could have made KL two
hours earlier had we not stopped so much. I prefer the South American bus
driving strategy of going insanely and extremely dangerously fast on treacherous
winding mountain roads where the slightest misstep would mean certain death for
all on board for the sake of getting to an isolated and completely shut down
town at 3-5 am,
when you could have taken it easy and gotten there safely right
when everything was starting to open compared to the Thai/Malay approach of
driving the speed limit on a well maintained paved highway, making leisurely
stops every hour.
The tortuous: The need for shocks. The
first four hours or so were spent bobbing up and down like a baby in one of
those things that babies bob up and down in when their parents grow tired of
the adorableness of puking, pooping, and screaming. This simultaneously made me
sleepy and nauseous. After one of our lengthier stops, the up and down bobbing
turned into a side to side shimmy that made it impossible for me to tell if
that bell ringing was just in my head, part of the bus, or in the luggage of
the lady next to me. I'm pretty sure that jingling sound flies in the face of
the Geneva Convention.
45 minutes away from our final destination we make
another bathroom break. Are you kidding me? I use the opportunity to buy more
questionable street food, some sort of beef and bean, curry manapua (delicious)
and an Alicafe- “premix coffee drink
with Tongkat Ali,” as it says on the label. A quick search of the interwebs just now informed me that tongkat
ali is a sexually stimulating herb from Malaysia, and is finding its way out of
the jungle and into bedrooms. Just the thing to keep me alert to scams on
my first taxi ride in the Malaysian capital.
Back to the D+ / C- rating for
this bus ride…It did occur to me that the delay in getting there could be
deliberate in order to avoid potential rush hour traffic in downtown KL, but I
pass swift if not arbitrary, cruel, and uncompromising judgement “Return to
Paradise”-style on bus companies. Judgement stands.
All in all, it was a pretty good trip and
I was ready to enjoy my mini-vacation in a new exciting city.
