Kicking Off

I set off for KL’s Puduraya bus station early this morning, a little tired from another late night playing Call of Duty, a little worried that I may have left something important behind.

Today’s adventure was a 4 ½ hour bus ride up to the town of Tanah Rata in the Cameron Highlands. I arrived at the bus station around 8:45, hoping to snag a ticket for the 10:00 bus; instead, the guy at the ticket counter sold me one for the 8:30 bus, assuring me that it’d be there. Sure as sugar, it was sitting at platform 18, waiting for the last few stragglers. It left at 9. It’s too bad I didn’t have enough time to wander the bus terminal because it has the same feel as the wet market I frequent by my grandma’s house. It’s quite run down with a lot of hawker stalls all about. Imagine an old multi-storey parkade with lots of people inside. Places like these, I find, have so much character.

The ride itself was rather uneventful with the exception of a police blockade halfway up the mountain. An officer boarded our bus with his loaded MP5 sub machine gun, looking over the faces of everybody on the bus, checking to see if there was a wanted felon amongst us. We never really found out exactly what was going on. Exciting.

I’m always amazed at how people can drive up these winding mountain roads, especially when it’s with a larger vehicle. The roads are much narrower than the ones back home, sometimes narrowing down to a single lane, with many blind corners and no guard rails. I must have seen half a dozen tanker trucks and freight vehicles take the corners like race car drivers, their only safety precaution a light tap on the horn.