Day 0

I totally forgot about our dramatic journey to the airport! This is supposed to be in Day 1 but now I guess it’ll have to be Day 0 or Night 0, for that matter.

As usual, we had to take a late night bus from Penang to KL from where we would then proceed to the LCC Terminal. We took the 10.30 PM Gunung Raya bus and at about 2 AM my friend and I were both awakened by a frightening sound. The first thing that crossed my mind was that we were plunging down some slope. Mom has been constantly planting thoughts of the bus crashing and stuff like that into my head due to the recent accidents involving the Konsortium busses.

The bus stopped by the road side and a few people went down to examine the tyres. It so happened that the sound came from the tyre exactly below where we were sitting. We saw them taking out a scissors and trying to cut loose something. Immediately, creepy thoughts like a head being caught in the tyres jumped into my mind. The bus continued the journey making a couple more stops from time to time.

When it struck me that I should record it down, the sound wasn’t as loud anymore. This is what it sounds like after some 30 minutes.

Sounded like a lion dance performance doesn’t it? It first started with the sound of an ancient choo-choo train (I had to do that :P) later progressing to a lion dance and later what sounded like an old sewing machine!

Well, almost.

This one sounds like a slightly modern train.

Imagine our fear as we had to be at the airport by 5.40 AM the latest. For something like 2 hours the bus crawled along the highway. Before we knew it, it had already passed Pudu Raya where it was destined to, and was at Shah Alam, stopping at a place to get its tyres fixed. Apparently the inner tyre burst and somehow it was making the sounds.

The driver blamed us for not letting him know we had a flight to catch. One lady on the same bus also had a flight to catch though hers was 30 minutes later than ours. Finally the bus dropped us at a taxi station and there the taxi drivers tried to slit our throat with exceptionally high rates of RM 100 per taxi.

That lady who was already in her middle ages surprised me with her incredible denseness by saying, “We’re already late. Just give us a considerable price okay?”

We’re already late?! That’s what you say after they agree on a price you biatch. You don’t show your desperation! What are you dumb?

In the end we paid RM 80 per taxi and got to the airport just right on the dot. That was one hell of an experience. After being terrified about visa requirements (that’s thanks to Chee Chong who said we needed visas just the night before our trip), I had to go through the experience of almost missing a flight. And you know what? Even Chee Chong himself confessed that the bus incident must be him and his bad luck. Oh well. It’s an incident no money can buy.