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18th of February 2008
Three countries in one day – Yangon in the morning, Bangkok in the afternoon and KL in the evening! Anyone visiting Bangkok Airport take note – there is a good, cheap but well-hidden food court on the lower level called Magic, where all the airport staff eat, and also CAT is a good cheap internet place – 300 baht for one hour – compared to one baht for two minutes at the phone video coin-operated thing, so the 4 hour stopover flew by.
Despite all the desperate email traffic over the last few weeks, no calls from the agents regarding the shipping problems.
Evil jobsworth airport people confiscated my shampoo and deodorant. Okay – my fault on the face of it – but it doesn’t say much for them that I took these very toiletries OK on Air Asia just 2 weeks before and also a very patchy policy, as they had let me carry my 300 ml contact lens solution no problem. Terrorists take note!
Descending into KL, Petronas Towers was distinct, but looks so small from the air. I looked for Sri Wangsaria, where I had stayed in 1994, but unsure whether I saw it or not – KL has expanded a lot since then. Sat next to quite an interesting American woman on the plane. 55, had lots of relationships in the past, married for money and very, very honest about it! Yoga teacher, going to Glastonbury. Married to husband who works for U.S. equivalent of the British Bankers’ Association. Likes the films Thank You for Smoking and About Schmidt. Also a tour guide, and very interested to hear my tales of Kashmir.
KL was bloody hot compared to Bangkok or Myanmar. Pleasant guitar music jamming from the table next to where I was sitting for dinner. I remember the odd, steamed monkey nuts and the food sellers on motorbikes-cum-tables on wheels from last time.
19th of February 2008
Perhaps I need to revise my opinion of Malaysia upwards a little bit. Having spent 3 weeks in KL and Penang in 1994, I had come away with memories of obtuse people, who looked at me as if I’d stepped off an alien spaceship and to whom I had to repeat even the simplest sentences 2 or 3 times despite my English being the same they heard every time they switched on the radio or TV. Also the culture jarred a little – there were adverts and documentaries on TV showing the bodies of babies who’d been abandoned by their mothers because they hadn’t been able to tell their parents they were pregnant and couldn’t get abortions. In short, the only appealing thing I found about Malaysia was the food – better Indian than India and better Chinese than China. But today, even though I ultimately ended up spending more time and money than planned and still not getting the car, everyone rallied round to help. I had reached Port Kelang and tried to find the local DHL office, where the shipping docs (Bill of Lading) had been sent, after some debate, confusion and frantic email traffic. In desperation, I went to the police station for directions. Really helpfully, they phoned around, then 2 of them took me 15 kms to the DHL office in their own car and refused my offer of petrol money. Confusion ensued over which DHL office I was supposed to go to – thank God for mobiles!
Then a 20 km taxi ride with the Bill of Lading to the SHIPPING agents to get the ‘delivery order’ – and pay 720 Ringits for the privilege. Granted up to half of this was demurrage, though, which I’d bargained on when staying as long as 2 weeks in Myanmar. At this point the seeds of later confusion were sown – I hadn’t been given the full story or perhaps I didn’t understand properly. Way back in Calcutta, LCL had asked me whether I wanted to appoint FORWARDING agents and Customs Clearing agents. But nobody explained to me what forwarding agents actually do, and so, without understanding what they were for, I said no. As regards Customs clearance, I didn’t see the point in paying people to do this and said no to that as well. However, the shipping agents had been appointed by LCL automatically and it was them I had to visit to get the Delivery order. Why couldn’t the shipping documents just have gone straight to the shipping agents instead of DHL? Don’t ask me!
THEN back to the port main entrance (Port Kelang, as I was just about to find out, is divided into areas according to points of the compass…….) I hadn’t been given the total story, or maybe I had but didn’t understand properly. I’d wanted to do my own customs clearance and had been told this was possible. I was told about terminal handling charges, but not as it turned – as it turned out – about forwarding agents!
However, shipping agent was helpful enough to draw me a map of where I needed to go to collect the car and also put me onto Customs. They embarked on a long spiel about the procedure but then, on hearing that I was a tourist just bringing my car through Malaysia and not actually importing it, sent me to the NORTH port customs (even though the car was at West Port) to get the paperwork processed. North Port Customs were surprised I’d been sent there but again were helpful to a fault and then the assistant director even ran me down to the taxi rank in her car so I could get to West Port. Not before, however, I committed a major faux pas in their bathroom. Just before we left, I went to the gents and used a funny-shaped urinal – or was it? After finishing, I turned around and saw a row of normally-shaped urinals along the wall behind where I’d been standing. The ‘urinal’ I’d been using was in fact a place where Moslems wash their feet before prayer – Marshall’ah nobody saw!
Hai, the Chinese taxi driver, was also very, very talkative and extremely pleasant. He’d been a shipping agent himself before. 51, never left Malaysia, 4 kids. Waiting for me in West port was yet another crash course in how ports / shipping operate. It transpires that the Terminal Handling Charge I had to pay to the shipping agents was just for offloading the container from the ship – then it goes to a holding area for the first (5) free storage days, than after that it’s moved to another long term storage area. THEN, when the hapless customer comes to collect said container, it must then be moved again – but oh no – that’s not the end of the story! Mere mortals like me can’t just open the container and remove the car – we must appoint a FORWARDING agent who takes the container FROM the government owned long term storage area TO their own warehouse within the port. Only then can the container be opened and the contents removed. But wait – there’s more! Not only does all this cost, but there’s also further costs associated with the movement of the by-now empty container BACK to the premises (or wherever they nominate) of the people it belongs to – the SHIPPING agents!
But the Indian chap I’d dealt with had been really helpful and patient in explaining all this. By now it was 7 PM and impossible to get the car that evening, so Hai took me back to Kelang to find a hotel for the night and even offered me to stay at his home. Perhaps I should have accepted, but didn’t want to impose and didn’t feel I’d known him long enough, so checked into a cheap place. He even gave me his phone no in case of any problems.
Port Kelang consisted of an incredible concentration of filling stations and 7/11s – sometimes different outlets of the same company right across the road from each other. Has anyone in Malaysia heard of efficiency savings?? Also sad to see the chavved-up Protons cruising up and down the mean streets of Port Kelang…….put me in mind of the Asian lads we saw once in Southall, sitting in an old Rover 214 listening to music so loud you could actually see their roof vibrating. Quite a relief to have consistent electricity after Myanmar.
20th of February 2008
Up bright and early to get to West Port to get the car. Little did I know I’d be there until 7.30 that night – bliss. Luckily I had reading material…the obvious thing to do would have been to get the laptop and spend the day on that, but it was locked away in the car inside the container. Interestingly, half way through the day everyone was evacuated from the building – I thought it was a fire alarm but it turned out to be an earth tremor – and I didn’t even feel it! Had an interesting chat with the Indian chap from the day before, hearing about how he and other ethnic Indians/Chinese didn’t appreciate being constitutionally barred from participating in politics even though they paid the same taxes as the Malays. I thought that sort of thing had ended with the Apartheid South Africa. Bit of an eye-opener, and makes a huge mockery of the ‘Out Of Many, One People’ motto on the Malaysian banknotes. If “No Taxation Without Representation” was good enough for the Founding Fathers of America, it should be good enough for everywhere else.
Once at the forwarding agent’s yard for the ‘unstuffing’, I was amazed to see 3 brand-new Mercedes CLSs and 1 S-Class sitting there. They had been stuck there for 5 months, unable to be taken out, driven or sold as they were being held up by Customs problems. There was also another brand-new car which been there for four years for the same reason and it had been abandoned, as the storage charges had ended up exceeding its value. They tried to find the right size of forklift to take the container off the truck and lower it to the ground for opening, but couldn’t. Then they lit on the bright idea of getting 2 smaller forklifts to lift it from opposite sides in concert…..you can imagine my fingers crossing each other as I watched this, but they kept it level and didn’t drop it!
Reached KL late. Stayed in the cheap bit of the Golden Triangle, and ate in a lovely cheap restaurant about 3 times during my stay in KL – lovely satay. I’d got talking to a couple of the waiters there as they were from Myanmar (Chin State) and they’d even managed to get me some Myanmar Beer! Amusing Filipina woman I got talking to, telling me how she’d had to change hotels because her room was full of bed lice and various insects “going walk walk walk”.
I can see this restaurant in my mind’s eye and the location….it is – or rather was – across the road from the hostel I stayed in. Anyway, more about this place later.
21-22 February 2008
Nice rides on Kuala Lumpur monorail. Adminy stuff – new digital camera, insurance etc. Again, taken by how helpful people were – at least, the insurance ones. Even though the receptionist and then the manager didn’t know about insuring foreign vehicles, they made enquiries and sorted it out. Tried to go up the Petronas Towers, but too late for a ticket. Still the staff tried to get me in. Why is Malaysia so different this time?
But there is always a but. I remember the attitude problem of the Chinese shopkeepers from when I worked in Hong Kong, as I am sure a lot of Westerners can. In the electronics market, I’d shopped around a bit as one does – sure enough one Chinese shop keeper had an attitude problem just like the garage man in Calcutta when I asked about the guarantee on the Canon A650IS I was wanting to buy. Should have stuck with the first shop I went to, where I’d been told the direct answer to a simple question – one year Malaysian, six months international guarantee. Wish I’d dealt better with Mr Attitude Problem when I passed him on the way out – should have brandished the camera I’d bought from someone else after storming out of his shop.
23rd of February 2008
KL to Taman Negara. Tried to avoid toll roads. Suspect would have been less upset if I had just bitten the bullet, as this took far too long but maybe a more detailed map would have helped too. Got talking to the local policeman at his house when I arrived there at night – I’d asked him for directions to Nusa Campsite. But good of him to send out buy signals about letting me stay at his place.
24th of February
Started at the Park HQ and then followed a trail around some of Taman Negara – not a long one, compared to some of the day/2 day/week treaks you can do there. It’s quite big, but very quickly realised you don’t need to travel that extensively across it to see it – all the jungle looks the same, at least to my untutored eye. No doubt people with more knowledge of these things (and more time on their hands to do a proper tour, and money to pay for a guide) will sneer with disdain at that comment, but then I’ve often been more of a dabbler than a fanatic. Comments very funny to read in the visitor’s book in one of the hides – ‘we came. We saw nothing. We left in disappointment’. But I saw wild pigs and something big made a tree shake when I went to investigate – probably the mother pig. Lots of whoop, whoop, whoop noises and really, really hot and sweaty…..cannot imagine what it must be like in the rainy season. Lots of comments in the book regarding leeches, but I didn’t get a single one. It transpired later that it had not rained for three weeks.
Pictures of the trip through Malaysia from collecting the car in Kuala Lumpur as far as Taman Negara jungle National Park.
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| Malaysia – KL to Taman Negara |
Just listen to the insect sounds!
Busily shuttling to and fro, this was a trail to and from an ants’ nest I happened across in Taman Negara
Took a walk on a rope walkway
25th of February 2008
Drove to Cherating today through the jungle, with palm and rubber plantations very much in evidence. Ran over a snake – no opportunity to avoid it.
Cherating just a sleepy seaside resort, with hotels so laid back they couldn’t even staff their own receptions. I went for a paddle, but was worried about what might come and bite me from the depths. Interesting car they have in Malaysia though, called a Proton Perdana, with a V6 engine and Lotus-tuned suspension.
Not bad for a cheap transplant….there seemed to be quite a few tuned-up ones in Cherating. That’s one Proton they should sell outside Malaysia.
26th of February 2008
Jungle drive from Cherating to Kuala Besut. Stopped at a McDonalds and met a Canadian who was cycling through Malaysia with his wife and kids in tow in a hire car – rather like David Cameron on his bike, with the limo carrying his papers behind!
Stopped at Kuala Besut because of a vague notion of going snorkeling the following day – I had also had a phone call from one of the Burmese waiters in that restaurant I’d been eating at in KL to tell me it had collapsed – this was confirmed by a visit to the local newsagent, where all the papers had it splashed across the front! He’d been caught in the building collapse. No broken bones, but plenty of cuts and bruises and he couldn’t go to a government hospital because he didn’t have a work permit. Nor a private doctor because his boss said ‘pay up front and I’ll pay you back’. At the time it happened, there was an article about it in the New Straits Times and I emailed it around to everyone. But now it seems to have disappeared. Anyway, the collapse definitely happened. They were doing building work/alterations on the building and someone had taken out 1 RSJ too many.
Kuala Perhentian Besar is a good snorkeling spot, but they couldn’t tell me the evening before whether the boat was going to go or not – depends on the party size. But I figured I might as well stay there – if I find out tomorrow the boat will go, great – or if it doesn’t, I can just go on to nearby Kota Bharu as I would have done anyway.
26 – 27 February 2008
Suspicions confirmed – boat didn’t go. Would have been a private charter just for me for 150 Ringgit – so wait until Thailand. On to Kotu Bharu. Saw Museum of Japanese occupation, then the market – good pictures. Tried to fix Magellan GPS – couldn’t but it’s confirmed that the alkaline has destroyed the tracks on the circuit board inside the GPS. Next time – WHEN NOT USING A BATTERY POWERED APPLIANCE FOR ANY LENGTH OF TIME, OBEY THE ADVICE IN THE HANDBOOK ABOUT TAKING THE BATTERIES OUT!
28th of February 2008
Last day in Malaysia. Called my mother, as well as Jo in Calcutta, to wish them happy birthdays! Also found a parking ticket on the car for overstaying the meter parking by 10 minutes. Well, they can chase me back in the UK for that.
Apart from that and the camera seller in KL who talked himself out of a sale, thanks for a much better time than last time, Malaysia. I’d now put Malaysia 3rd or 4th (behind Pakistan, Syria and maybe Burma) in the list of ‘countries I wish I’d seen more of and want to go back to’.
Further pictures, all the way north to the Thai border.
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| Malaysia – Taman Negara up coast to Thai border |
