Bus to Melaka

The mist rose later this morning giving an ethereal feeling to Kuala Lumpu as its spires glittered dimly in the soft light. Almost like a shimmering, evanescent city in a tale of Sinbad.

During the day in Kuala Lumpur I had to take the taxi a few times, thereby learning the trick of taking rides in KL instead of being taken for one (or several).

Here it is: in most rail terminals there is a ticket booth for taxis. Tell them where you want to you, pay the fee they charge, give the receipt to the cab driver and repeat address. Simple. Alternatively, say “by the meter” – ie the ride is metered (as it should be), not a fixed price that they might suggest or you might (like me) ask.

I had to go to the Bengsam district (the nicest I found in KL, fewer high rises, more bohemian, nice looking restaurants and clubs); to get there from the station where I bought the bus tickets I asked “how much” and got answers from 35 ringgit to 15 ringgit. I took the 15 ringgit offer. When I was advised to say “by the meter” the ride back turned out to be 5 ringgit.

So now you know.

I wrapped up my last meeting in Kuala Lumpur in the early afternoon and jumped on board a bus bound for Melaka.

The bus terminal was fascinating – a true view of the real Malaysia, instead of the Petronas image. Here you see the various ethnies mixed up, because the people who take a bus to the various parts of the country must of necessity jumble up. Since the wealthy don’t travel this way, then you see where public/private money isn’t spent too.

The building has been repainted many times, and just as quickly is battered by the passing travelers and their bags. Just as in the Gulf states, elements of religion are always present, from the chapels (male and female) to the several dress styles.

The area is split into sections. Through the middle on the left side are the ticket counters for the coaches that go to most everywhere in Malaysia. Access to the coaches is through stairs that descend through the floor to the bus lanes below. These access ways run the length of the terminal

To the back of the ticket counters are stalls that sell everything from clothes to DVDs. Mixed in with them are left luggage stalls. In the spirit of true enterprise, each of these stalls employs a guy who recommends to every traveler that, even for a short period and a modest fee, it is infinitely preferable to deposit your bag with them rather than wander around the terminal overloaded. I was so proposed many times. Almost agreed too, but for the fact I was trying to jump on an earlier bus.

To the right are all the food stalls, offering fast local food at reasonable prices (for me at least). Not many people eating though. Running the length of the terminal’s frontage are all the other stalls – soft drinks, snacks, fruit, tobacco, etc.
And amongst it, all the noise, shouts, cries and murmurs of a station you would expect find anywhere else in the world (well, except Budapest, which is deathly quiet).

I managed to jump aboard an earlier coach. Fearing that the air conditioning would be as bad as the train (indeed so was I told), I came prepared with heavier shirt and sarong to hand. Fortunately it wasn’t so bad.

The trip out of KL was totally uneventful, the voyage taking about two and a half hours. The road to Melaka is a six-lane freeway of German style and standard. The roadsides are sculpted, edged and planted with thin trunked, large leaved trees. Haven’t a clue what they are. Either side, through the hills and plains, nothing but palm trees, just like I saw on the trip up from Singapore. I’m told these are plantations for palm oil, which would make sense. They appear to be planted in groves. Access to them, if difficult sometimes, is certainly possible. Below some trunks I saw what looks like white plastic containers. What they hold, I don’t know. Many of the palm trunks are wrapped in a furry coat of ferns, whose seeds must have germinated in the rough bark of the tree itself.

Through a toll plaza, in the darkening light the outskirts of Melaka begin to appear: modern, spacious, well lit and somewhere that could easily be a town in California or the Carolinas.

The coach pulled into a section of an absolutely massive shopping mall that evidently doubles as the main bus terminal for the city. Not a bad idea, that. From there jumped into a cab to take me to the hotel I had booked earlier, which is in the old part of town.

I am in Melaka, the old and legendary city of Malacca, once capital of the spice trade and imagined by the early European explorers to be a city of gold.

Let’s see what’s here …

Suffering in KL

My first two days here haven’t been the best. I reckon the last straw was the air conditioning in the train up from Singapore, as almost straight after I picked up a cold that has knocked me out since.

So my idea to see the city over the weekend fizzled, and today hasn’t been any better.

Sunday I did nothing but suffer a lousy cold and stay in the hotel room watching episode after episode of Ugly Betty on TV. Anyway it was drizzling for most of the day.

Monday I have done almost nothing as the cold is, if anything, worse. I struggled out to the KL Tower and managed to get myself to the observation deck, but that was it. Gave up after 30 minutes and went back to the hotel room to feel miserable and watch documentaries on the building of several new complexes in Beijing as part of the build-up to the Olympics.

My meetings are all moved to Tuesday.

Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur is new in every sense. The city only really got started in the 1880s and has only boomed in the last 30 years or so. There may be some older sections worth walking through but I haven’t found them (lets face it, my chill/cold has hammered both energy and curiosity levels). Below me, looking out over KL Sentral from my hotel window, lies Brickfields, evidently one of the older areas, now the Indian quarter. The houses there are mostly commercial, three floors high with brightly colored frontages. Could be good for some fotos.

The rest of the city is widely spread over a large plain with low rolling hills, itself fringed by higher hills and low mountains. Which means, even in this, the rainy season, that by 9am you can see the tobacco stain in the air as vehicle pollution mounts.

This is a city of wide freeways for cars, snaking through green parks and concentrated islands of high rises. As a modern city goes, not a bad idea. But it demands you have transport. No city that I have seen on this trip has (ever had) the European concept, tradition or history of a built up central area where culture, commerce and community are mixed together. Old Jakarta may have had (though in the book I bought I read that even in the 1850s one traveler told of the need for all to use transport to get around); the others surely never had.

After checking into the hotel on arrival, my first target was Petronas Towers. I got there by the Rapid KL ‘metro’, which is really good. In fact public transport in KL is impressive: fast, clean, smooth, cheap and with at least three ideas that others could adopt. There’s a monorail too, which I will endeavor to jump on if I’m OK and have the time.

When I exited the KLCC station just beside the Towers, a short downpour was just clearing the area; I was lucky to see them at all!

I love the flair of the building: sheer, smooth steel wrapped around a classic Islamic design. The use of shining steel reminds me just a little of the 1930s skyscrapers in Manhattan – Chrysler in particular – with the same attention to detail and the fine quality finish. It does not look like so many other pre-constructed buildings with their bolt-on facades or indolent exposure of concrete beams and walls.

The ride up is free (wow!) and there are batches of people every 15 minutes. I managed to ‘jump’ aboard one ride up thanks to an extremely sweet guy at the reception desk.

Before going up you are treated to a 7 minute 3D movie of the building of the Towers. I’ve seen better on Discovery Channel, not least because the storyline there is just a little less laudatory of Petronas. But fun to see, nevertheless.

The other riders were the usual mix you would expect to find – tourists, visitors and residents from all over – German, Italian, French, Indian, Chinese, Arab.

Between the Towers is KL’s luxury shopping mall, a classic list of worldwide high and low fashion brands. No city is worth its salt without them, it seems. The style of the mall is as you might expect – several floors of consumer delights radiating from a large open atrium with an architectural fancy, the sole differentiator between this mall and another. Here, as in Jakarta, Mexico or Sao Paulo, a great part of a family’s non-work time is spent, seeking out the next best thing.

Don't ask me why, but sometimes these malls look like the jails designed by Bentham, with its rows of cells that can all be seen from the large atrium. Who are the prisoners - the people sitting in their blind, air conditioned units or those wandering the aisles with a fear of leaving without having bought something?

I’m satiated and past all this. I’m older now - I know now how insubstantial and unnecessary so many things really are. I buy few things nowadays (OK so what I buy is expensive, like cameras and my adored Mac); if I manage to save anything then it going to be for my next life adventure.

Up to KL

The train to Kuala Lumpur leaves - 7:40 am. Singapore's main train station is a modest building. It looks untouched since the 1950s and far away from the 21st Century glass towers of the rest of the city; the English decorating style of the 1930s is still evident.

 I bought my ticket, then scouted the cafe to the side of the public area and bought myself a bright blue concoction labelled "blueberry juice".

The train (and the station indeed) is operated by the Malaysian Rail.  The carriages are simple box designs, I think maybe from the 1970s. It looks like a commuter train, with one first class carriage that, except for the cloth fabric on the seats, is the same as second class. I was going to regret have chosen first class ....



The train pulled out of the station and then sinks into a defile, as if to slip out of Singapore invisibly.  The vegetation by the side of the tracks is wild and savage. Ferns cascade from the joints of trees where enough detritus has settled and let them seed; banana trees nestle among hanging lianas and slender palms.



Breaking out of the jungle trench I could see the outer residences of Singapore, still stretching skywards but interspersed by a hindu temple, a military emplacement and parking lots for trucks. It looks like the upper part of Singapore is all utlities, fabrication yards, warehouses and low rise offices - in essence the back office.



After about 30 minutes the train pulled into Woodlands Rail Checkpoint. Still on Singaporean soil, this is the border crossing between Singapore and Malaysia.  The process is old world - everyone off and into queues to control documents and scan prints, then a long wait until everyone is processed and the doors slither open to let you board again.



I was already dismayed by the chill produced by the carriage's air conditioning. I had asked the steward to turn it up (or down, if you prefer) but this wasn't working - all I got was exasperated arms and eyebrows before a rustle of the same steward's newspaper. Already my throat was feeling the impact. By the end of the voyage I was dressed in three layers of clothes and had my beach sarong draped over my head to keep the chill from freezing my brain. To no effect. I remained a numbed skull.



After the pass control the train rolled over the causeway. On the road side, a queue the length of the causeway itself of trucks, cars, bikes and scooters, all waiting to trade in Singapore.

With a limpid sun rising in the hazy morning sky we passed through Johor Bahru, the main city in the province of Johor. The other side of the Straits isn't the same as Singapore.  For a start the commercial buildings in Johor have a dated 1970s and 1980s feel to them - obviously concrete frames with pre-fab panels.  The houses are much simpler too - more like Jakarta or Cebu - though I did see new construction projects going on. 

Here every is cloaked in dense green vegetation, which I always find beautiful.  Orange earth is pushed aside by the living areas, to tumble into brownwater creeks fringed by papaya, banana and a cascade of creepers.

Ten minutes into Malaysia and the mosques are evidence we are in an overtly Moslem country. The minarets are in the Turkish style, but stumpier; the roofing a strong blue, which sets off the white plastered walls very well.

Over the course of the next hour or so the train stops at several outlying suburbs of Johor Bahru. Commuters crowd around the second class carriages; no-one appears in the first class, where most of the travelers are tourists like me, including three Italian guys who have wrapped up to battle the air conditioning.  One indian lady can't stop coughing up her deep cattarh. She must hate the A/C too.



Leaving Kapas Baru the train runs into a defile again, deeper than the one in Singapore and almost overwhelmed by the vegetation. Occasionally it breaks out to run over a plain, full of palm trees and an occasional tin roofed dwelling with its tawny red bare earth front yard.



Passing by a small town I can see there is a small property boom, with new apartment blocks going up. Looking through the main street most building seem to be three floors high. Public buildings seem to have blue painted rooves here, not just the mosques.


We stop at Kulai; just over the track there's a pool of water with some plants in it, fringed by ever present palms.  The train waited here only a few moment, then pulled out to follow the main road with its moisture mottled buildings on the left and jungle with its tumultuous growth on the right. The road soons disappears, leaving us with views over palm plantations and what looks like coffee bushes.



In Rengam there is a large, sun blackened statue of Ganesh just over the road from a silver paint hindu temple.  Next to it a football stadium with the greenest, lushest pitch I've ever seen. By the station platform the bouganvillea is shaped into bushes. On the other side of the tracks a tall, flowering cactus, its flowers large and creamy yellow as though they were lotus blossoms. Another long wait and we pull away from Rengam, to be swallowed up by the palm groves again.



I had thought earlier of getting off in Kluang but decided to go on to KL.  It is a pleasant looking low rise town, spread either side of the tracks.  Most of the people at the station seem to be Indian, one of the three main ethnies in Malaysia. The town stretches on a while - there's more developments on the northern edge - but the track is soon deep into nature.



Beyond Kluang are low lying hills. The vegetation changes for a short while, high standing slender trees and with broad leaves that alternate with the palm plantations As we pass Genuang the scenery is more open but the principal vegetation is still palms.  What they produce I don't know. 

The train stopped again at Segamat. Well it stopped, rolled back over the bridge, then puffed back into the station again on a different track Someone pulled a lever too slow, it seems.  Ah well, good thing we changed over - another train went through on the track we were on - heading the opposite way.


After Segamat the views open up again, with the additon of some broad fields of swamp and low bushes. Then its palms mixed with what I think may be coffee bushes.

The sky darkened, clouds are building heavy heads that begin to glower over the trains destination. It might rain later... I fell asleep, my head bandana'd by my sarong, my eyes looking at the eternal plantations of palm trees.

A sound of braking, the movement of people pulling bags down from the racks. I've arrived in Kuala Lumpur.