We stole down to breakfast at a good hour (9) and had a decent fill. Nasi goreng was back, the porridge was unlabelled. Helen went off to try to exchange some books whilst I, faffed. I worked out that the channel with the logo "vision four" was in fact the channel referred to in the hotel entertainment guide entitled in very large letters on the front: "Vision Four". I shall leave my method as an exercise for the reader. The current programme was about a marine research ship with deep sea sub which, in the interests of research, sucked things into sample jars at 1400ft below, brought them to the surface where they were filmed, observed and even painted in the short time before they died at this "high" altitude. The scientists seemed very pleased, though.
The bus station, despite having 40 odd platforms, each holding three coaches had ground to a halt which was causing a backlog of coaches and much traffic chaos outside. In the midst of this we were led off our platform to outside where our tickets were exchanged for other tickets and we got on a bus unlike the one pointed to in a photo when we bought them. Still there was a bit more legroom though there was a problem with the damping of the suspension such that even small changes in speed caused a buckeroo kick in the coach. Never mind the bumps in the road. Two hours in, I discovered the really annoying squeak every few seconds was my chair. Hmm. A more prone position seemed to cure it though too much and my entire body was thrown in the air each bump. Funny, that only seemed to happen to me.
Sandals are great footwear. Not the Jesus sandals of hippy happiness but the modern, um, open shoe. Certainly the thing to be wearing in warm weather apart from the zebra tan you get. That can be cured by the Australian thong. No, not the Y-fronts with just the Y but the humble flip-flop. I fancy there's confusion for travellers in either direction. However, the open toed shoe does have its drawbacks. Consider stepping up to the urinal next to the older gentleman, clearly needing to go. Imagine, before you've got yourself going, feeling the gentle splish splashing of water on your toes even though the flush isn't running.
The rest of the journey was fairly uninteresting. There's little countryside, as such, to be seen from the main roads as they act as a magnet for people and buildings. What little you do see is dominated by a particular palm (obviously I don't know which) which is relatively short but sprouts a great shower of leaves. Sometimes the remarkably straight [planting] lines of the these has a certain artificiality to it. We hit the east coast at Kuantan, an unremarkable place, then follow the coast road north. The coast road starting in a very antipodean fasion in that there's no sign of the coast for miles.
The ticket woman said it was a six hour trip, which is now up, and we're sure we've just been overtaken by the (luxury) coach we should have been on. Never mind, we do start to get glimpses of the South China Sea rolling in impressively. It's a neck aching, body shaking 8.5 hour trip in the end. Waving the ever eager taxi drivers away we stagger off into town to the hotel over the road from the proposed travel agent's. The hotel has a special offer on which we take them up on. Not enormously special, RM75 for a twin, but that with some dinner in the hotel cafe and transport today has brought us in at just about half our budget. That's a good thing when the money's running low. We could have had an even cheaper dinner but the RM8 set dinner was in Malaysian and I couldn't find the words to get the waiter to translate it for me nor find any of the names in the English menu. This is one of the first times that we've failed to communicate (not that we try very often) and is therefore a cultural lowpoint.
Yen Tin Hotel, Kuala Terengganu N5.33467 E103.13905 Elev. 10m Yen Tin Hotel, Kuala Terengganu
Copyright 2003 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.
