Back to the trip

Another crazy weekend has gotten in the way of my finishing the story of my trip. Oops. I really do have a number of excuses, including a lack of running water in Longtan since the typhoon (I've had exactly one shower in the past five days), but things are finally starting to calm down - even if they're also starting to smell. So kick back and read on for the tale of my last couple of days on vacation. This'll probably be a long entry.

After my second night in Kuala Lompur, I more than happily packed my bags and grabbed the first available cab to the bus station. Like I said, I didn't dislike KL, but I also didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would and I was definitely looking forward to the beach. The bus station was another taste of the rustic side of Malaysia: it was all outdoors, just a couple of rows of tiny shack-like buildings where they sold tickets for the various bus lines through slots in the door. Given how grungy bus stations usually are (in America and Taiwan alike, and I'm guessing most everywhere else), it wasn't a bad change.

Thanks to my recent travels, I had the currency of three countries in my pocket and it took me a while to sift out all the Singaporean dollars and pay only in ringgit. Then it was a matter of waiting on the curb in the sunshine for an hour. That, of course, was one of those memories of travel that are kind of exotic and fun to say you've been through, but they really aren't that much fun to actually live. Still, it was a bit interesting to watch the everyday life of this faraway land go by.

In any case, the bus arrived just a minute or two late (which, I would soon learn, is very impressive by Malaysian standards) and I was off on the ride across the peninsula to the east coast. It took about four hours, but it truly was never boring - when you're seeing a new country for the first time, even the countryside you see from the highway is fascinating, at least for me it is. Of course, it wasn't anything unique compared to Taiwan, except of course that it was cleaner and less developed!

My first stop was in Kuantan, which was billed in the travel guide as a good transit point for those on their way to the coast thanks to its big bus depot, and not much else. From what I could see, this was basically true. It looked like your average small city, interesting to me only because I was from halfway around the world. A week or so after I got back to Taiwan, though, I would read about Kuantan in the paper: it seems a young woman there was trying to earn a place in the Guinness Book of World Records by living in a glass room full of scorpions for several days. She would be doing this in a mall in Kuantan, so the public could see. I can't quite decide whether or not I'm sorry I missed that one!

Anyhow, after the bus arrived, I waited for a while for another bus to Cherating, the resort I'd settled on; but as of half an hour past the time that bus was supposed to leave, it hadn't even arrived. So I settled on taking a cab out to Cherating, which according to the travel guide would cost 40 ringgit (a bit over $10 US). That price turned out to be exactly right - I do wonder how Lonely Planet keeps so up to date on these things. So I got to Cherating at around 4:00 in the afternoon, with a few hours of sunlight left to possibly take advantage of, at least.