Motorbike

I was very excited to get to ride a motorbike again. There is nothing quite like the feeling of the wind in your face and the bike responding as if it were an extension of your body. But when I woke up, the bike had a flat. So I had to take a car. I wish there was a way I could explain fully the feeling if driving here. There are so many more variables a play here than at home. Not only are you watching the cars around you, but motorbikes suddenly appear out of no where and slip into your blindspot. Then you've got the the cars that are hoping to turn into the road you're on. They just kinda keep inching forward until the other cars have no choice but to stop and let them enter. If that isn't enough-there are the blue factory buses. I'm not sure who drives those, but I've heard they are from India- and they still drive as if they are there! They drive as if the whole road belongs to them and no one else is there. Plus those busses are huge! Not terribly much smaller than a semi really. On top of that, parking places are something of an art form. If you can make your car fit, it's fair game. Depending on the place, the far left lane will unexpectedly turn into parking. It's not uncommon to see cars parked two deep along the side of the road. I've always wondered how the inside car gets out. The lanes themselves are much more narrow then ours, and are much more flexible. Sometimes a road that is marked with two lanes becomes three. It's not uncommon to see cars driving on top of the lane line.
I did okay driving the car. I'm pretty used to the traffic rules, but parking, ugh! The next time I complain about parking in Seattle, please remind me that it could be much, much worse!!! I have no idea how people even fit in the parking spaces. There is absolutely no room for error. And I tell you what, you don't want to forget to bend your side mirror, or it might not be there when you get back. Needless to say, I was very happy when my friend offered her motorbike for today. It's just much, much easier. You can pretty much park anywhere and for the most part avoid all jams by sneaking around on the shoulder or inbetween stopped cars! Plus, there is just nothing quite like the excitement if riding the motortbike!

Bus Ride

A trip to Malaysia wouldn't be complete without a bus debacle. I bought a ticket for the 6:30 bus to KL. We got there at 6:15 and they gave us the number of the bus. The bus arrived more or less on time. I put my bags underneath and found my seat. My friend waited outside just to make sure that I got off well. After half an hour of waiting we started to wonder what was up. The ticket lady had just started to check tickets and I thought, okay just a little behind, when suddenly the driver came on yelling. Apparently the lady had sold a ticket to a person who wanted to go to Klang, which is an hour out of the way of the bus route. It turns out that we had also been waiting for some people whose bus broke down to arrive so they could catch a ride with us, to a place that was also not on our route. At this point we were looking at arriving 3 hours late- 2am instead of 11 pm. Needless to say I was annoyed - so was the driver! I tried to forget about it by amusing myself with photo editing. After an hour we made a quick bathroom stop. After two hours we stopped to eat. It was here that the driver worked his magic. You see the buses always stop at specific places -so there were other buses at the eatery as well. The driver talked with other drivers and found a place on a different bus for all of those people who had joined us. Our ETA changed to 12am in a matter of seconds. The thing I find the craziest is that this is NOT a rare occurrence. It seems every other time I ride the bus here something random happens - one time the bus broke down, other the driver almost left without my friend, another time we sat forever at a stop waiting for another bus that had broke down. Never a dull moment at the bus station here, that's for sure!

KL to Penang Local Style

I got a ride from Kuala Lumpur to Penang with my old roommate and her friend. They planned to pick me up at 8 pm for the 4 hour drive. They got lost finding the place I was staying. I got a text saying it would be closer to 8:30. At 9 I started to worry. I called - several times. The phone was shut off. By then I was definitely worried. At 10pm I finally got a call back. They had figured it out and were almost to the place we were meeting. When all was said and done, we were leaving the parking lot at 10:30pm. I was in the back and went straight to sleep. In Malaysia a 4 hour drive is considered quite long, as it only takes 8 hours to travel the whole of Malaysia. Also, rest areas always include gas stations and many places to eat - often a Mcdonold's or KFC. I lost count how many times we stopped. It felt like every 20 minutes! We stopped so that the driver could take a quick 15 minute nap, because driving while tired is unsafe. ;) Needless to say, a 4 hour drive ended up taking 6 and a half hours! I spent the whole time somewhere between asleep and awake. When we arrived in Penang did we go straight home to sleep? Of course not! That would be very anti-Malaysian of us - we went straight out to eat an early 5:00am breakfast!! My old roommate felt it necessary to get me a real Penang teh tarik (pulled tea) the second we arrived - she knows me too well! She took me to one of my favorite places - Kapitians. They are open 24 hours, however, we found out that they don't have a cook from 4am to 6 am! After that we went to Kayu Nasi Kandar. They are also open 24 hours and actually have a cook the entire time! Only after that did we head home to sleep - around 6:30am. Besides we had nearly had a full nights sleep in the car anyway, right?!

Journey

Flying is such a strange experience. For me it always becomes a quiet meditation on the fleetingness of life and leaves me feeling as if I need to squeeze every possible bit of life out of every single moment. It makes me feel reckless with the fear of missing some hidden opportunity. I'm not sure why this comes about - perhaps it is the quiet solitude of traveling- the feeling of loneliness that accompanies long journeys, or maybe it's in the simple act of looking down upon my world with a view that makes everything seem so minuscule and insignificant. Whatever it is though, it's a feeling that I wish I could conjure back while I'm in he midst of life-surrounded by deadlines and to-do lists - where I am so busy doing that I forget to revel in the small things - the things that make life worth living - laughter, kids discovering something for the first time, an inside joke that doesn't end, the leaves turning that deep magenta. I'm not sure why it is in America that we have come to equate a successful life with excess of material things - to the point that our work is allowed to drown out the things that truly feed us. Perhaps I simply need to make a point of traveling more often so as to be reminded of what is important. As Lewis Carroll said - “All that matters is what we do for each other.”