He's Not Married, He Has No Ring, Don't trust Him, I'm not Joking

So yeah, this is the 'long awaited' Malaysia related blog post, I've been threatening to post. Sorry It's taken so long

PART ONE

After Sentosa, in the evening and after we had eaten (this time on our own without Matt and Audrey) They ran us to the bus terminal where we boarded our 'superior,premier super coach thing' It was pretty nice, we sat at the front with a little extra leg room Audrey had blagged for us.

Anyway the coach journey was pretty interesting, weird, scary and fuckin' annoying. Basically within 10 minutes I realised that my mp3 player had completely fucked up and couldn't read any music on either it's own memory or it's external, schweet. Me and Sirus just went to sleep, as after all it was a 10 hour journey, we'd set off at 9 in the evening o it was an overnighter. after the excruciatingly painful immigration and bagge checks (taken place at different terminals, so off the coach, back on, downn the road 2 seconds, back off on etc) At around 2/3 in the morning I awoke to have the driver tell me soemthing unclear about a taxi or some-shit, I wasn't interested and drifted back off to sleep. At 7, the driver mumbled 'Penang' our stop. I had luckily drifted from my sleep and managed to wake Sirus up collect our stuff and get up, we did however then ask the driver ' Are we being taken to our hotel' Like we had paid for and had been clearly stated in our travel documents Alas however, NO.

Right basically the 'taxi' talk was because the driver couldn't be bothered to take us all the way and decided to offload us inot an un-marked taxi, qho he proceeded to pay, at 7 in the morning and slightly out of it I was in no mood to complain/argue etc. So we got in and off we went, withing 30 seconds the river had;

A, Almsot killed a moped driver

B Reversed up a triple carriageway- the wrong way to talk to a taxi driver mid drive

C, Run a Red-Light

Basically the taxi driver told our non-taxi driver that the hotle was alot further away than the coach driver had told him it was, and had fobbed him off with money, so back to the coach we went, after a strong interchange of words and money we were back on the road and far more aware of what a shit and scary sitaution we were in. With Clenched fists I made sure to question everything our driver told us and make sure there was somewhere to run if he tried anything.

At one point the driver attempted to allay our fears with a pleasant family story about his daughters and wife, Alas I discovered it all to be a lie, hence the title. So I swiftly texted Sirus the following;

He's Not Married, He Has No Ring, Don't trust Him, I'm not Joking

Anyways despite my fears he did actually take us to our hotel, and didn't (Luckily) try and rinse us for more money than he'd been paid.

This Is Him In the White (We saw him in town later that day)

The Hotel was AWESOME, swimming pool, resteraunt nice views, the whole lot, and for a budget price. We checked in and went for a nap before heading out into Penang

In Penang there is literally shit all to do, we wandered alot, enjoyed people watching and spent most of our time jostling with the traffic, as pedestrians are less than second class citizens here, and there is no code of conduct for pedestrians who wish to cross the road and drivers don't understand the concept of 'driving laws'

Anyways here we met some colourful characters;

• The Tinnest man in the world who we think was a rickshaw driver

• The Most awesome (again) lady who made us our lunch for 60p Seen Here;

• The Most elderly Asian couple in existence
• A man who believed me and Sirus to be gay (This (un)fortunately happens alot) who proceeded to offer to buy us lunch and show us the sights
• A ten year old Kid Ride a moped, on the pavement and then onto and into, the road seen here

• The most insane taxi driver on the face of the planet, no-one will ever beat him, ever- I'll explain further later.

After our interesting day out in Penang viewing the (Very few) sights and enjoying the undeveloped hap hazard nature of the underbelly of the city, we caught the free hotel shuttle bus back and chilled at our hotel as at this point it had started to rain. Sirus wrote a love letter whilst I slept, though it wasn't for me, what gives man?????

The Taxi Driver

This deserves it's own section as nothing on the face of the planet could prepare you for the degree of insane driving the taxi driver we had the following day subjected us to.

Having checked out and ensured we were in the hotel at 8.50 for our transfer at 9 for our next coach jounrey, we began to panic at 9.14 when our lift still hadn't arrived despire our coach leaving at 10, check in being at 9.30 and the journey to the coach depot being 30 minutes drive away (at least).

So after 3 phonecalls to the bus company the driver eventually turned up at 9.35, aware he was late and we headed on into town.

Now Asians aren't great at time keeping but when they're in a rush they love to rush. So in we got with our driver, into a car thirty years old and barely recognisable as a car, let alone a taxi. The Thign was falling apart and the air-con unit was pumping white smoke into the car.

Now off we set, on average our driver broke a driving law every 2-3 seconds including, but not exclusive to;

• The Speed limit - We averaged 80, the whole time (even side roads)
• Lanes - What lanes?
• Traffic Lights - Again what traffic lights?
• Other Drivers - What other drivers?
• Indicators - Cars don't need em

Basically we almost killed at least 5 moped drivers and avoided in excess of 10 serious crashes with other drivers / other objects.

The worst occasion was when on a two lane road our driver attempted to, at 80kmph drive between a car and moped, decided against it, backed off and almost killed the moped driver to the side, this was the only time of at least three, that this manoeuvre had actually failed.

We made it to the depot in 15 minutes, checked in and surprise surprise had to wait till gone 10 for our coach onto Kuala Lumpa.

The journey was pleasant enough and took only a few hours - I'll do a separate post for that later today.

Ben Our, Also currently in Aus, chillin' in the sun :)

Mob Of Asians