Standards of driving in Singapore are bad; standards of driving in Malaysia are atrocious. We saw our first accident about an hour into our journey, a six or seven car pile up on the opposite carriageway, with a couple of vehicles looking like write-offs. At this point the rain wasn’t terribly severe and the visibility was good, so it might have been difficult to understand how such an accident might have happened were it not for our intimate and hard won knowledge of cars getting far too close and tail-gating each other, and of drivers who seem to think they can handle excessive speeds despite having only two lanes to operate within (and being useless drivers). The second accident we saw came just before we stopped at the Ayer Keroh services to sample free tea and toast at the A.R.A.B. Café, which happens to belong to Noi’s sister’s husband (Abdul Rachid Abu Bakar, hence the rather neat acronym. ) This time it was on our side of the carriage way, creating a jam of some fifteen minutes: a medium sized lorry had managed to turn over onto its side, slap-bang in the middle of the road. Of course, quite a number of cars made the situation worse by driving up on the hard shoulder to turn two lanes into three, at times four, to make getting round the site of the accident as difficult as possible. This kind of foresight is the mark of the Malaysian driver.
After we’d finished our tea, by which time it was dark, the heavens decided to truly open and the last couple of hours into Kuala Lumpur involved an unpleasantly high level of concentration whilst driving. The stretch of highway between Ayer Keroh and Seremban is undergoing some kind of widening operation to convert two lanes to three. Unfortunately this operation is not yet complete and involves stretches of highway with a definite three lanes turning suddenly and unpredictably into stretches with the usual two. Negotiating the ins and outs of this in a howling storm is not a restful way to spend your Sunday evening. Surprisingly we didn’t see any further accidents until we reached KL.
Traffic into the city seemed heavy up to the toll but after that it wasn’t so bad until we came to Jalan Ampang. At that point it suddenly became quite slow moving, the reason for this becoming clear to us as we approached the bend to the Flamingo Hotel. The road there had flooded and one or two cars seemed to have run into the wall of the raised highway at Ampang which we went to the left of. At that point we were the only car going in that direction as the flood on that side was at its worst. Noi asked me, after I got through the stretch if I had accelerated into it, obviously thinking I knew what I was doing. I explained it was the power of prayer that took us through. Today we’ve been reading in the papers how, at that point in time, there were flash floods all over the city so it seems we were lucky our route remained passable.
We ate a snack at the Dunkin’ Donuts place on Bukit Antarabansa, thinking our journey was done, but this was not to be. When we finally got to Maison KL and parked the car in the drive, I was puzzled as to why Noi, the first in the house, didn’t switch on the lights. The reason was simple enough: no power. Nothing wrong with the fusebox, just no power: no lights, no alarm, no tv, no air-con, no fans, no fridge, etc. So off we set, in search of a hotel room – heading for a place we knew called the Sucasa on Jalan Ampang. Back on the highway we passed an interesting five car pile-up, quite a fresh one, ready to cause a massive jam.
Fortunately the Sucasa had one room available, and they’re pretty big rooms, with a small kitchen area & living room, enough for the five of us. The girls seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves there. I think they thought it was all part of the treat.
Today power has been restored and things here are finally in some sort of order. I’m tempted to say never again, but it was all a bit of a lark really (though I can’t say I recall thinking so at the time.)
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