The Jungle Train/Kota Bharu

I didn't get sick on the bus out of Taman Negara. In fact, I was determined to get to the Perhentian Islands that day and not let anything stop me or slow me down. We arrived back in Jerantut and flew around town trying to find the fastest, easiest or cheapest was to get to our destination. Bad news came fast, in that there was no way to make it to the island that day, and we would have to spend a night in Kota Bharu. Also, unless we hustled to the train station within 15 minutes, we would be spending the night right there in Jerantut, only several kilometers out side of the damn national park we just left! So before you could say "waste of a day" we hurried to the station and bought a ticket.

It actually ended up being somewhat of a blessing because the train we would be taking was the much touted "jungle railway" through Malaysia. Lonely Planet and Seat 61 both had high praise for it, so out of sheer circumstance, we managed to check it out.

There was only one platform and our train was due. So naturally, when one rolled in, we enthusiastically hopped on board without thinking twice. You can probably already see where this is going. If you guessed "Singapore", you're right. It wasn't until another trail rolled in, parallel to ours, that we suspected we might have been a little quick to hop on board. Smelling something amiss, I showed my ticket stub to a fellow passenger. Yep. Wrong train. I told Adam and several other travelers who had made the same mistake as us. We all hopped off the train, onto the tracks and up onto the next train. I saved all of our asses. My smug sense of self-satisfaction was further complimented by excellent seats, air conditioning and the best damn legroom a Harlem Globetrotter could ask for.

The jungle railway was quite nice. Adam and I talked about people we went to elementary school with. Rivers and tree canopies and the occasional Karst landscape flew by the window. At one point the air conditioning failed leaving us in a hermetically sealed sauna. Then it came back with a vengeance, staying cold until the end of our trip. When I exited the train at our destination, my glasses fogged up from the humidity, so I followed a silhouette that walked with Adam's gait. We split a cab with a Belgian couple to a backpacker hostel in Kota Bharu. And the journey definitely outweighed the destination.

So Kota Bharu is by no means a tourist attraction. In fact, it has the misfortune of being the gateway to a much more interesting attraction, the Perhentian Islands. It is a coastal town on the northwest tip of peninsular Malaysia and is known for being a pretty conservatively Muslim place. The owner of the hostel we were staying in recommended we check out the night market. We had an evening to kill, so we figured "what the hell". With our Belgian travel partners, we walked the unlit streets of what definitely felt like a town living in the shadows of a much more substantial attraction. Other backpackers milled about, no doubt in the same situation as us. there were taxis, convenience stores, young boys on motorbikes. In fact, this is probably just what any Malaysian city looks like when you get off of the tourist trail. Or make an unplanned stop on it, as it happened.

The night market was underwhelming. The expectations of a hustling bazaar with cramped stalls, lively patrons and exotic wares were quickly squashed when it became clear that we were in the middle of what was essentially a parking lot for food carts. Sure, tables liberally peppered the rim of said parking lot, and some of the carts installed TVs for their patrons to watch, but underwhelming it certainly was.

The four of us circled different carts. like discerning shoppers, really just looking for something that would be a: delicious, b: not a hassle to order and c: not a hassle to eat. I struck out on all fronts when it became clear that the rice and chicken with mush I fought to order had to be eaten with my hands. My public transit taking, stray animal petting hands. My companions had better luck. So did the litter of cats circling our table begging for handouts. I ate as much as I felt comfortable eating (after finding a spoon mind you) before we decided to head back. My innate pessimism was counterbalanced by a nearby tourist who was REALLY EXCITED about the selection of bootlegged DVDs some tout was trying to pawn off on him. That and the GREAT PRICE of only 10 ringets!

On my way back, I split from the group to seek out a notebook. Yeah, I finally succumbed to the urge to buy a pen and a notebook. until this point, I had been storing every memory of this trip in a backlog of other memories I've collected over the past year since I've been out of Canada. When it came time to regurgitate my experiences onto the Internet for my friends and family to read, I would always sit listlessly in front of the computer, exhausted from a day of swimming or trekking or whatever the hell I was attempting to remember I did in the first place. With a notebook, I feel I can more accurately encapsulate an experience as it happens and relegate my brain to the rote task of copying it onto a screen after it has spent the day trying to find an Internet connection. That, and the tangibility of a notebook holds a certain allure.

I made the decision to buy the notebook while riding the jungle train. It was long 7 hours of foliage passing by the window. Certainly I've spent much more time in transit before, and certainly my brain has wandered and poked holes of insight into what has transpired in the last month (it had been exactly a month at that point). But more and more I felt the urge to write until it began to feel like a handicap, not having a pen and paper. I've almost exhausted my itunes library, so it was time to start something new. Let's hope it doesn't fall by the wayside now.

So it was 10 and the streets sounded of shutters closing. Not one to be defeated, I stepped into a 7-11. I had hoped to get something nice, but this cheap little pad was the best thing they had. Again, not one to be defeated (so strong was my resolve to begin writing) I approached the girl at the cash with the intent of finding a better place to buy notepads. Now, I'm not sure if I was being presumptuous, but I immediately began speaking pidgin Malaysian/English to her in an attempt to convey my message. She responded in perfect English, "yes, try the stationary store, just that way." OK. the girl at the 7-eleven in Kota Bharu, Malaysia spoke better English than the kids I taught in Korea whose parents give half of their salaries so they can learn close to NOTHING. How does this happen? In fact, this encounter was not terribly uncommon in Malaysia. In Korea, you learn a little English and your friends, your family and your potential employers think you are Johnny Jetset making the world move below you. But in Malaysia, you work at 7-eleven selling notebooks to tourists. Anyways, the stationary store was closed so I had to settle for some ratshit number. Oh well.

The next day, we jettied out to the Perhentian Islands, the real attraction. I made sure to withdraw enough cash for four days there because I heard that there were no ATMs anywhere. I was also told that the entire island runs on generators, but that sounded like a dubious claim. We bought return boat tickets, so we hadn't seen the last of Kota Bharu. Hopefully the last we see of it will be out a window as we sail through to our next destination.

Image stolen from Wikipedia.