When I got to Puduraya, it was packed. It was still about 85 degrees and 90% humidity. I was tired after carrying my bags but I was still really, really excited about going to the island. I made it to the gate easily enough and had about 1 hour to wait until departure time. I killed that time by playing Sudoku. I also happened to meet a Malayan who was on the same bus as me, so I waited with him.
That may have been the first thing I did wrong. Since the announcements were in Malayan, I of course had no idea what was going on. He was nice about it and said that he'd tell me when the bus was leaving, and we would go together. Well, it got to be about 11:50, and I asked him if we should go. He said, "not yet." So we waited and waited some more. Right at 12, he gave the signal to go downstairs to the platform. I hadn't considered how crowded the platform would be! It was packed, and I immediately lost my guide in the sea of tourists. The good thing was, or so I thought at the time, was that EVERYONE on the platform was going to Kuala Perlis. So I'd just wait with them, right? Wrong. It got to be after 12, then 12:15, and everyone was chatting and waiting. I was standing with some people when we decided to look at our tickets. Even though we were all supposed to go to Perlis at 12 from the same platform, we were apparently on different busses. Oh crap.
Then, someone looked at my ticket, and said, "Oh, you're bus 59, not 3359. Bus 59 left about 15 minutes ago." Oh shit. I started to sweat even more, and my world came crashing down. I wanted to cry! What was I going to do? My entire vacation, ruined! Go back to the hostel? Try to sneak onto a bus? Tell someone to get the bus to come back? Oh shit. I couldn't believe I had missed the bus. However, in my defense, there were approximately 6 busses on the platform right at 12 all headed to Perlis, and with the 200 people on the platform and announcements for departures in Malay, I had was just going with what I thought was the flow. So I spent about the next 2 hours freaking out. Here's what happened next.
After calming down a little, I thought, "maybe I'll just write 33 in front of the 59 and try to get on that bus." But then, what if I kicked someone else off the bus who really was supposed to be on that bus? Could they strap me to the roof? Could I sit on the floor for 7 hours? Hide under somebody elses seat? All sorts of questions were racing through my mind.
Soon, I met a group of 3 Iranians my age, and the girl Sharin was very sweet and helpful. She took the staple out of their grouped-together tickets and stapled mine in with theirs. The plan was just for me to try to sneak in with their group on bus 3359 when it came. Well, we waited and waited again. It was now over a half hour late! That would never have happened in Korea! Everyone on bus 3359 had started to sit down and wait on different places on the platform. Here's a picture of the ghetto bus platform from the backside. Most people are sitting off to the left hand side on some benches.
About 1:15 am, after eating some KFC, the man in charge said that bus 3359 was no longer coming! WHAT?!?! After all that?? And now we couldn't get there. But wait, a different bus was coming, so we needed new tickets. Because my ticket was grouped together with my new friends, we were issued 4 new tickets for the new bus, no questions asked. Phew! What a relief! After another half hour, the bus still hadn't shown up. The same man lead us up to street level and the group of about 100 of us waited outside of a restaurant for 20 minutes for the bus. One bus showed up and took the people that were headed for Penang (a state in Pennisular Malaysia). Then, there was about 65 of us.
Our bus did eventually show, and we all pushed and shoved to get on the bus. Lucikly, our group got seats together in the back. There were 6 more people to get on, but no more seats left. The same man came on, yelled for a little bit, and ticked people off that didn't have the "new" ticket that was issued. I'm not sure if a bus ever came to get those guys who didn't have the correct ticket! I was so lucky with how everything turned out, but I was still so stressed and wound up that I was unable to sleep a wink on the 7 hour bus ride through the middle of the night!
To be continued...
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