THE UNLIKELY BALIK KAMPUNG DRIVE
This year balik kampung was going to be different. Inevitably, my total lack of planning always meant that tickets would be long gone by the time the thought of buying one even vaguely passed though me head. And so, my mode of transportation to balik kampung for raya for as long as I have worked in KL was one that had four doors, four wheels, and me as a driver. A small procession of cars made that journey. First, a little Toyota Starlet that could, then a Wira, then Betty the 505GTi, and now, Helga the slightly fiestier 100C3.
Of course, it was not bad when toll was half what it is now, petrol was a measly RM1.05 a litre and I still had my brother running shotgun. Well, my brother got married, and you know what painfully happened to the rest.
Sg Petani is not that far away, although it has always been that little bit too far to make the journey at best, bearable, and a worst, something to dread. I know, I know, east coast drivers who journey down to KL almost every other week would immediately brand me as a poofter, but that's how it always felt - 5 hours at the wheel, trying to stay awake, slowing at all the overpasses in case the police were up to their tricks again, with only the occasional fast car chase to brighten things up.
Well, sod the petroleum giants, the sneaky camera totting PDRM and the evil money making capitalist toll operators. This year I am going to take the trunk roads and save myself a whole load of dosh.
I have never ever done this in my decade old sojurn in KL. And so, it seems, neither has anybody else of my generation. Personally, I still remember the snaky narrow uphill roads just before you reached Kuala Kangsar, being stuck for what seems like a long eternity behind an extremely snaily and gloriously smoky truck. That, and the absurdly ridiculous traffic lights near Taiping that had us crawling along for another long eternity. And, like all our dads will say, the trip to KL back then would take 8 long hours. If you had a Mini Cooper, 124 Sport or MGB handy. It can't be any faster now, can it? Not with 20 years worth of new registrations. It came as no surprise then, that my grand plans were met with more than a few raised eyebrows, and the occasional "haha you must be absolutely cuckoo" look, followed of course by an apologetic "drive safely and watch out for the cows...".
Righty then. My plans for a quick getaway on Friday was scuppered by the normal excuse - that thing most of us call work. And so, I finally pushed off on Sunday, 2 days before Raya. Waking up in the wee hours, I was cruising along Jalan Duta by 5.30am. My plan was to take the toll roads until it got light, and then exit into the trunk roads. Tanjung Malim, perhaps. Well, in great Malaysian motoring tradition, my plans got "modified". God I love our logical grandfathers. Don't you just love the fact that Jalan Ipoh will actually get you to Ipoh if I follow it long enough? Serendah, barely out of KL, had a surprise in store. A car had somehow flipped and crashed into the drain, a mangled web of steel, glass and plastic. The accident happened right outside a police station, with the hospital right behind it. At least the poor bloke couldn't have crashed at a better place.
Driving the trunk route was an absolute revelation. Even with an 11 year old car. Forget the sad sad fact that she is only as embarrassingly accelerative as a Satria that looked frighteningly bog standard 1.3 (but of course, I'm sure its K&Ned, ports polished, flywheel lightened and balanced, engine blueprinted, interior stripped out etc etc). Old Heidi has a trick up her saucy skirts. The 5 cylinder engine nicked from the quattro with the capital "Q". Sans turbo of course. Sweet right up to her red line at 6500 rpm, with an addictive warbly tenor that is smoother than a four but with bags more character than a straight six.
Trunk road traffic is really quite different. Who wants to go more than 80kph if all you want to do is to pop by the local grocer down the road? 70kph is more like it, and 60kph is absolutely the right thing to do in these here parts. Which is where the fun starts. Overtaking on trunk roads is a fine art that will have your full and utter concentration, as brain, eyes and limbs work in unison to sling you and your car past the other side in safety. It had me mentally dusting of my long discarded notes. You use all of your peripheral vision and then more, taking in road conditions, housing density, road signs, and the inevitable farm animal. You read the lay of the road by looking at which way the trees go off into the distance. You hang back a couple of car length to get a better view of incoming traffic, and crucially, to gain that extra head of steam as you signal, blip the throttle and change into third, check the rear view mirrors one last time and slam the accelerator up against the floorboards. Again, I hear that addictive wail as 5 cylinders scream their way up to 6000 rpm and then settle down at 5000 as we tuck in between two cars, ready to overtake again a few hundred metres down the road. This scenario is scientifically impossible on the PLUS. That you can have so much fun and satisfaction driving without getting nicked by the Bill is truly outrageous. And if you have sense, it can be safe as well.
And as proof yet another time that you can have your cake and eat it too, the journey only took slightly less than 6 hours. Really. Not kidding. No, I am absolutely serious. 120 minutes less than daddy Mohd "Fangio" in his twin carb Cooper, and only perhaps an hour more than if you had stuck doggedly to the PLUS and its speed limit. Not that I would know of course, because I never have.
Let me let you in to a big secret. Trunk roads have been upgraded and re-routed for the past 20 years. The windy snaky narrow roads after Kuala Kangsar is no more. The one lane train bridge that had us taking turns going through at Padang Rengas is gone. Ditto the traffic light from hell at Taiping. And guess what? Whole swathes of the trunk road are now straight as an arrow. And wait for this - many a kilometre are double laned! Folks, now you know why they are trying to raise the speed limit to 120kph.
But the even bigger secret is the journey itself. No more monotonous and endless double lane highways. You pass by towns whose colonial buildings and foreign names hint at a bygone age, at foreign invaders and civilisations a century ago. You pass through the land and the history that is, was and will always be Malaysia. You see the rubber plantations that used to fuel our economy give way to palm oil plantations that do that now. And then as you pass the plains of Taiping, endless paddy fields signal their arrival by winking at you in between the houses and tall trees that line the road.
Forget about stopping at the same rest area, eating the same mee rebus, pau and gelang patah from the same stall over and over and (sigh) over again. Now you have the option of stopping by at any old town you pass and try your luck at stalls, shacks, restaurants, coffee houses, hotels, and the remaining few rest houses in Malaysia. No more meeting traveller after weary traveller, foreigners in their own land, whizzing by you with nary a glance with only one goal in mind - home. Here, you get to see, and if you take the time, get to meet and know people who call that piece of earth home, and whose father and grandfathers before them have too. You get to see the real Malaysia, not KL and your kampung joined by a very long piece of straight road devoid of any character.
This year, balik kampung started the moment I left KL, not after I had reached the Sg Petani Utara toll booth. This year, balik kampung started 6 hours earlier.
aris
Word Count : 1420
Of course, it was not bad when toll was half what it is now, petrol was a measly RM1.05 a litre and I still had my brother running shotgun. Well, my brother got married, and you know what painfully happened to the rest.
Sg Petani is not that far away, although it has always been that little bit too far to make the journey at best, bearable, and a worst, something to dread. I know, I know, east coast drivers who journey down to KL almost every other week would immediately brand me as a poofter, but that's how it always felt - 5 hours at the wheel, trying to stay awake, slowing at all the overpasses in case the police were up to their tricks again, with only the occasional fast car chase to brighten things up.
Well, sod the petroleum giants, the sneaky camera totting PDRM and the evil money making capitalist toll operators. This year I am going to take the trunk roads and save myself a whole load of dosh.
I have never ever done this in my decade old sojurn in KL. And so, it seems, neither has anybody else of my generation. Personally, I still remember the snaky narrow uphill roads just before you reached Kuala Kangsar, being stuck for what seems like a long eternity behind an extremely snaily and gloriously smoky truck. That, and the absurdly ridiculous traffic lights near Taiping that had us crawling along for another long eternity. And, like all our dads will say, the trip to KL back then would take 8 long hours. If you had a Mini Cooper, 124 Sport or MGB handy. It can't be any faster now, can it? Not with 20 years worth of new registrations. It came as no surprise then, that my grand plans were met with more than a few raised eyebrows, and the occasional "haha you must be absolutely cuckoo" look, followed of course by an apologetic "drive safely and watch out for the cows...".
Righty then. My plans for a quick getaway on Friday was scuppered by the normal excuse - that thing most of us call work. And so, I finally pushed off on Sunday, 2 days before Raya. Waking up in the wee hours, I was cruising along Jalan Duta by 5.30am. My plan was to take the toll roads until it got light, and then exit into the trunk roads. Tanjung Malim, perhaps. Well, in great Malaysian motoring tradition, my plans got "modified". God I love our logical grandfathers. Don't you just love the fact that Jalan Ipoh will actually get you to Ipoh if I follow it long enough? Serendah, barely out of KL, had a surprise in store. A car had somehow flipped and crashed into the drain, a mangled web of steel, glass and plastic. The accident happened right outside a police station, with the hospital right behind it. At least the poor bloke couldn't have crashed at a better place.
Driving the trunk route was an absolute revelation. Even with an 11 year old car. Forget the sad sad fact that she is only as embarrassingly accelerative as a Satria that looked frighteningly bog standard 1.3 (but of course, I'm sure its K&Ned, ports polished, flywheel lightened and balanced, engine blueprinted, interior stripped out etc etc). Old Heidi has a trick up her saucy skirts. The 5 cylinder engine nicked from the quattro with the capital "Q". Sans turbo of course. Sweet right up to her red line at 6500 rpm, with an addictive warbly tenor that is smoother than a four but with bags more character than a straight six.
Trunk road traffic is really quite different. Who wants to go more than 80kph if all you want to do is to pop by the local grocer down the road? 70kph is more like it, and 60kph is absolutely the right thing to do in these here parts. Which is where the fun starts. Overtaking on trunk roads is a fine art that will have your full and utter concentration, as brain, eyes and limbs work in unison to sling you and your car past the other side in safety. It had me mentally dusting of my long discarded notes. You use all of your peripheral vision and then more, taking in road conditions, housing density, road signs, and the inevitable farm animal. You read the lay of the road by looking at which way the trees go off into the distance. You hang back a couple of car length to get a better view of incoming traffic, and crucially, to gain that extra head of steam as you signal, blip the throttle and change into third, check the rear view mirrors one last time and slam the accelerator up against the floorboards. Again, I hear that addictive wail as 5 cylinders scream their way up to 6000 rpm and then settle down at 5000 as we tuck in between two cars, ready to overtake again a few hundred metres down the road. This scenario is scientifically impossible on the PLUS. That you can have so much fun and satisfaction driving without getting nicked by the Bill is truly outrageous. And if you have sense, it can be safe as well.
And as proof yet another time that you can have your cake and eat it too, the journey only took slightly less than 6 hours. Really. Not kidding. No, I am absolutely serious. 120 minutes less than daddy Mohd "Fangio" in his twin carb Cooper, and only perhaps an hour more than if you had stuck doggedly to the PLUS and its speed limit. Not that I would know of course, because I never have.
Let me let you in to a big secret. Trunk roads have been upgraded and re-routed for the past 20 years. The windy snaky narrow roads after Kuala Kangsar is no more. The one lane train bridge that had us taking turns going through at Padang Rengas is gone. Ditto the traffic light from hell at Taiping. And guess what? Whole swathes of the trunk road are now straight as an arrow. And wait for this - many a kilometre are double laned! Folks, now you know why they are trying to raise the speed limit to 120kph.
But the even bigger secret is the journey itself. No more monotonous and endless double lane highways. You pass by towns whose colonial buildings and foreign names hint at a bygone age, at foreign invaders and civilisations a century ago. You pass through the land and the history that is, was and will always be Malaysia. You see the rubber plantations that used to fuel our economy give way to palm oil plantations that do that now. And then as you pass the plains of Taiping, endless paddy fields signal their arrival by winking at you in between the houses and tall trees that line the road.
Forget about stopping at the same rest area, eating the same mee rebus, pau and gelang patah from the same stall over and over and (sigh) over again. Now you have the option of stopping by at any old town you pass and try your luck at stalls, shacks, restaurants, coffee houses, hotels, and the remaining few rest houses in Malaysia. No more meeting traveller after weary traveller, foreigners in their own land, whizzing by you with nary a glance with only one goal in mind - home. Here, you get to see, and if you take the time, get to meet and know people who call that piece of earth home, and whose father and grandfathers before them have too. You get to see the real Malaysia, not KL and your kampung joined by a very long piece of straight road devoid of any character.
This year, balik kampung started the moment I left KL, not after I had reached the Sg Petani Utara toll booth. This year, balik kampung started 6 hours earlier.
aris
Word Count : 1420
posted by aries at
2:21 AM
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