Malaysia's bus driver

This is a true story of how a Malaysian bus driver drives.
It happened a few days ago, at the cross junction in front of 1U.

Well it's a pretty busy and broad road, so it's important to follow the signals of the traffic lights to avoid any accidents.

I took this Metro 99 bus from Asia Jaya, going to my gf's place in Damansara. The roads at the junction is roughly shown in the diagram below. Juz ignore the tiny colour boxes in the diagram 1st.

As you can c, the road is broad and there r cars going in all kinds of directions through centre of the yellow line box. Buses normally stop at the road side after crossing the cross road to take passengers, so they usually follow the 2nd left lane (1st left lane is to turn left into 1U's direction), as tht is easier for them to juz give a signal n approach the road shoulder on the left.
But in this case, the bus driver of the Metro 99 seemed to have no intention to go to the left lane when he approaches the traffic light. Instead, he cut into the rightmost lane, where it is intended for ppl to make a U-turn beneath the flyover to the opposite side (TTDI side). OK, tht is illegal already as the lane is not for cars tht r going straight. What next is, while the traffic light is still red for our side, n cars r turning towards 1U from the opposite road (notice the little black boxes turning right in the diagram), the bus beats the traffic light and cars from opposite side n rushes through the cross road (when the driver noticed no cars coming from the other side), n then quickly moves to the left lane n stops by the road side (notice the movement of the blue box in the diagram below). WHAT THE FUCK!! It's a shame that i forgot to note down the bus' plate number.

I think the Metro bus driver took this step so that he can beat the Rapid KL bus which was in the left lane and get all the passengers. He chose to risk the lifes of the entire bus to make, say extra 20 bucks? Tht is freaking dangerous and idiotic! This is how bus drivers in Malaysia cause those freaking accidents! Rapid KL drivers on the other hand i think is more law abiding, yeah i've seen drivers who talk on the phone while driving, drivers who curses ppl who play with the bell, but not reckless driving like this metro bud driver! N let me assure u tht this is not the first time they did such thing!

Although it is not fair to categorise all Malaysian bus drivers as ignorant and hazardous, but u can see problems in their driving attitude everyday everywhere, from minor things to major problems. They need more discipline, damn it! How many freakin accidents do we need n how many more ppl to die 1st b4 they do something more serious to control these 'wild n reckless' road freaks? I think the ministers have not tried one of these on the road rollercoasters yet..

Euro Trip with my dear (Day 6)

DAY 6

We wanted to get up early but still we dragged till around 10 only fully prepared. We had a very filling chinese teo-chew style breakfast (although the son of the owner told me they were from Fujian aka Hokkien), with porridge, pau and dishes of vege and egg.

We then went to buy two 24 hour travel passes from the tobacco shop, and took a bus from Mestre to Venice. Well i did not really know where to go and how to take the Vaporetto (water bus) at first, so we decided to just walk following the road signs to Piazza San Marco. Well turned out to be a good choice. We saw a lot of stuff along our way...

Ok, here's Sin May with some walls again.

I don't remember what buildings did i walked past below, some cathedral-cum-museum i guess..
There was a man playing some weird musical instrument, like an up-side-down wok, but the sound of the instrument sounded a bit 'mystical'...

We walked past a pastry shop, selling pizzas and these 'calzones'. It's like an Italian version of curry puff, with different type of fillings.

Sin May fed some fat pigeons in half way.

Finally, we reached the St. Mark's Square (Piazza San Marco)... Well we did not bother to go into the Basilica San Marco, as the queue was long under the hot sun, and cathedrals will juz look like cathedrals...

Instead, after taking some photos, we took a Vaporetto to a nearby island called Murano, the place where Murano glasses r made.

We did not take any pictures of the glasswork on the island, as most shops do not welcome photography n we respected them. So we juz walked around the island, n we found a gelato store in a small mall... Cheapest so far :)

A monument made of murano glasses... N Sin May taking photos with wall again... hehe..

We had a big piece of pizza as our lunch... Then our next destination, another island called Burano.. The unique thing about this island is that the buildings on this island are all painted in different colours, i.e. no repeated colours between adjacent buildings... Other than that, we juz walked around, took some beautiful scenes, had another gelato, n then headed back to Venice.

It was evening already n we tried to find a place to eat, somewhere affordable n Italian. No, we did not eat in McD for god's sake.

We walked around San Marco, trying to find a nice place to eat... We ended up in a place called Ristorante La Nuova Grotta...Well they were having some sort of promotion, 3 course meal for 17 euro. Not bad huh...

We had some bread n bread sticks before our meal was served. Sin May ordered a pizza while i ordered a 3 course meal, starting with pasta nero di sepia (squid ink spaghetti), followed by a grilled salmon dish n a bowl of salad. Quite filling, n it was nice to have tasted the squid ink pasta :)

After dinner, it was getting dark already, we had a walk around, saw some restaurants with live orchestra/band performing (fancy!) n we headed to the jetty to take a Vaporetto back to the bus station. Unfortunately, we took the Vaporetto that made the most stops in between (should have taken a direct Vaporetto to the bus station).. So we were forced to stand for like 20 - 30 minutes in the packed, sweaty boat, waiting to arrive at the last stop. That was the only turn off of that day's trip. We had a wonderful day in Venice, n next time when we go, we will try the gondola :)


(to be continued...)

Euro Trip with my dear (Day 5)

DAY 5

We did not have much plan today, I allocated today for a visit to the Louvre. This time is INTO the Louvre.

We entered the Louvre from the back entrance where the inverted pyramid is located as we took the metro directly to the station Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre

This is how the Louvre is suppose to be like in a summer's day - filled, packed with people hehe...
Long queue as always, and for a world class museum, 10 euro is not expensive at all... And the best thing of all, I've been to the Louvre for three times, n everytime I got in for FREE! I love the benefits of being a student in Europe :)

We did not have time to go through every single thing in the museum, and we did not go to every section of the museum, we simply did not have tht much time as we had a flight to catch at 6 in the evening. We visited the Mesopotamian section, Egyptian section, Roman & Greek sculptures and artifacts, French & Italian paintings.

A bronze sculpture below showing a centaur grabbing a woman, then the next sculpture a man fighting a centaur. We assumed that the centaur grabbed the man's wife, then the man beat the ass out of that centaur lol...

And thanks to best selling book of Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, and the making of this book into film, the inverted pyramid and Mona Lisa had become a must see in the Louvre. So we paid a visit to Mona Lisa as well.

We then continued to see some paintings.. 'Liberty Leading the People' and 'Joan of Arc' paintings.

Before we left, we visited the African section... Creepy looking artifacts... And we took a photo with dumb dumb from Easter Island as well :)


We saw 2 interesting paintings when we were on our way out... 2 paintings painted from the front n back view of the fighting scene...

We headed back to the hostel, took our luggage, then took a metro to Gare du Nord to change to RER B, to CDG Airport. At Gare du Nord, we had a little problem here... The counter had a long queue and the ticket machine only accepts coins and cards, not notes. As I was looking around to find a way to buy the tickets, i asked Sin May to wait for me at one spot. There was no way that i could buy with banknotes, wtf, they accept Visa Debit so, if there is extra charge, let them charge la... Luckily my card had been changed to Visa Debit... If I was still using Solo card tht time, I would have been dead... After i bought the tickets, Sin May told me that when she was waiting for me, a man approached her speaking French, did not know whether he's a begger or mentally ill or what, he juz bugged her for a while then left, still tht left her a bit stunned... The train was packed, n there were a lot of French-Africans... It was hot n stuffy, and a baby cried all the way.... zzz...

It was a long way to walk to the gate.... zzz.... I thought we had not much time d so i did not want to eat d only pass through security.... but then, flight delayed.... Gate changed.. then last minute flight arrived in time... What a mess.. The waiting area was hot, no aircond...

We flew past the beautiful Alps on our way to Venice, but unfortunately we could not take any photos because none of us sat next to the window... We arrived in Marco Polo Airport after around an hour. The airport was located at the coast and we can see the sea juz right next to the runway when the plane was landing... Interesting..

We did not book our accommodation on the island itself. Instead, we booked our hostel in the mainland of Venice, a town called Mestre. We chose that hostel because it was right opposite the train station, and we needed to take a train to Rome at 4am on the day after tomorrow.

When we reached the train station we took sometime to find the hostel because the hostel was located in a building without clear signs, then took sometime again to try to pass through few gates and getting to the correct floor. Luckily, someone came down then only we were able to go up. The instructions to get to the hostel was really unclear. However, everything turned out good after we checked in. The hostel was ran by a chinese family, and they insisted that we should eat and settle down first before doing the check in procedure. Home-cooked chinese food, rice, fish, meat vege, soup etc. It was better than expected, and i felt welcomed here. We got a big room, meant for 3 ppl, since only 2 of us stayin, we had a spacious room, with our own plasma tv :) since it was quite late already, and there was nothing to see around the area, we juz stayed in the room during that evening. I chatted with the son of the owner (the receptionist) n some other chinese tourists, while watchin football with them for a while. They were really nice ppl, even the mineral water n beer in the kitchen can be consumed anytime free of charge... They even prepared a very comprehensive guide about Venice for tourists like us n i must admit i was very impressed. Me and Sin May watched a few movies dubbed in Italian then gone to sleep.

Below is the view of the train station outside of our window, n me reading the guide provided by the hostel.


(to be continued..)