Here is a survey from a Columbia University professor on vacation with his family in Malaysia.
He decided to take a road trip on one of the most beautiful stretch of highway from north of the country to the capital.
The plan is to drive the 2 hours drive from a small city called Ipoh in the state of Perak to the Capital of the country, Kuala Lumpur.
So to make things fun, the professor stir up an observation game for his 9 and 11 years old boy to play with while on the road.
Here is the report from the prof family.
The car driving seat is on the right hand side, and the stick shift is in the middle of the car on the left of the driver. Need some time to get used to. All cars go on the left hand side and the speed lane is on the right. The measurement for speed and distance is in Kilometer and not miles, that’s about 2.45 for every mile. And the speed limit for the Highway (almost the same as freeway, only it’s not free and the ground is raised to avoid flooding and improve water flow on the road.)
The initial plan is to drive the 210km stretch of highway from Ipoh to Kuala Lumpur.
We took one pee stop. Encounter one annoying driver that park right behind our car to wait for his lovely wife, even when we honk the horn a dozen times and there’s plenty of space in front of the car to move to let us leave. He insists on staying that 2 meter distance to shorten the wife’s trip from the toilet to the car.
Ok, one good thing about the trip is that, this is the greenest road trip that I’ve ever taken, all the tropical forest, counted 5 palm field, 3 rubber field, 16 over head bridges, and 6 under road bridges, one beautiful water fall (we later find out that’s the only one visible on the highway.). there’s about 16 opening between the forest, with housing area in between them. Beautiful.
Half of the trip is a 6 lanes highway. So we are pretty comfortable speeding our way all the way. We almost max out 110km/hr the whole way.
Now the fun part is that my sons have been really busy the whole trip, because the driving here is fun to encounter, it is almost a pleasant drive. And my family has the best fun counting the following statistic.
65 cars pass us while we are at top speed (meaning all of them are speeding), we receive around 16 flashes and 36 tail gating when we are on the fast lane at max speed. 5 cars decided to swift into the left lane to pass us over and speed across the front of us to the right fast lane when we are at max speed in the middle lane. Great maneuver but dangerous when one almost hit a motorcycle passing us on the right lane (bear in mind we are still at max speed, which means even the cyclist is speeding.) around 25 of the car passes us above high speed passes us on the fast lane when we are in the middle lane. Still it’s speeding.
We encounter 15 buses and 13 trucks, 20 of those are going so slow I think that there should be a minimal limit to the speed on highway. Anyway, that causes about a 5km of jam on the road. Which clearly those trucks are unable to speed because there’s a slope and their overweight stuff on the truck is dragging them. Amazingly only 5 of them spew black smoke all the way. (a warning from the car rental agency, they advice to avoid driving behind a truck because almost all of them spew smelly black smoke and the smell would be unpleasant to be behind them.
More fun is that there’s about a dozen of road kill from normal dogs and cats, to baboon and lizard, and at one point there’s a snake and pangolin. And about a dozen of vehicles broke down on the emergency lane.
Alright besides the excitement of being flash constantly and tailgated. The whole trip is pretty easy, as the roadway are wide and pretty flat.
Of the most exciting thing that my sons found is that there’s this gang of bikers that ride in pack of 30 something. And on auto combusted motorcycle on the way out of the rest station.
We also saw more than a dozen of BMW and Mercedes that give no mercy at flashing at us whenever they come over when we are on the fast lane. (I guess good cars does run faster, and less prone to be in Accident?!! Rather create one.) and 6 Ferraris and 3 Chryslers sped over us in no time at all. Excitement scream from my sons. All the wows.
We are actually driving a small local made can called SAGA. Pretty easy to drive, the space is modest, it does get cramp up at the back if my sons were older, there’s less leg space at the back then expected when me and my wife have to back our front seat for comfortable driving.
All in all the road trip is a success one. Due to good planning, we don’t get to watch a movie (my sons is not so happy about that.) before our dinner gala at one of the shopping mall convention centre due to the miscalculated distance and ETA.
One small notes, we watch about every movies they have in their Cineplex the next couple of days, including the Europe film fest specials. One reason is that one of my son is a gaming freak (non-of it contributed by me) and the other is a movie geek (I admit due to my own academic teaching habit). The ticket here for a premiere class seats is just 9 RM, that’s about 3 dollars fantastic price for adult and children are half price, one strange thing is that the children seats are calculated by heights not age, both my boys have passed the limits and treated as adult, which they are happy about and we did comply since the price is just ridiculously cheap. And we get to let them enjoy some European art movie with all the sexually sensitive part censored (due to local cultural rules), and we actually watch a pretty smoothly re-edited version of the movie. Without us needing to discuss some of the uncomfortable sexual topic at their age and able to enjoy a pretty meaningful movie….. clean.
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