Malaysia 639

It seems that when you get too many complaints against your bus driving ability, the Malaysia state bus company places you on the 639 route.  639 is the route that delivers tourists to the Perhentian Islands.  I am sure that some clever administrator figured that since tourists were in general not repeat customers and did not know how to lodge formal complaints anyway, moving problem drivers to the 639 route was a win win.  At least a win, problem solved.

We had a driver on the way there that we thought was bad on account of his complete inefficiency.  He stopped the bus mid route to talk to a friend for a full 15 minutes.  This was after he had us sitting on the bus for an hour waiting for a lady friend of his to show up.   We were on the two thirty pm departure and the four thirty spent more than three quarters of the entire 50 mile route following directly behind us in traffic.

On the way back, things turned from inefficient to downright dangerous.  We hit a goat.  Regardless, we did not stop and making a big deal about the driver charging us 7 malay ringet a piece for the 6 ringett fare would have been a waste of time.  30 cents is hardly worth fighting a killer who can kick you off the bus.

The dangerous part was that the guy was clearly dozing at the wheel and doing all the tricks that tired drivers do to stay awake.  He squirmed in his chair ala Stevie Wonder, clapped his hands loudly at various intervals, sang songs to himself, turned the radio on for us all to hear, stopped and ran around the bus, and finally used the two extra ringets snaked from us to buy a cold coconut shake.  To his credit, we did not swerve out of the lines.  Still, clearly our hot sleepy tired afternoon nap approaching bus driver was worse than our inefficient chatty bus driver.  The drivers we had on all of the other lines have not been noteworthy.  Not noteworthy is what I am looking for in a bus driver from now on.