KL to the Perhentians
Finally after 4 days, I managed to get some direction and headed out of KL. I got an email from Ben, who I met 2 months before at the Hanoi Backpackers. He said he was heading to the Perhentians so I decided to go to Long Beach to meet up with him. There were a four Brits that were also heading up there so I figured it’d be good to head out with them on the local long distance bus in the middle of the night. It’s usually better to travel in a group especially when u r not sure where u r going to end up at 4am because most individual travelers depend on each other for just about everything.
The bus dropped us off in Jerteh (middle of nowhere) as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. We found ourselves in a dimly lit bus stop with only a few taxis hanging around trying to rip us off for the short trip to the port in Kuala Besut. These Brits were pretty much idiots and had no barganing skills whatsoever so they paid what was asked. The Taxis wanted 20RM(~$6) for the trip when the bus ride all the way from Kuala Lumpur (7 hours) cost 30RM. There were 5 of us and we were not going to fit in 1 taxi with all our packs. The four of them decided to hop in a taxi and head to the pier leaving me on my own. Fair enough, they had been traveling together and really didn’t owe me anything, but come on.
Only complete twats, pictured here, would leave a lone traveler in a dim bus station by himself at 4am and ask him to foot the whole taxi bill by himself instead of splitting 2 taxis btw/ 5 people. I guess they thought it was worth it to save 2RM each (.55 cents) though. All I have to say is Karma. Anyway, by myself, I negotiated the fare down to 10RM and ended up at the ticket office a few minutes after them. Unfortunately, it was 5am and still 2 hours before the first boat. Now lets talk about instant Karma coming to get you. The girls realized that they didn’t have enough money so they had to take a taxi back to the nearest ATM (in Jerteh) and back to get more cash because the island doesn’t have any ATMs. LOL
Tags: KL, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Kane
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