The Jungle Bungle

I’ve wanted to do it for years: the Kiplingesque Jungle Railway meandering through…jungle? Who would not be intrigued? I got a chance, so I decided to go. Johor Bahru to Tumpat. The names trip off the tongue like a discarded chili sauce packet in a bowl of laksa.

These days travel is so easy. Get on line and book. Let’s see know. Open the KTMB (Malaysian Railways) website. It is quite complicated. It covers the journeys of at least five trains. Count them. Five.

Now which one do I want? Simple question. KTMB makes it a challenge. As is so typical in Malaysia, the simple is made complicated because little else is. First hurdle: register as an online user. Fine. Name, IC number, password (the one you use for your on-line), mother’s maiden name: that sort of thing. I stopped at register credit card.

Try another page. I opened something that looked like a timetable. Getting somewhere. It took a while to work out that if you travel south you read down and if you travel north… got it? You have to register again.

Pass. You go to another site and click on the train you think looks like the one you want. Remember, there are so many from which to choose. Five, I think I said. I clicked on the Jungle Railway (that’s what it is called). Another web site opened advertising a Singapore travel agency.  

I gave up. At least I had gleaned a couple of references to the jadwal tren that gave a departure time of 7 pm. I resorted to Trip Advisor. Aha. Here it is: “Don’t worry about making a booking just turn up at the station an hour or so before the train leaves. There are always tickets on this train.”

I closed down the computer. I took courage. Trip Advisor is always right.

I crossed the causeway and turned up at the KTMB station booking office in Johor.

Malaise ruled. The clerk looked at me. He said nothing. Just looked. He seemed tired. He jerked his head…slightly.

He spoke.

“Nyea?”

“I would like a ticket to Tumpat on this evening’s train, please”. I smiled. Sincerely.

“Fully booked”.

What can one say? So I didn’t.

“Come back at 4 pm. Maybe got one then”.

I wandered back at 3.30 pm. Sleeper boy was not there. A polite Malay lady checked for me.

“Sleeper or seat?”

‘Sleeper, I suppose.”

“No problem.”

(Maybe there were six trains?) I got a sleeper.

Only two and a half hours to wait. Not much point waiting at JB station. With only four trains a day (disregarding the Johor Woodlands shuttle), it is hardly a hive of activity.

A foot massage filled in the time.

I came back in good time. We boarded. The train seemed empty. I was one of only two passengers in my magnificent, air and smoke conditioned ghetto…sorry, carriage.

Where do I stash my back pack? There is nowhere for bags. You park them in the narrow corridor between the rows of double bunks, all made up and ready for the two of us. Curtains covered each cubicle. It reminded me of a cross between a Japanese capsule hotel and the interior of a POW camp, but with less room and less class.

I examined the sleeper. It was designed to be a seat which could be folded out at night by an attentive and helpful conductor to form a bed. The process would be repeated in the morning. Not in Malaysia. The bed was a bed was a bed. Period. I was glad for the lower bunk. The top bunk was only slightly larger than an aircraft luggage rack, but with less view.

Apparently, the conductors (I counted two) do not have the time to turn down the forty eight beds in each of the nine sleeping cars.

Comfort? What might have made for a comfortable back rest was now the mattress. Sit and look out? At what? A 7 pm departure would not allow for much elysian field viewing. Maybe come the dawn... The 750 km trip was to take 21 hours. That’s 35 kmph. This would be no Shinkansen.

I made myself comfortableish by wedging my back pack against the wall of my capsule and tried to read. There was a reading lamp. Watts? Possibly 15.7. It varied.

Departure time. 7 pm. Still just the two of us. The whistle blew. I was impressed. At least we were on time. Nothing happened. 7.15. Still nothing. I wandered out on to the platform. No one in sight. I walked to the engine. The driver had nodded off, his feet sticking out of the cabin.

I went back to Bill Bryson and “Mother Tongue”.

7.55. Wheeze. Clank. Lurch. We raced out of JB station. (I use the word raced rather loosely).

Bryson kept me amused. We stopped at a few stations: The train started to fill. By the time we got to Kluang, it was packed. The corridor was an obstacle course of bags, TV sets, three chickens in a coop, cooking pots, annoying children and chaos.

I closed my curtains. Someone ripped them open.

“Can I change my upper bunk for yours?”

I slammed the curtains closed.

Around ten I wandered up to the “dining car”.  Interestingly, Trip Advisor had said it had none. I was in car 11. The dining car was car 3. To get there, apart from the STOCK (strewn luggage obstacle course for Kampung travellers), you had to negotiate groups of men standing at the open door where the sign said “Do not open when in motion: fine $2,000.” The other sign said: no smoking. Obviously that only applied to outside the train.

If you were brave enough you could cross from carriage to carriage over the rusting, half missing steel platforms joining the carriages. You could have held the safety chains on either side. If they had not disintegrated.

The dining car attendant was dozing off. I smiled. Menu? He flicked a finger at two shelves of kampung store goods behind him. Boiled water added to everything: coffee (three in one), tea, (three in one), noodles…or pre-packaged rice and stuff.

“I am a vegetarian”.

“I’ll take the piece of chicken out of that rice for you”.

I settled for Maggi noodles with fake flavouring.

We chatted. He does the trip every day. Arrives at 2 pm (ish) in Wakhaf Baru, rests till 7.30 pm when he returns. His social life must be a whirl.

I sat in the dining car read Bryson for a couple of hours then fought my way back to my sleeper. Two men were using it. I will not describe what for. For a while I considered joining them, then decided not: I wanted to sleep. They left in a huff. Yet again, I slammed the Velcro, turned down the candle, and was soon comfortably asleep.

Dawn does not break in jungles. It emerges. The wraiths of the evening dissolve and you are alone (with a few hundred people) in a time capsule from a previous century. Occasional river crossings. Distant mountains. And no oil palm plantations in sight! A few stops at small towns like Gua Musang, Meranto, Dabong: delightful. Refreshment rooms. Wander outside for fresh air. Open doors with cigarette smoke billowing out into the steamy morning. That apart, delightful. When the whistle blows, run for the train.

Miss the train? No problem. There will be another one tomorrow.

Back on board the Shitkansen, I transferred to the sitting carriages. Comfortable. Luggage racks even. Far more civilized. With several cups of sweet instant coffee, a fossilised egg sandwich and Bryson, I relaxed and enjoyed the ride.

Worth it? At 48 ringgit, who could complain? Really?