The Lost Scrolls of Our Travels Pt. 1
I have just realised that there are a couple of journal entries I haven’t posted from our travels. This is entry one, a diatribe on the stupidity of having to rent blankets in Malaysian hostels. Enjoy.
Tuesday, 24th January, Traveller’s Lodge Guesthouse, Melaka, 11:10pm
James and I have just done a little list of how many hotels we’ve stayed at during our trip. We counted 22. We then tried to figure out how many of those hotels have really pissed us off. We counted 6. Not too bad an average really. But then we realised that every hotel in Malaysia has pissed us off somehow. Why has the poor Traveller’s Lodge entered this category? With its colourful walls, funky and friendly staff, spacious living area and self-service kitchen area, what could it possibly do wrong? We thought this place faultless. Until we came to go to bed, in our large, soft and sheetless bed. I said, “Where’s the sheet?” and James said “this is the sheet” and I said “no, that’s the undersheet” and we tugged at it and then realised, baffled, that indeed it was the undersheet. So we gazed around our room (and our room wasn’t cheap! It cost 52 Ringgit, which is about $18.50) but alas, no sheets. So I wander upstairs and find the kindly old man who runs the guesthouse. “Excuse me,” I say politely, “but where are our sheets?”. “What room are you in?” he asks. I explain. He nods and says, “Yes you get sheets, you must rent them from us.” I stare at him. “Rent them?” I say, anger edging into my words. “Yes,” he says. “Two ringgit.” I can’t hide my fury at this sudden 11pm confession that we have to rent bed sheets from them. “Most travellers bring them own,” he explains. I say, as politely as possible, “We’re not most travellers.” I turn and walk down the stairs. He calls “Do you want them?” and I say “I have to talk to my boyfriend first.” James is as incredulous as me. “Never,” he says, “in any hotel I have stayed at, have I had to rent sheets.”
The thing that shits me is that this room isn’t cheap! If we were paying $3 a room, it would be a bit more understandable. If we were staying in a dorm, again, understandable. But this is a private room! With en suite! And towels are provided free of charge!! After conversing with James, I went back up, begrudgingly collected sheets from him (crappy terrycloth things that barely cover my legs) and he says, in a polite but, I feel, condescending way (in truth I think he was just really concerned over how clearly pissed off I was), “Let me show you so you understand,” and he takes me over to a board where he explains that their full price is normally 58 Ringgit, which includes sheets and everything. I just say, “yeah, sure, whatever” and walk off, too angry and feeling too foolish to bother explaining why my reaction was the way it was (and is). I know that what we’re talking about is the equivalent of $1.50, but it all adds up and now suddenly this room is costing us $20, which it’s not worth. There’s still a fantastic atmosphere to this place, and yes, the staff are friendly, but if it’s going to act like a hostel, and treat the guests like hostel guests, then the prices should be half what they are. Instead, it’s charging guesthouse prices and having hostel idiosyncrasies and dumb-arse rules (like that guests are only allowed to watch one movie at 9pm, and there’s a curfew for the upstairs garden, etc). So yeah, I’m really annoyed about it, but only because I feel torn between thinking of this place as hostel or guesthouse. It’s like the downstairs area, where we are, is the guesthouse, and the upstairs area is the hostel, and they get the benefits of being in a guesthouse, but we get the downfalls of being in a hostel. Does that make sense? This place has a muddled identity, probably as a result of a bastardised knowledge of European hostels, mixed with traditional cultural guesthouse accommodation. Or something like that.
Aside from that, the bus trip from Pangkor to Melaka was amazing. The first bus was a luxury vehicle with enormous, lusciously comfortable seats (with backrests that were shaped like cockle shells, plus footrests!). At Kuala Lumpur, we saw the Petronis Towers from a distance (they didn’t look that speccy, but then they are only the second highest building in the world). Conveniently, the bus dropped us off right outside a Nandos, which we were ecstatic about, so that was lunch taken care of! Then we walked to the bus station to catch a bus to Melaka (the station had a bizarre set-up where tickets were purchased on the second floor, and then you went to whichever of twenty flights of stairs corresponded with your ticket, and descended to a narrow platform where you then boarded your bus which was waiting there. There were hundreds of buses under there; it was like when you uncover a mass of earthworms when you turn untouched looking soil). The bus to Melaka wasn’t as comfortable, but it was still relaxing. A girl hopped on, and her eyes bugged when she saw us. She was about 20, and she practically ran down the aisle to ask where we were from and whether we liked Malaysia. She was very sweet, but her eagerness in talking to us was a little disarming. I think it’s because, on all our bus trips so far in Malaysia, we’ve been the only tourists, so I think we can sometimes be a bit of a novelty. The trip from KL to Melaka was only 2 ½ hours, and when we arrived at the station we were quickly whisked into a taxi and brought to this place, the deceptively accommodating Traveller’s Lodge. Look, in all honesty I still can’t dislike this place, because it’s got such a relaxed air to it, I’m just feeling jipped about the sheets.
We wandered around Melaka after we arrived, checking out a nearby department store (filled with sales!), wandering through an alarmingly deserted marketplace (where we noticed that in some of the container-like shops that were closed up, we could see light or the door was open a gap so we could see people living inside them, like tramps in a railway carriage). It’s begun raining here though! We haven’t had rain for about a month, and suddenly, four days before the end of our journey, it starts again! It means we get more use out of our stupid Vietnam umbrellas that cost us a fortune. I will use them till they fall apart, or die trying! Actually, their falling apart is not too far off, I fear. Damn them.
We ate at an echoey Chinese restaurant, but were still full from our Nandos, so we only had a medium serve of satay to share. Then we came back to the hostel (yes, I’m going to call it a hostel from now on!!) to watch the 9pm movie. A group of about six joined us, and between us and the 100s of pirate VCDs, we settled on the movie “Flighplan” which was watchably lame. Lots of shots of Jodie Foster looking tight-jawed and determinedly anxious.
Our last day in Pangkor was really nice as well. I’m glad we left when we did, though, another day and I’d have gone crazy. After James returned from his trek to the bank, any hardcore walking was out of the question. So we found somewhere to have lunch (after admiring a pedigree-looking pregnant cat who slept under our bench as we drank our banana milkshakes). We saw a bunch of those crazy geese we saw in Laos as well. Then we went for a dip in the ocean, but the pollution was so horrendous that we had to get out. Just rubbish and litter, plastic containers, shoes, tubs, anything that could be thrown out was floating in the pristine waters of this could-have-been-so-beautiful beach. We vegged out for the afternoon, writing, reading, me bugging James in general, then we went for a walk to Coral Beach in the early evening to watch the sunset. There the litter was again horrendous, coating the beach like seaweed should have been. We sat on a log, reading for awhile, before being distracted by the antics of two puppies (probably about four months old, with some Doberman or something in them). They were galumphing around the litter, hunting for things to eat or chew. They were really friendly as well, and bounded over to say hello to us. Then they started to dig up the crab holes, occasionally catching one and munching on it happily (before the puppy without food could steal it from them). They were very entertaining, as puppies always are. The sunset had an early burst of red, but that was all, so we headed back for dinner. On the way to the beach and on the way back, we took bets on how many cats we would see. On the way there, we saw 10. On the way back, we saw 13.
We wanted to have an early-ish night, but ended up buying chocolate and getting too sugar jittery to sleep. Thankfully someone in the hotel must have requested Star Movies, because at about 10pm, Star Movies came on and stayed on for the rest of the night. I had visions of someone having the exact same discussion as we kept having: what’s the point of paying for cable for your guests, if you’re just going to watch the same three local channels, and never venture past them (except maybe once to National Geographic, which was a pleasant surprise!). So I’m glad someone said something, because “Commando” was on, and I’d only see bits and pieces of it. And so, in the words of Arnie, “please don’t disturb my friend. He’s dead tired.” In other words, I’m going to bed.