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Monday 24 May
Last Tuesday was a flurry of activity, after being unsure and inert for a couple of days, because we suddenly got a phone call to say that the customs officer in Chennai was all lined up to inspect the car and a container too had been arranged for delivery to the container depot on the edge of Chennai where the car was to be inspected and loaded before being taken down to the docks to be loaded onto a ship bound for Port Kelang, near Kuala Lumpur.
John was out hunting down some fuel enhancement treatment to try and prevent the pinking we had been experiencing in India with the engine. Octane rating in India is 92 for the good stuff and only 88 or 90 for the cheaper unleaded fuel, neither of which were doing our engine much good. He had gone off to I do not know where but was being taken somewhere that promised to provide the necessary increase in octane through an additive. He had already got some the day before but we felt it necessary to have a few bottles with us in case the fuel quality was poor in Malaysia. My own
A modern city
In this and several other photographs, you can see that Kuala Lumpur is a very modern city.thoughts are that it is only Malaysia we now need to worry about as fuel in Australia is pretty good. But it is better to be on the safe side having made it all the way to here, to ensure the engine is running well both here in Malaysia and Australia.
When I took the call to say that we should be ready to take the car to the container depot in 30 minutes, I checked with him to ensure that we could book flights and accommodation in Malaysia. Our man from the shipping agency confirmed we could so I had a frenetic 45 minutes on the internet getting accommodation sorted in Kuala Lumpur as well as booking flights out of Chennai for that night. I have never ever booked these things and had them confirmed so quickly in all my life but subsequent events proved that it can all work.
John appeared as I was about to take the car, so we agreed that he would sort his stuff out in the room, and pay the hotel bill and wait for my return before then making our way down to the airport to catch a plane at three minutes
past midnight to KL.
What had not been explained to us was that the process of customs inspection, reports etc. would take the next five hours! It took nearly an hour to get to through the traffic and on the way we ran out of petrol - I should say here that it was expected as we had had to siphon off all petrol out of the tanks and just leave enough to get the car into and out of the container. So we had a spare can of fuel that enabled us to get to the depot with little more trouble. My ‘man’, the agent, his name was Mr Monahar, then explained to me that we had to wait nearly another hour while the customs officer made his way down to the depot. Eventually he arrived and the first thing he did was asked to see the engine and chassis numbers. We have a little issue with this because actually it is not clear on the engine that we have an engine number that matches all the paperwork prepared for our journey. Even the registration documents state that the engine and chassis number are the same, but the Indian
authorities wanted proof by seeing the numbers for themselves on the engine block and on the chassis. Well, in both cases we had to disappoint them, but it did mean further holdups as one tried to explain that the car had been made up of many different parts and that it was 42 years old and that it could be expected to have parts numbers like a modern car. Eventually, after the customs officer and his team left to make a report (he had to pass it to higher authority for approval!), we got the all clear to load the car into the container. Ah but no container! “It’s on its way.” Says my agent. A further hour and lo and behold this long low loader with a 20 foot container arrived into which the car was duly driven. Once in, I watched the packers secure the vehicle and then finally left to go back to the hotel. By this time it had been raining, the first rain we had seen for several weeks, and on the way back in a taxi arranged by the agent, I found myself in a shunt as a result of going straight into the
back of the car in front that had stopped suddenly to avoid pedestrians crossing the road. It reaffirmed my wish to leave that night!
And so we did. A trouble free flight into Malaysia, to a hotel to await the arrival of the car. The hotel was all we wanted it to be (thanks to Agoda and its great discount rates on hotels around the world), and arriving at the airport was like arriving in a different world - orderly, clean, well sign posted, and a great public transport system. John and I caught the KL express from the airport, easily done, and only 28 minutes to the city centre from where a taxi sped us to the Garden Hotel.
Not withstanding the delights of KL, as one of our original destinations had been Thailand, we decided to investigate the possibility of taking a flight to one of the islands for a few days to await the arrival of the car. So we find ourselves on the island of Phi Phi, which we got to via Phuket airport and a sea passage, staying in a small hotel some way from the main village of Tonsai, ie: a 30 minute sea
ride by one of the local boats, called ‘long tail boats’ because they are large wooden boats that have a long prop shaft on the back of the vessel onto which is mounted any kind of engine you can imagine - whether it be a two stroke or four stroke car engine, and with these very maneuverable boats that can operate in very shallow waters, most of the getting around the island is done by this method. There are no cars on the island, just a few motor bikes, some cycles and the odd small piece of machinery for structural work.
Today is our last day and while John has been taking it easy again, I have been off to see what is under the water as this area has a reputation of being one of the richest areas in the world for marine life. Sadly, while the marine life is here, I saw the effects of global warming insofar as what was once the most beautiful coral to be seen in the world bar that on the Great Barrier Reef is being killed off by the unusually high sea temperatures here.
My dive guide was a lovely Brazilian woman
who has been here running this dive centre for the past five years called Paola. Very efficient and I felt really comfortable under her guidance and explanation as to what equipment I would be provided with, where we were going to dive and what would be provided during the trip. Diving is not a recreational sport to take lightly, with several meters of water over you if things go wrong so it was really comforting to hear that the centre was equipped with its own air recharging system, that oxygen was carried on the boat as well as a well stocked first aid cupboard and life jackets of course.
The two dives lived up to their expectations with the underwater life providing an intoxicating mixture of colour provided by the myriad of fish of all shapes and sizes as well as the underwater fauna. Fish seen, which are not often seen because of their camouflage, were stone fish, scorpion fish, moray eel, clown fish and an enormous puffer fish! Giant clams and also blue spotted rays we disturbed in large numbers. Enough of the diving - except to say we surfaced during a rain storm, and while getting into the
boat, it got its propeller snarled up and then had difficulty getting off the coral reef. It all added to the excitement.
Now we prepare for another day of travel leaving at 0700 hours in the morning to travel back to Kuala Lumpur where we hope to have news that our car is waiting for us. We have several things to do to get legal but once they have been done we will be off south to Johore Bahru, Malaysia’s most southerly city and where I had spent much of my off duty days when a young Royal Marine in the mid sixties, if I wasn’t being employed somewhere in Borneo during the confrontation with Indonesia at the time.
It will be good to get back onto the road again only if for a short while, but one more sea trip will then enable us to complete a marathon journey to the finish in Sydney. More about that in the days to come.
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pat crowe
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fascinating journey
Hey Guys watching with interest your adventure. You will have lots of stories to dine out on for years to come Well done so far. Pat