I went back to Melaka last Thursday because I was supposed to give a talk on turtle conservation on behalf of my Supervisor in conjunction with the Turtle Awareness Day at MGS. To cut a long story short, the initial CEPAT bus that I boarded broke down at Dungun, and I (together with other passengers of course) was stranded at the Dungun bus station for at least 3 hours!

When the replacement bus finally came at 2am (by then I was already about 4 hours behind schedule), I was furious because it wasn’t a CEPAT bus but a very old and run-down bus that had brown (or black?) stains on the walls of the window seats. The cushions weren’t comfortable anymore, and the air-conditioning was loud and blasting full-force I felt like I was sitting in a dirty freezer :(

And because the replacement bus wasn’t a licensed commercial express bus, the driver had to avoid driving on major roads, which was why we were brought around the bushes. Instead of a simple-and-straight-to-the-point journey from Dungun to Kuantan to Melaka, we were driven to Kuala Pilah, nearby Rompin, and we passed a dozen other places that I’ve never been to or heard of.

And when we arrived at Seremban, the driver asked those of us heading to Melaka to get off the bus and he got us a ticket each to board the Transnasional bus from Seremban to Melaka. Now this third bus was what I called “an express bus”. It was clean, the cushion was comfortable and the air-conditioning was working perfectly well.

Needless to say, I was 2 hours behind time when I arrived at the school and the students were competing in an origami competition. The talk, which was supposed to start at 9am, began at 11am instead. Nonetheless, the response from the Form 4 students were good (though they are always some who don’t give two fish about what’s going on), the sale of turtle products was also satisfactory, and the event was quite a success.

I don’t have any pictures to show off because I forgot to bring along my camera :(