Kelip-kelip at Kuala Selangor

My trip to Kuala Selangor began with Siew picking me up at nearly 6pm sharp, who already had May Peng in the car. We then picked up Tomoko and Ben (who were all like “I’m so glad you’re here Clem, so we don’t need to share seats with Gopi” hahaha) and headed towards Jerm’s place, but when we discovered that he had only reached SS19 then, we then decided to go to Taipan as Siew wanted to withdraw some money while Tom and Ben wanted to get some drinks.

And then as we were heading back towards Jerm’s place, Poh Yuen contacted us (or the other way round, I can’t remember) and May Peng then asked her to pick up Gopi. Well long story short after much waiting (as Gopi accidentally took his mum’s car keys and had to return them), we finally departed from Subang at around 6.45pm-ish, got stuck at the Summit traffic jam while Ben and Tom played around with a laser light against PY’s car, finally got on the highway, got stuck somewhere in a traffic jam near Sungai Buloh, lost each other (our car decided to drop by at a Shell station to use its loos) and then met up at KFC before we finally departed.

It was raining a little at the time, and our journey was further interrupted when the car in front slammed his brakes all of a sudden, forcing Siew to do the same (we heard an extremely loud screech) and we managed to brake in time.

But not before the car behind us slammed into our car which caused us to knock the car in front of us a little, resulting in

Not fun.

Further mind-boggling ensues when a few random strangers decided to hop onto the scene with walkie-talkies possibly trying to profit on the situation. Fortunately PY and co must’ve reversed and stopped right in front of Siew’s car where we acquired more ammunition in the form of numbers—the dude who rammed into us has a grand total of 1 person (himself) in terms of support.

The Malay dude whose car was knocked into by us quickly left the scene, and later on we discovered that Ben’s iPhone was missing and we suspected that the Malay dude could’ve taken it, or someone else. We practically turned the car inside out but we still could not locate Ben’s phone, and this problem was further compounded by the fact that his phone was on Vibrate, and hence rendered our search even more impossible.

As for Siew’s car, in the end we negotiated for RM500 since the damage was pretty bad, and we even had to rip off the entire bumper as it was hanging loose and would scrape against the tyres or brush against a motorcycle that wanders too near.

We eventually got into a seafood restaurant, where Ben was apparently allergic to shellfish and so couldn’t take prawns or crabs.

Jerm and Siew.

Our fish cooked in nyonya style. I think I’ve been too lazy to snap photos wtf hence my photos are both bad and incredibly sparse.

Now that my own friends have decidedly vanished into the void known as “busy” or being “occupied”, I’ve been hanging out with Jerm, Tom, PY and co, and they’re a blast to chill with, although admittedly I spent more time listening to their jokes and laughing along with them.

After our rather late dinner, we only arrived at the firefly park at about 11pm and were concerned that it might be closed, but not before we were stopped in the roadblock and had our driving licenses checked, and our car nearly had to give out our ICs too before the officer learned that we were together with PY’s car, who was ahead of us.

Many jokes were abound about Gopi’s inability to fit into a lifejacket, and eventually when he did fit into it, Tom, Ben, and I shared a boat with Gopi, with Gopi next to me and I was concerned and mildly terrified of having the boat tipping over one side and drown my entire camera equipment. (It was also RM40/boat, and only 4 people could fit into a boat, so it was perfect for the 8 of us to hire 2 boats.) The fireflies were rather fascinating, since it has been many years since I came here (and I think the numbers have dwindled down somewhat), although the lack of stars were rather disappointing, because I vaguely recall that I saw an entire galaxy of them last time.

Apparently a fish jumped onto our boat and flapped around vigorously behind Ben, where Ben freaked and jumped out somewhat at an unidentified object violently thrashing itself at such close proximity to him. We can’t really see much in the dark, but we think the fish jumped back into the river. Our sampan rower was rather quiet during the first half of the trip, and it was only when Gopi shot him questions that be began talking a lil. We discovered that there really are crocodiles in the river, which could be as large and wide as the sampan we were in itself wtf.

Tom wasn’t exactly pleased though, as our sampan reached the shore much earlier than PY and co’s boat, even though we departed later than them.

Awaiting the others.

And then we went all the way back home, where we were once again stopped at a police roadblock in the middle of nowhere (PY had her license checked, possibly randomly). For some reason, I thought a one-way journey to Kuala Selangor seemed longer than going to Port Dickson itself; and I was finally dropped off by Siew at about 1am (his car also had some air-con problems right after we depart from the firefly place).

It was a very… eventful day, to say the least, and doubly marred so by the unfortunate collision we got into, as well as with Ben’s stolen iPhone (even though he could claim it under his travel insurance, it would be a very troublesome process). I haven’t been on a trip like this in ages, and it was a rather fun night out. :)

Now looking forward to a fishing trip to Gopi’s dad’s place at Batu Berjuntai if it’s gonna be on!

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Heng joined my gym (for 2 months, the duration that he’d be here in Subang) earlier today, which is great to have a familiar face to pass the time with while working out. I also renewed my 3-month membership today too.