The 331.9KM Journey to Malacca’s Food Orgy

Friday night 11pm – instead of our usual gathering at one of the mamaks or cafés, the gang (or the part of it) was at my house watching Pan’s Labyrinth, bringing Esther’s purchased Domino’s Pizza.

I would’ve formed better opinions of the movie were it watched in a better environment than at my house, because I was constantly distracted by many things such as unnecessary audible comments from the audience, constant moving around to get drinks/go toilet, etc. But overall it was a good watch, a little sad, even.

Saturday – 17th March 2007
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WARNING: OBSCENE AMOUNT OF PICS

Next day I woke up at 8am feeling slightly better from my feverish conditions, contracted only the night before which I took a Panadol Actifast in the hopes to get cured by morning. After eating another pill of Actifast when I woke up, I felt all the more energised and better than my semi-comatose state I felt on Friday night.

Okay anyway, I left house about 9.40am to pump petrol, pick up Suet, Esther and Andy before heading straight to Malacca. The fact that it was raining quite heavily all the way from Subang to Seremban using the Puchong highway didn’t dampen our spirits, although I was fairly annoyed that the ridiculously straight road was quite dull to drive on.

Forests of oil palms and other similar agricultural exports were primarily the main view while driving along the Puchong highway (not sure what the exact name is). We were driving along quite comfortably with me constantly turning my wipers on and off because I was driving into different areas where it alternated between torrential rains and sunny sunshine.

You must also know that somewhere on the Seremban stretch of highway, the three lanes were reduced to two due to work in progress on the fast lane, apparently to install trillions of plants instead of dividers to reduce fatalities of accidents. This eventually caused a slight slow down on the highway, because there were plenty of cars on said highway for some reason.

And that was when we almost died. Almost. By a tiny inch.

So while singing to one of the songs I burned on my CD, with the rain still blaring down on my windscreen, I was going on a normal 80 or 100 (speed limit is 110 kmph btw) when the car in front of me (which was still quite a distance away) braked suddenly. Naturally I started pressing on the brakes, but my car continued throttling forward at the same speed (read: skidding).

Instincts made me slammed on the brakes harder but my car was inching nearer and faster to the Saga in front. By the time I realised I was going to pummel into the car in front and the brakes were completely useless, by pure reflexes I swerved my car to the left lane (not right because it was under construction, remember?) with or without looking at my side mirrors, I couldn’t remember, because it all happened in a split second.

This FUCKING huge truck on the left lane gave that muscular, bass horn directly behind us – indicating that we nearly rammed into it. Which also indicated that we almost, nearly died, which isn’t something to be taken lightly because if I swerved slower than a second or so our bodies would’ve been entangled into said truck.

Honestly, what would you have done were you in my shoes? Everything happened so fast that life and death are literally in that several, seemingly worthless seconds (which gives rise to the overused idiom “time is money”), that quick reflexes (and a huge serving of luck) are in order that anything slower would’ve caused a person several lives, cars, or both.

To be honest I was quite shaken when we eventually alighted from the car when we reached Malacca and I had time to ponder over this life-and-death issue. The last place I want to die is in a car accident, nor do I want to be warded in the hospital for weeks.

So with help from Kai Tzin’s inverted-comma friend, we eventually reached the canteen near his hostel and he was quite pleasantly surprised to see the lot of us, after braving the non-stop rain and the prospect of death. :)

Okay, time for the pictures (and videos) to guide you.

The two girls camwhoring at the back of my car.

After finally finding a parking lot (that utilises really ancient ticketing system, where you have to manually scratch dates and time, etc), we sat down and took the first group pic of the day.

At the chicken rice ball shop. Have to queue wan wtf.

Pointing to the boy next to us.

Uncivilised girls playing with utensils and containers for sauces. D:

Er.. civilised guys.

“We want food we want food!” Food took ages to arrive.

Yumyum.

<3 this pic for some reason. The old lady looked like she had tons of stories to tell.

Empty plates! (actually we dumped the fish head bones onto a separate plate, impossible can eat until so clean)

On finishing chicken rice balls, we headed immediately to another restaurant serving the famous Baba Asam Laksa and chendol.

Eat eat eat again. Semua macam babi.

And so, the tummy appears.

Suet pretending to be the hideous statue’s friend.

VIDEO: Message to the rest who weren’t here with us while walking towards the town square or sommat.

At Malacca’s infamous square near Jonker Street.

At the infamous staircase (if you noticed, the people at the back were kind enough to wait for a while to let us snap this photo using my tripod).

At the.. er, infamous window near the staircase?

“OMG battery low!” I said, and their looks were priceless.

Group pic again!

Fuh berlagak yeng.

Malaccan In-Front-of-Church Jump!

And another!

The battery was seriously low – the result of not charging it the night before. I know that as with Canon cameras, the moment the dreaded battery low icon appears, you can probably only take a few more shots before the camera goes dead.

So we hung about at the new shopping mall opposite Mahkota Parade, the girls wanting to buy some Vincci shoes as Esther’s high heels’ strap conveniently broke while walking to the mall. Since the girls actually took an hour to decide (no kidding), I took the opportunity to lie down on the available seats and sleep.

We walked all the way back to our parking lot (quite a long distance away) since our parking ticket expires at about 5.30pm. We moved the car to the shopping complex’s parking space instead, and continued with our shopping spree.

After a while, the girls came up with a brilliant idea of going to the camera shops to seduce the men manning the shops into charging my camera battery.

So I went with Suet (not that I’m a seductive girl) and we found only two camera shops in the entire mall. Both shops don’t sell my type of battery (which actually cost RM200+ anyway), so after leaving the final shop with crushing hopes, I noticed that they sell my exact camera and wondered out loud to Suet if there’s a chance they would open the camera package and use the charger to charge our battery.

With sweet, alluring charms, Suet asked the guy named Tommy very nicely if he could do what I had suggested above. After pondering for a few seconds, he said “yes” and would do so without charging us a single sen wtf.

Since when are people so awfully kind!? Although I’m somewhat convinced that without Suet, Tommy would hardly bother helping another guy out.

So after shopping for bikinis and whatnot two hours later (the girls’ stuffs, of course), we returned to the same shop where we obtained my camera’s battery, recharged enough to last the entire night. We were darned grateful to Tommy, of course.

And did this to display our happiness:

<3

We went to Jonker Street for ‘dinner’, which was more like scavenging through the various stalls for assorted food. According to Kai Tzin, every Saturday night, Jonker Street would be filled to the brim with people and we were in the middle of it.

VIDEO: At Jonker Street at night, so you can get a better look at it, as videos sometimes could tell stories better than pictures could. (Note that there are tons of other videos in my camera but I’ll only put up a few due to space and time constraints.)

Suet and Esther eating some Taiwan Fruit Candy (RM2 per stick).

People line-dancing.

Can you see how frigging packed it was? To say that we were drenched in sweat and our legs were aching is putting it mildly, because I felt like I had been running on a treadmill for 5 hours non-stop.

Suet with her attempt at an artistic, moody pose.

We took a while to find this particular infamous sate celup shop at Bukit Cina, and you have to actually queue for it.

VIDEO: A video of the four queuing up while I recuperate in my car, and the rest told really lame jokes. :) Oh god hilarious.

When it was finally our turn. EAT EAT EAT again for the 503670th time.

The final farewell video before Kai Tzin finally left the car for his hostel. Aww.

Andy drove us back home because I was really beyond the word exhaustion. It was nearly pitch-black all the way on the highway for an hour due to the lack of street lamps, but we had fairly good emo talks (more to keep Andy awake than anything else) all the same.

..reached home at 3am wtf. My odometer showed 331.9 kilometres when I finally reached my own house – what an amazing food orgy journey.