April 2nd 2008

Posted by Jim...
Today was a fairly normal day at work today until it was time to go home. Right as I was getting on the highway to go home it started raining. This is not unusual because it rains here all the time but this time it was what I would classify as a monsoon. I made the decision to drive in the slow lane and just follow the driver in front of me. This was not a good idea as I soon found out that when it rains and you can not see that Malaysian drivers are no less impatient in the rain then they are when it is bright and sunny. As a matter of fact since I guess they can not see the lines marking the lanes that they assume the lines no longer exist and drive where ever they want. So instead of having 3 lanes of traffic you end up with 5-6 lanes and people trying to switch in order to get in the lane that is going the fastest which as soon as someone tries to move over causes the lane to slow down. Then we hit the toll booth...now I have to tell you something about Malaysian toll booths: they have the manual pay lanes, the touch and go lanes and the smart tag lanes. There is no rhyme or reason to where these lanes are that I can tell and for some reason all toll booths are approached at an angle and therefore it is virtually impossible to line yourself up properly until you are about 50 yards from the toll booth. Now put a traffic jam in the mix with heavy rain and you have about 20 lanes trying to merge through about 8 toll booths but to make matters worse you need to be in the right lane because there are 4 manual pay lanes, 2 touch and go lanes, and 2 smart tag lanes. So I am a touch and go user and am trying to navigate my way to the proper lane which has 5 lanes trying to get into the two lanes. This was slow moving at best and it is really amazing that nobody hit anyone while I was there because at times there were cars on both sides of me that if I had been able to unroll my window I could have touched very easily. I was very worried about losing a mirror. Also they are still changing lanes and making new lanes and everything was just slowing down even more. Finally I got through the toll booth and thought things would pick up after this however this was not the case after passing through the toll booth I was confronted with what looked like a parking lot in front of me. Suffice to say after the 8 lanes of booths everyone figured that it was a great idea to make 20 lanes of traffic again and see who get in front of who by a car length while showing they could get the closest to car next to them. After everyone got into an actual lane, well for most of the time anyway, traffic started moving again and I was able to get on the elevated highway I take home. Normally this highway has absolutely no one on it because there is a 2.2RM toll and Malaysians will do almost anything to avoid paying a toll. Well apparently when it is raining and the roads are almost at a standstill more people will are willing to pay the toll. This was not too bad because there were still not that many cars on the road the part that struck me as odd was the fact that it is an elevated highway I figured there would be no way the road could hold water. I was wrong there were several places where the road had water that must have been a half an inch deep. The most frustrating part however occured where I normally experience a back up on my way home but today it was worse because the no lane picking started again. It was ridiculous because you have 3 roads all converging at once but now not only are people making their own lanes but when lanes are actually established people will drive half in one lane and half in another waiting to see which lane is going to go faster. I just wanted to get out of the car and scream "Pick a F-ing lane you morons". Of course it goes without saying that the freaking motor bikes are weaving in and out of lanes at will just waiting to get hit. And to top it all off when I finally get to where I can turn into the hotel another idiot is coming out of the hotel and has decided that they are going to be right in the middle of the entrance and took forever to pull out. All I know is that it is a good thing that guns are outlawed in Malaysia because if they were legal I think there would be more road rage shootings here than there has ever been in the United States.