Longest Journey Home

I spent the long weekend away in Malaysia, like most people. The weekend was long yet too short for a trip further out.

The coach ride to Malacca on Konsortium was decent.  No complaints - not even for the traffic at Tuas, because there was none.  H/e on the trip back, it was a journey of disgust.

First - the coach arrived very late. I was told to wait at the hotel lobby at 2pm, the ticket stated 230pm.

At 230pm, there was still no sign of the bus and when I enquired with Concierge, I was told there is a massive traffic bottleneck in the city - which is to be expected, because Malaysia is also having the Labour Day weekend.

The bus showed up at 2.50pm with a grouchy driver.  I was of the opinion that being a tour coach driver, they would already be used to the traffic but apparently, attitude was the order of the day.  Because they were so late, picking up the other passengers from other hotels had delays.  Passengers probably wandered about the lobby/surrounding area.  No one called to inform.  I guess the cheap coach tickets does not warrant us any rights to being kept updated by their office, although we did pay more to ride the coach over a public holiday.

Now, passengers over long weekends are also something else.

I had the pleasure of riding with fellow passengers from one huge extended family.  They were not seated together as a group, so I had to bear with them walking up and down the aisle.  Because they were overweight, they bumped into arm-rests without apologies.  The icing on the cake was a couple, both also obese, with a newborn of approx 4mths old.  The baby cried too many times and in a confined space, sounded like screams.  

I don't understand why and how, people decide to travel with an infant, who apparently wasn't adjusted to coach travel at all.  I'm not against new parents going for a vacation, but I think 'common sense' should always be exercised.  How can they expect others to tolerate their babies cries?  Am I supposed to be tolerant, just because they can't manage their infant?  This is probably where things start to go wrong.

At this stage, we are supposed to be considerate of their inexperience.  What happens when the kid goes to school?  Are we also supposed to give more consideration and excuses for adults who do not take the trouble to LEARN how to be a considerate parent?  If kids get into trouble in school, parents blame the teachers.  If they get into trouble right after, it's society.

Time to really take stock of the quality of parents these days.  I believe people are mass producing, because of government grants and not because they really want to be parents.

Parents used to be proud of a child's good behaviour.  These days, parents just wait along the sidelines and expect everyone else to make allowances for their unparented child while they make excuses for themselves.

The bus had a mechanic visit at Yong Peng and the grouchy driver did not even inform us.  He said, be back at 6pm and the engine compartment was still opened at that time.  The bus didn't push off till 645pm.  I could have had a meal in that 45 minutes.

So a journey that should have taken no more than 4 hours by coach, ended up to be 7 hours.

That is really way too long.  

First time I'm travelling on Konsortium and I guess they called themselves that because they consort to Murphy's Law at every opportunity.