Confessions and other things

We confess - as Linda was riced and noodled out we had breakfast at McDonalds a place we have not been in in a very long time and of which the children will probably remember better than us. We will not be visiting again for many years !
Altogether we found Kota Bharu to be a fascinating place but it could be in a different country to where we are now namely Johur Bharu. In order to catch the Jungle train on the start of our journey South we had to get up at 1.45am so we could catch the 3.45am train to Gemas. Having sussed out the night before we knew we could not get lost! Sadly we got lost three times and arrived hot and sweaty at 3.10am only to find everything locked up and no one about. However within about ten minutes the place was alive with people and enormous quantities of produce. On our journey we saw melons, peanuts, cucumbers, durians, lycees, mangoes, live chickens, dead chickens, fish, and Linda even claims to have heard a sheep in the storage cabin! We started off the journey in a carriage with no lights and throughout the 15 hour journey the main carriage doors remained open - no sign of health and safety inspectors here. The journey took us through the most amazing scenery - of jungle, Karst - like cliffs of limestone towering out of the forest. The track went through numerous tunnels - over rivers large and small - an amazing engineering feat. We stopped at least forty times sometimes at stations but at other occasions when someone waved the train down. It was fascinating to watch the village people coming and going with their produce. The facilities were basic to say the least the buffet car consisted of an old Chinese gent who made a very nice cup of tea but sadly not much else. We could write a book about the loos of Malaysia but the loos in the train would require a chapter of their own. However the staff were very friendly and apologetic about the state of the train saying they did not like it any better than we did. It was incredibly hot not helped by the fact that the fans were not working and also the windows did not all open. We were able to get off the train at various stations - at one point we had to wait 90 minutes so we has a very nice lunch and used the stations loos ( much better).
We finally got to Gemas at 7pm. We then discovered that in order to continue our journey South we would have to wait another 7 hours for our next train and even this was complicated by our obvious need to take our bike with us. It was a very long time waiting in a station with very little facilities and nowhere to have a kip so we wandered about , sat and generally got fed up with the waiting and we really felt like two very old back packers in need of rest and a wash!!!!
2 am finally arrived and we got on a very swish train where we dozed for a further 5 hours. We managed to find a really nice hotel right next to the station where we crashed out for hours on end to recover. Tomorrow we intend to continue our journey on the bike to Kota Tinggi about 40 miles away. We are now making our way back to the ferry where we started our journey from Singapore.