Tired. I'm currently feeling like my head is tugging upwards slightly, like it's lifting itself up. My ears feel blocks and my eyes feel strained. I think I'm a tiny bit dizzy due to fatigue. Not really making sense. I slept for about 3 hours this afternoon after I returned and unpacked most of the stuff. I slept a proper eight and a half hours last night at the hostel in Malacca. I should be feeling fine, theoretically.
Still having watery diarrhoea. It's not going away! It's not the diarrhoea that's stopping me from eating much, it's the fact that watery diarrhoea makes it hard to fart that's doing it. I simply cannot fart since it began because it's never fart anymore. Worse is that I can't hold it back as well I do when I have normal bowel movements. Combine that with my dislike for public washrooms and it gets obvious why I've been eating less for most of the trip to Malaysia.
And I have been eating less. 5 days into the 9-day trip I began to experience a most inconvenient bout of diarrhoea. That's when I learnt I couldn't fart as long as the condition persists. It happened at night, when I was unconscious. People fart when they dream; it's normal.
Quite embarrassing, though strangely enough one of my room-mates didn't understand why I rolled up the bed cover I was sleeping in and left it in the bathroom. There was no smell after I made sure the soiled area was tightly sealed in the centre of the roll. A nasty surprise for the hotel's housekeeping department but I did try to leave some tips. They didn't take it. I guess they don't accept tips there in Malaysia.
I'll never be able to determine what the cause of it was. Almost all the other members of the group had the same problem but to different degrees. All had new theories everyday. Me, I was just glad I found a way to seal up my soiled shorts in my luggage without anyone realizing I was literally carrying shit with me ever since that night.
The first 4 days of the trip was at the Perhentian Islands in north-eastern Malaysia. Took an 11-hour-long coach ride that bordered on sleep deprivation torture. The ingenious driver was able keep himself awake by searching for every single pothole on the road and running over them. Every bump must have been a rush.
At least it helped him stay conscious... right?
On the second day's morning we reached Jerteh, a town close to Kuala Besut and Kota Bahru. Kuala Besut was the town with the jetty we need to reach, Kota Bahru was the actual destination of the coach. With about 3 hours to spend on travelling to Kuala Besut, we had a tough time deciding what to do with all that time.
As the only person among group who knows a little Bahasa Melayu, our "guide" was able to extract some information from the locals, including the existence of a bus service that will bring us to Besut. With some vague directions to start on, I set out with the impression that we would take a bus.
Taxi drivers, all illegal operators with private cars, were touting there at the stop and offering to drive us there for 40RM. Knowing that the trip was only a 10-min journey by car, it was obvious that that was daylight robbery. Well, the sun wasn't up yet at that point so it was more of a pre-dawn robbery.
A small attempt at negotiations followed, mostly with repeating phrases like "20 Ringgits?" and "No." Our guide's proficiency at the Malay language was sorely tested here. If I had S$0.10 for every "Huh?" in the conversations then, we could have taken the cab ride for free.
When the talks failed as expected, we went on to find the bus terminal. A little into the journey we spotted an actual red Malaysian taxi along the way. Thinking the cab driver would be a little more reasonable or would even agree on using the meter, our guide tried to talk to him.
It turns out they all want the same price, legal or not. Worse is that actual Malaysian taxis are tiny cars compared to the ones used by the illegal operators. There wasn't much of a negotiation here with him refusing to drive us there for 30RM. Paying 40RM here would be pure bullshit, especially when we had another 3 hours to burn. Heck, we had more than enough time to walk to the jetty.
So we continued our way to the bus terminal while our guide asked random people for directions to it, in case we were given wrong advices previously.
Fuck. I'll type the rest tomorrow.
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