Although I could gladly have stayed in the Cameron Highlands longer, it was time to move on. I booked a seat on a bus from the highlands to Penang, a province that mainly consists of a large island off the Northwest coast of Malaysia.
There are assigned seats on the bus and I was seated in the first row. This means I have a great view out the front window, but there is no safety bar on these buses. So there is nothing between me and the stairwell to the door of the bus as we are careening down steep hills, guided by a bus driver to whom driving is secondary to smoking, spitting, and repeatedly counting his money. (Turns out he wanted to make sure he had enough for a snack at the bottom of the mountain.)
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I was forced to hold on for dear life and to hold my small bag, as well, to keep it from ending up in the stairwell that had engulfed other small items that were sliding forward from the rest of the bus as we raced downhill. As we carelessly skated around corners, there were a few moments when I thought today could be THAT DAY.
It is funny, though, how after an hour or so, my own sense of judgement began to shift. As the driver passed someone on a blind S-curve, I was right there with him, thinking to myself, "That makes sense. I would have done the same thing," with not a single note of sarcasm in my thought.
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I did however manage to snap a few pictures out the bus window as we went. The first two are taken in the highlands and the last is taken in the countryside shortly before we reached Penang.
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