Stuck (but happy) in KL

29 Decembre 2008

We were hoping to pick up the wombat and be on our merry way today, but we were foiled by a public holiday yet again. Seems to be a little tradition that when we ship our car it arrives on long weekend. Today is a muslim holiday, so offices in Malaysia and Indonesia are closed. That meant that we were not able to reach Mr Indrawan, who still hadn’t sent us the bill of lading. I called the Aeroswan office in Jakarta but Mr Indrawan was not in. No one spoke English, only Bahasa Indonesia...At the hostel, I found a woman who spoke English and Bahasa Melayu and another woman who spoke Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia. I was able to, in English, tell the first woman what I wanted to tell the man on the phone. The first woman, in Bahasa Melayu, told the second woman what I said who then, in Bahasa Indonesia, told the man on the phone. It was tricky, but it looked like we were getting somewhere. It turns out all he said was “try tomorrow”. I wanted my car today, so I was not giving up! I called the area of the port where we thought our container was (according to the tracking website) but they had no record of our container. I was given the number to call the vessel operator, who also had no record of our container being in the yard. He said that he didn’t even have a record of it being put on the ship in Jakarta! Oh boy...I was stressing on the phone! I was on the phone at the entry of our neighbouring hostel where on my right everyone was trying to check out, and on my left a bus’ engine was being repaired (and the revs tested). I could not hear much and was getting so confused. How could the website confirm it made it, but not the port? The nice man at the vessel company gave me 3 other phone numbers to try, but there was no answer at any of them...looks like the wombat will sleep alone in the dark for one more night.

We decided to go walking around after having eaten a pizza. We saw the Petronas twin towers, and the expensive mall under them. We went to see the latest James Bond movie, it was awesome. Once out of the cinema, it was dark and the towers looked amazing! They are so nice all lit up! Also, we had a nice view of the KL tower, that was imitating the Eiffel and twinkling all sweetly. We started back to the hostel, and decided to take the monorail. Jonny was happy.

We went back to the same curry house for a nice dinner. amazing.

Marie-Claude