Rail Stories

by mrbrown@mrbrown.com

(Feel free to distribute for non-profit and non-commercial purposes but keep my byline, email address and URL intact please. Thanks)

Thu, Oct 16, 1997

So I'm on this KTM train bound for Kuala Lumpur being served Light Snack (some oily rice and pieces of chicken) and enjoying the service that even other train companies talk about.

I had planned to drive up to Ipoh to visit an old friend who was getting married but the thought of driving 6 hours plus another 5 hours sitting in a jam at the Causeway made me decide to take my chances with the Malaysian Rail.

However, it did not start right when I bought the tickets for the 4 of us (two married couples) and saw the seating: 6A, 7A, 7B, 8A. And the train was not what you might call full. Fortunately the nice young man at 6B gave up his seat for us and sat in our 8A instead. He later met a nice girl sitting in 8B. I kid you not.

My previous experience with the KTM was in the early Eighties when there were people standing in the non-aircon Third-class cabin and we ate really really bad food in the dining car.

But times have changed and now we were in the air-conditioned Second-class car eating merely bad food at our seats.

Okay, okay, the food was alright and things have really improved. For one thing, the guys who served us wore really swanky blue uniforms with gold buttons and were actually very courteous and nice. For another thing, we had Rail TV, the inflight entertainment that looked suspiciously like programs recorded off last week's TV3 Tuesday non-prime time slot. But hey, who am I to complain? I had a clean seat, air-conditioning and clean loos.

Speaking of train loos, I discovered a truth of X-Files proportions, about the differences between the male and female toilets. The female toilet had the usual sitting-type bowl (I peeked when no one was in there, I swear). Fine, I thought, very logical. But the male loo had this mutant cross-breed between a sitting-type and a squat-type of toilet bowl. And being the intrepid Paranormal Investigator (part-time) cum Singapore National Education Series writer that I am, I decided to plumb the depths (unfortunate image here) of this mystery. No danger too great for my loyal readers.

So I stared at the sitter/squatter and wondered if I should sit on it or climb up the elevated platform and squat over it. My friend Mike, who was with me (on the train ride, not in the toilet) did the most logical thing when faced with this dilemma. Mike had A Stroke of Genius (TM) and used the female loo (when no one was in there, of course).

As for me, faced with this and the fact that the male loo was extremely dirty due to poor aims (let's see _you_ try to aim in the toilet of a lurching train), I did the next most logical thing, I went back to my seat and waited till I got to my hotel. It was the longest 10 hours of my life.

In my free time, I was able to reflect on matters of profound spiritual significance. I have always wondered where the, um, stuff goes after I flush. When I took the trains the last time, many eons ago, I could see the romantic view of the passing tracks below when I foolishly looked down the toilet bowl (or The Black Hole, as some people call it). At least I did not see the tracks this time. But I am told the present sewerage system is still based on this time-honoured tradition.

That being the case, I think they would make a ton of money if they made T-shirts that said, "I Dumped on the Malaysian Railway Tracks and Survived".

The next question that would inevitably crop up would be who clears up the, um, stuff on the tracks. Given the long operating history of the KTM, it would seem to me that without a proper Stuff Clearing Ministry, the tracks would accumulate a whole lot, of, um, stuff, thereby stopping entire trains. That may explain some of the delays we had along the way. Although the official explanation given by our helpful captain was that we were waiting for another train to come in the opposite direction so that they could change tracks. My guess was that we had encountered another huge deposit of um, stuff, of Petronas Towers/Bakun Dam proportions, and we had to wait for the Stuff Clearing Ministry guys to clear the way.

All in all, it was a very surreal experience, that toilet bowl epiphany, but that was nothing compared to this marvelous airline style service that the KTM had decided to adopt for their Rail services. If only they had let us know which airline they were referring to.

We had the Captain welcoming us over the PA in Malay and English, refillable tea or coffee, the duty-free cart, the works, man.

In fact, I thought the Captain should have gone the whole way and really given us an airline style welcome, something like this:

"Welcome to KTM's KL Express to, um, KL. Thank you for choosing KTM for your transport needs in Malaysia, and not our evil rival, the pirate taxis.

'We will be travelling at 60kmh and at an altitude of 0 feet above sea level. The weather in Singapore is hot and hazy while in KL, the weather is hot and hazy.

'Time now in Singapore is 3pm in the afternoon, and taking into account international time zone differences, time in KL now is, um, 3pm.

'Please pay attention to our lovely male attendants in the front as they demonstrate the correct way to jump out of the train screaming should we be hijacked for evil nuclear war purposes by terrorists as seen in the Steven Seagal movie "Under Seige 2", which we will _not_ be showing in this train route.

'Instead, you will be shown an award-winning episode of that delightful cartoon series "The Real Ghostbusters", and other fine movies that many have not heard of before. If you are lucky, maybe we might even turn on the sound.

'If you look out of your window, you will see the spectacular view of tall grass and unused land. It is a sight to behold and only available to the discerning traveler who chooses KTM for their Rail needs, the Premier and _Only_ Rail service in Malaysia.

'In case of cabin decompression, which happens only very rarely, your luggage will drop from the top. Pull it towards you and breathe normally.

'Please take note of all the exits, which are Automatic doors and do not require brute force to open, so that in the case of an emergency, you know exactly where to go if you need to smoke, as smoking is not allowed in the aircon cabins.

'A duty-free cart will arrive shortly to sell you our Premier line of perfumes and cosmetics, like "Scent de Goat" and "Parfum la KTM", not available elsewhere. So take this golden opportunity to buy everything. Our prices are very competitive for such a fine line of unknown brands.

'We hope you enjoy your ride with us and should you need any assistance, feel free to wave and shout for our attendants. Do not use the lever on your arm rest because that is not a call button. It only makes your seat recline up and down. Prolonged use of this lever can lead to back injuries.

'Once again, thank you for choosing KTM and enjoy your Light Snack of "Rice de la France". And yes, that thing with your rice is chicken."

We had a fairly smooth ride and did not get any train sickness but Ginny, my wife (or mrs brown to some friends) had a little gas in the tummy (Ginny has a stomach that _knows_ when it is going on a trip and gets really excited as a result -- it was extremely annoying especially during our long honeymoon in the States) and I handed her some antacid, to which she shouted "DO I HAVE TO CHEW THIS?", which caused most of the passengers to have minor heart seizures there and then. She had her headphones on and her Discman blasting Chinese love songs directly into her ears and she thought she was whispering the question to me.

It probably made a lot of people think that we Singaporeans are a bunch of loud, arrogant yobs who think nothing of shouting out questions about antacids in quiet Malaysian trains. It would probably make it into the next UMNO Youth newsletter as another critical issue for which to ask for a formal apology from the relevant Singapore authorities:

"Singapore Woman Shouts in KTM Train! UMNO Youth Demands Apology!"

"UMNO Youth Chief Apologises for Burning of MRT Poster"

"UMNO Youth Chief Denies Making Apology"

"Singapore Arrogance Threatens Malaysian-Singapore Relations!"

"Authorities Consider Cutting Water Supply in Retaliation --Again!"

"Malaysian Kastam Begins Thorough Lorry Inspections in Response to KTM Shouting Incident!"

"Malaysian Airlines Sues Cabinet Minister for Saying Service Sucks"

That last headline was not related but it was a true story and I thought it funnier than fiction. So I threw it in. Anyway, the suit was dropped when good sense prevailed.

Despite all this hoohah about the service in MAS, Malaysia's National Carrier (in Singapore the National Carrier is the NTUC Supermarket plastic bag), the service in the KTM was pretty good. It was just a little slow. I mean, the attendants, all three of them, strapping young men, took more than 45 minutes to serve the full length of our _car_. This involved the complex procedure of giving us a box of prepackaged food and serving coffee or tea. Probably the constant dropping of the plastic cups (twice) had something to do with the delay.

Then again, later in our 4-star hotel in Ipoh, tired and hungry, we tried to get room service at 2am (we reached our destination at 1.30am) and ordered a couple of sandwiches. The order took one and a half hours to arrive (after much calling and ranting from us) and even then we only received half our sandwiches and our drinks. The nice boy who brought us our half order told us that they were busy in the cafe and had only one chef on duty. That explained everything. It can get pretty wild in Ipoh on Saturday mornings at 2am, in the quiet part of the city that we were in.

In the light of that, I can't really say the train service was slow. But it was not very inspiring when the attendants did not know what were in the boxes they served (it was either Spaghetti or some rice thing). And they had to guess.

Mike got Spaghetti and the cheery young attendant promptly gave him a spoon. Full marks for eagerness to please, I guess. It was especially hilarious when the intrepid young attendants suddenly decided they had more important things to attend to (clearing the, um, stuff, on the tracks maybe?) and left their meal cart in the middle of the aisle, leaving a poor old man to hold the cart from his aisle seat to prevent the cart from rolling down the aisle and killing someone. The old man was holding on to that cart for a long, long time.

Still, it is laudable that there is an attempt to bring airline style service to the KTM trains. The attendants in their blue and gold uniforms were a nice touch. I wonder if it were possible to market them as being the Hunks of the Tracks. Something like the SIA Girl (A Great Way to Fly). We could have the KTM Guy (A Great Way to Ride).

"Who are you?
Do I know you?
You're so Handsome
Will I see you again?

KTM Guy
You're a Great Way to Ride!"

The campaign could stress the great service (slow and steady!), exciting exotic food (you have to guess what it is!) and punctual trains.

On our return trip, our train ticket said that the train would arrive at 10.49am (it came at 10.54am, not bad really), that underscored the kind of precision and punctuality that KTM aimed for, not unlike the precision scheduling we often see in the Malaysian TV channels. It would have been so much easier to say that the arrival time would be "elevenish", but that would not be professional, you see.

When we were nearing KL Station, the captain announced that "the train will be arriving in a few minutes (again note the precision here) at KL Station, I repeat, the train will be arriving in a few minutes at KL Station. Passengers should prepare to disembark, I repeat, passengers should prepare to disembark. We thank you for travelling with us on KTM and hope to see you soon, I repeat..."

The captain was a precise and meticulous man who felt the need to repeat his announcements, almost every sentence. We felt reassured by his thoroughness.

As we were getting off, we were laughing about how funny it would be if they also had the attendants stand at the door as we disembarked (I repeat, as we disembarked) to say goodbye, like they do with so much sincerity in airline flights.

Obviously they took the airline style service thing very seriously and yep, _there_ were the KTM Guys (and one KTM Girl), wishing us smiley goodbyes (a little awkwardly but really trying hard).

It was a breath of fresh air, this service thing. Unfortunately, our next stop was Pudu Raya bus station, a behemoth of a bus station, that was obviously designed by a demented architect in the 4th Century AD. The whole second floor was a mass of ticketing counters and taxi drivers, waiting to pounce on you when you said "Ipo-".

The tour de force, though, was the first floor, a behemoth of a bus bay (I like this word, behemoth) with 10 to 20 Super VIP Coaches and Sort-of Super VIP Coaches, all with their engines running, and _no_ ventilation. Fresh air was not something you associate with the Pudu Raya bus bay. You got lung cancer if you stayed in that underground gas chamber for more than 2 minutes. I suspect that the ventilation to remove the carbon monoxide in that bus bay was provided by the passengers like us who breathed it all in and filtered it in our lungs.

And passengers literally fought to get into their buses. I don't know if it was because they were trying to escape inhaling the noxious gases or because they wanted to get a seat, but that place is one big war zone. And they allow chemical weapons.

Still we managed to get to Ipoh in one piece and tried their "hor fun" (it's a kind of smooth flat noodle, and not what you think, gentle reader) and went "tau sah piah" (a kind of biscuit with a sweet and salty filling) shopping. Very heady stuff.

Our return leg was smoother but we did not get the airline style service because they only implemented this privilege on certain trains. But we did manage to see the award-winning episode of that delightful cartoon series "The Real Ghostbusters" again, but this time without the sound. Lunch was a mad rush to the canteen at KL Station when the train stopped there for 8 minutes. And no one stood at the door to wish us goodbye at the Singapore Station, just hordes of people rushing to get in line at the Kastam booths.

Man, I think I really miss the KTM Guys.

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Other writings may be found in the Website "BrownTown" at http://www.mrbrown.com