Day 102 - Arrival in Kuala Lumpur, flight to Jakarta, Indonesia and the most Ghetto train ride in history to Yogyakarta

I didn't end up getting much sleep on the train as all the lights were kept on all night and the girl behind me decided to play her music on her phone quite loudly around midnight and then proceeded to eat the really disgusting smelling fish. While I could hear her chew, I tried to sleep.

We arrived into Kuala Lumpur Sentral station at around 5:30 am. Upon arrival we decided to leave for Jakarta, Indonesia right away to save some time. Unfortunately the wifi in the station wasn't working so we left to go to the airport directly to try and book a ticket for today. The bus to the airport cost 10000 RM ($3) and took about an hour. Thank god the seats were comfortable and the bus was rather empty, I was finally able to catch some sleep.

The airport in KL is huge. It was a good thing that all the airline offices were in one place as it isn't the most fun to run around frantically looking for tickets to fly out to Jakarta with a 40 lb pack on your back. It was good to find out that Lionair sells tickets for double the price quoted online so ended up booking with the Indonesian airline Garuda Air for 249 RM ($83) from KL to Jakarta. The staff was extremely helpful. The customer service here is far superior to that in Thailand without a doubt.

The flight.Arrived in Jakarta at around 5 pm. The food on the plane was outstanding. I've never had such good, filliing airplane food before. Upon arrival, I purchased a 30-day visa for $25 USD. The people here are really friendly and the men are super flirty and nosey. At once I was asked if I had a boyfriend. I just ended up inventing one for the trip. I'm sure I'll have to use "him" again.

We caught the public bus called the Damri into town for 20000Rp ($2) from the airport. The bus was full except for a single drop seat beside the driver. My friend ended up sitting there and I sat on the stairs. Of course, this bus driver was crazy but this time I felt that if he braked hard, I would fly through the windsheild.

Since we were dropped off at the train station we thought it would be a good idea to book a train directly to Yogyakarta. For some reason the train was really expensive. It was 350000Rp ( $35) and the train wasn't even a sleeper. We opted to go the economy "bisnis" class route and took a taxi to the other train station where we bought tickets for 150000Rp. The ride was to take the same about of time.

We arrived at the train station and it was packed with people. Not so bad I thought. We bought our tickets and walked into the train station and there were people everywhere. Sitting on newspaper and standing on the platform. There were so many people that I only had standing room. So crowded!

When the train arrived, I was kind of in shock. I really shouldn't have been because I've been in SE asia for the past 4 months but this really was well, really ghetto. We got onto the train and went to our assigned seats only to find out that our 2 seater bench seat was backwards. Between our seat and the one behind it was a man lying in the crevice made by the seats because he wanted to sleep there for the journey. We flipped it anyhow and he promptly picked up his newspaper and left.

The seat was so screwed up that my friend's seat was so concave that she sank into it and I had a huge spring sticking out of my seat into my shoulder. To make things worse, the train was not airconditioned and the fans didn't really work and the windows didn't stay open. It was like a sauna on the train. I figured I'd make the best of it and tried to make myself as comfortable as possible which really wasn't very confortable at all.

After about 15 min of the journey the fun began. The train stopped and a hoard of people got on. I was wondering where they were all going to sit as all the seats were already occupied. And then they started to pull out newspaper and proceeded to line the aisle way with it so that they could sit down or lie down on it. What the hell? Within a matter of minutes the aisleway was covered with people. Any little bit of space was occupied. But they weren't stowaways, they actually had tickets!

In addition to this people kept coming onto the train to sell stuff, from food to combs to toys. Noisy toys at that. They were selling these things shaped like peanuts that emitted a high pitched chirping like birds when opened. Not to mention that every vendor would scream out at the top of his lungs what he was selling as he walked through the carpet of people in the aisleway who were all smoking and ashing all over the place. At this point I couldn't believe I had to be on here for another 10 hours. This stopping, starting and selling of merchandise happened every 15 minutes until around 2 am and the most of the people on the train got off.

I think I had about an hour of sleep until I was rudely awakened by a guy in drag who decided to board the train and sing while shaking chimes 2 inches from my face. What a wake up call. The guy wasn't even any good! I spoke to someone else on the train and he said that it was worse than 2nd class trains in India.