small things

So that night-train got us to Jerentut, which is where we could hop a bus to the rain forest the following morning. We had received advice from some ladies who worked for Tourism in Kuala Terengganu that there would be a place for us to rest at the train station, as we’d be arriving rather early. We thought it’d be a great idea to take the night train to save money on a motel, and be able to travel over a large part of the country simultaneously…. so we decided to do that. Well. We arrived at the train station at just around 2 in the morning… looked around to see nothing other than a food stall, some benches, under a pretty much open air waiting area for the trains….. and then we did see in one of the windows near the ticket office a room with some couches and cots. We went and asked if those rooms were for rent or something. Turned out that, no, they were not for rent or something…. they were for staff only.

SoOOOoo… too tired to try and venture out into the city, not to mention we were on too much of a budget to want to pay for a room for 4 hours (our bus left at 6am)…. we decided to grab some bench space a little farther from the office and plopped down there.

I guess, let me say that, that experience has made me forever grateful that I’ve been lucky enough to have different types of employment throughout my life, and have always been able to always have a shelter over my head when I sleep. Let’s keep in mind this was a bit different from sleeping under the stars on a camping trip. We were on the edge of town, sleeping on metal bleacher style benches under a covered section of the waiting area for trains, with some fluorescent street lamps down the way shining through the night. Needless to say, I hardly got any sleep. At one point in the night, I told Will we’d have to keep this in mind (the whole sleeping on a bench outside) as a form of discipline for our kids someday, should they ever want to drop out of school. He said, “yea… Maybe.”

Anyhow, we made it through the night…and at the first hint of dawn, grabbed our bags and went to the first open restaurant (a Chinese place, with nobody speaking English)…the lady brought us a bunch of items on a tray, and we pointed to what we were brave enough to try at that hour…and were able to get some breakfast in. After that we were on our way to the bus station.