First LC visit…

and a lot of adventures!

My first LC visit is in LC UUM (for non-AIESECers – Member Committee members sometimes have to visit local entities to meet with members, educate them, etc). It’s around 6h of travelling by bus.

You go to the station, buy the ticket, get into the bus, fall asleep, wake up after 6h, get out of the bus and you are there. It sounds surprisingly simple, doesn’t it it? :)

But of course nothing is as simple as you may think.

At the same evening, when I had to leave KL, one of the LCs located in the city had an induction evening for new AIESEC members. So whole MC team wanted to attend the event, share their experience, see what’s going on around, etc. And this is why I needed to go to the bus station on my own. But fortunately it’s not difficult to get there. As I entered the station I felt as I were in Chinatown – a lot of people, some of them approach you and screaming to your ear ask where do you want to travel, because their bus for sure goes in your direction. I was supposed to search for Mara Lines counter to buy the ticket (it’s a little bit different than in Poland: each travel agency has its own counter where it sells the ticket). When I finally found it I was told that there is no more tickets for my bus at 10:30 and next bus goes next day (I needed to be on Friday morning in Kedah and I was supposed to leave KL on Thursday evening). So with kind of resignation on my face I approached one girl, who asked me earlier about where I would to go. She was trying to find a ticket for me, she asked about it at three different countries, but at the end we realized that I will not get any ticket for a bus, which is going directly to UUMs campus.

But one of the nice guys offered me a trip to Changloon. I called one of the LC UUM members, who was supposed to pick me up, whether I should go to Changloon, when there is no other way to get to Kedah (Kedah is a state, Changloon is a city and UUMs campus is located few kilometers from it). She agreed to pick me up from the further place. The guy who sold me the ticket told me that the bus will come at 10:30 pm and will leave at 11 pm.

So I went to the place I was shown. The bus was supposed to be double-decked and this was the reason why it couldn’t park at a decked platform (it was too low). So I was waiting in a weird place wondering, whether it’s possible that he sold me a fake ticket.

And I was waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

And finally the guy appeared. Around 10mins later – bas came. So we left the bus station around 11:20 (not that bad, right? :p).

The Bus. THE BUS. It wasn’t just the bus, it was The Bus! I have never ever travelled by Bus like this! The seats were so huge that I felt as I were riding in a limousine! It was awesome ;)

Stupid me – I forgot to ask the driver or the guy, who sold me the ticket, when the bus will reach Changloon. So I set my alarm clock at 5 am, woke up and was waited for the first bus stop. So after a while the bus stopped, the driver shouted name of the city, people in a rush get off the bus and we moved on. At the third station (which also wasn’t the Changloon station) I realized that all passengers left. So I went down to ask the driver what’s going on. So he asked me: ‘Changloon? Follow me!’. He went upstairs, showed me my stuff – so I took it – and said: ‘Follow me, change the bus!’. I was really surprised, because nobody informed me before that I will have to change the bus. It was around 5 am, I had no idea what kind of city was that. And it was still dark. But I changed the bus and fortunately the second driver didn’t ask me to pay any ticket.

When I get off the second buss in Changloon I was still waiting for around 1h for the LC members to fetch me from kind-of-bus-station.

So we came to the campus. It’s huge. It’s really huge. I have never seen that kind of campus before (in Poland it looks a little bit different). Of course all the university buildings are here. But imagine, that all the students (around 22 k) live here! Obviously – boys and girls separately.

It’s awesome to have palms / coconut trees around the uni buildings. But I need to admit that standard of dorms is quite low :/ Despite this – those 22k of students here need to survive somehow, so probably it’s not that bad. They have swimming pool, go-kart track and many other show places! :)

I will upload few pictures on my picassa. You will see :>