Cuti-cuti KK Day 1 - Kereta Rosak

30 May 2015

Kami pindah ke Miri tahun 2010, dan sejak dari itulah I dah berkali-kali cakap dengan hubby, jom lah kita ber-roadtrip ke KK. Macam best jek driving 10 jam lintas2 sempadan Sarawak-Brunei-Sarawak banyak2 kali sampai lah yang terakhir, sempadan Sarawak-Sabah. I love roadtrips cause obviously, there's more to see, and more to experience.

Akhirnya, setelah hampir 5 tahun dan setelah penambahan ahli keluarga seramai 2 orang menjadikan 6 orang kesemuanya, tercapai jugalah my roadtrip dream. Hik!

I had this trip planned as best as I - an impulsive and disorganized person -  could.

Booking bilik, checked! 

Kereta hantar servis - checked! 

Passport semua valid - checked! 

Makan-pakai untuk seminggu - checked! 

Pendek kata, insyaAllah semua keperluan covered lah.

Kebetulan our neighbours depan rumah, Geena and family, had also been planning the same trip on the same day. What a lucky coincidence! So we decided to make the journey together. Konvoi gitu. Since they've made the trip before, who better to guide us kan?

About 10 minutes into the journey, hujan renyai-renyai.
Konon GPS tapi tak set pun. Mentang-mentanglah
ikut pilot car kat depan hihihi.

Maka dengan izinNya, on the morning of 30th May, pukul 6:10 pagi, dalam cuaca hujan renyai, bertolaklah kami 2 kereta yang kedua2 sendat dengan penumpang dan barang2 keperluan. Masing2 kereta ada 7 passengers. Geena has 4 children, and she brought her maid with her. I pulak brought my elderly mother with me.

Everything went smoothly from there. The first checkpoint, Sungai Tujuh, lintasan sempadan yang pertama ke Kuala Belait, Brunei. We stopped at Kuala Belait for breakfast. Lupa lah pulak nak snap gambar kedai tu... al maklum... dah lapor! Pretty decent shop and good food too. And then we continued with our journey.

Alhamdulillah, lepas cross border ke Brunei, cuaca dah tak hujan. Malah, elok sepanjang jalan. Maka menjamu matalah I tengok kiri-kanan. Maklum, memang seronok melihat negara orang ni kan?

Happy faces at the start of the journey.

We crossed borders a few more times, and I was pretty much enjoying the ride. Sampailah di satu tempat di Brunei ni... mungkin Bangar atau Temburong, tak berapa nak pasti, when tak semena-mena we accidentally hit a road hump yang agak tinggi. Al-kisahnya, encik suami yang memandu masa tu tak perasan di depan tu ada zebra crossing yang ditinggikan sedikit dari aras jalan. Maklum, ikut belakang kereta orang. Tau-tau I nampak kereta Geena ter-melompat gitu so I pun cepat2 warning kat driver to watch out, but it was too close, too little time. Maka termelompatlah kereta kami di situ dengan agak kuat. I swear, I heard something in the engine went "toing!" macam ada benda putus/patah and I feared the worst. But not wanting to cause unnecessary stress to anyone in the car, I diamkan saja sambil dalam hati berdoa mintaklah takde apa2 kerosakan berlaku. Amiin.

Leaving Brunei Immigration (left), entering
Malaysian Immigration (right)

But then, when we reached the last Brunei-Sarawak border, sambil menunggu pegawai imigresen chop-chop passport kami bertujuh, the engine started making a rattling sound. Itu pun perasan sebab tingkap terbuka and me being me, I'm quite sensitive to something sounding quite out of the ordinary. When I asked hubs, "bunyi enjin kita ke?" Dia dengan kondifennye menjawab, "bunyi enjin kete sebelah, Hilux" cewah! But I was not convinced. As we started to push forward after the passport checks, the rattling got louder. Sahlah, our car!

Hoping for the best, since the car was still running, we continued on. But barely 2km or so after the immigration checkpoint, akhirnya, the engine gave way and died on us.

In the middle of nowhere. As far as I was concerned.

There we were tersadai tepi jalan in mid-day sun and quite honestly, not a clue of what to do next. In my head, thoughts were running wild... my kids in the car, my mum, in a foreign place that has no internet reception... Where are we? What do we do now? Who to call for help? Haish!

I quickly called Geena yang maybe tak perasan we all dah takde kat belakang dia huhuhu. They turned back. At this point, I was so thankful that we were travelling with friends!

At first, we tried to get help from a house tepi jalan. It was the only house there, and ada anjing lah pulak! Tuan rumah cakap dia tak tau any tow truck company or anyone who can help. Macam taknak tolong jek... takpe lah. In the meantime, hubs called his regular guy in Miri to ask if he has any contacts in Lawas, the nearest town to where we were stranded. Si Geena and hubby pulak, God bless them, when they turned back to get to us, sempat lagi diorang survey2 pekan Lawas looking for a workshop that's open. And they also noted that there's a Hotel Seri Malaysia (HSM) in town.

Mind you, this happened on a Sunday, and to make things worse, the coming Monday and Tuesday pulak cuti awam sempena perayaan Hari Gawai. Mana nak cari workshop yang nak amik job time pekerja dia bercuti, ye tak?

Anyway, long story short. We had no choice but to make a quick decision to spend the night in Lawas. Geena and hubby then ferried me and the kids over to HSM. Disebabkan ramai, terpaksalah buat 2 trip. For the first trip, Geena left her maid with my mum and hubby while they ferried me and all the children to HSM. Bayangkan, 3 adults and 8 children ranging in age between 13 and 2 all in a 5-seater car hehehe!

Sungai Lawas
Pic courtesy of Geena.

When we reached HSM, hubby called cakap tak payah datang balik to fetch them. The house owner, alhamdulillah, eventually came out to help and got one of his friends to ferry my mom and geena's maid along with all our stuff to HSM. Hubby plak managed to get a tow truck, thanks to his friend's contact in Lawas, to tow the car to HSM until we can find a mechanic to look at it.

Layan anak-anak sementara
tunggu makanan sampai.

We proceeded to have lunch in HSM. A late lunch. Kesian kids semua kelaparan. Jangan kata kids je lah, mak-pak nye pun sama heh! After lunch, Geena and family continued with their journey to KK dan tinggallah iols sekeluarga di pekan Lawas. Rasa nak nangis masa ni....

We spent the night in Lawas making alternative plans due to the unexpected turn of event.

We went to bed that night exhausted. But at least, the plan for the following day had been laid out. We were to continue our journey to KK via a public transport in the form of a van. Hubby got all 7 of us booked for the 7am departure. Maknanya, kena bangun seawal-awalnya lah kan? We don't want to be late and delay the trip for other passengers.

Our car, it seems, would have to be left at the hotel until the workshop resume business on Tuesday. Itupun, masih belum pasti whether they can fix the car or not. But tentatively, the plan was to come back to HSM on Friday, and hoped that the car would've been ready by then.

At this point, I was still feeling positive and hoping to have a good family vacation.

To be continued...

Cuti-Cuti KK Day 2 - Bumpy van ride and finally, KK.