Bussing It Home

My youngest daughter Syirah and I had made an unplanned trip to One Utama by bus, the longest journey we have ever made on RapidKL including the 20 minutes "transit" at KL Sentral.

What was also unplanned was the damage to my purse incurred at Mark's and Spark's but thanks to years of preventive instincts it survived being completely totaled.

Unfortunately such instincts are not applicable for bus routes. We emerged from OU's old wing with no inkling where to catch the bus back to Pusat Bandar Damansara and Kl Sentral.  An OU general worker told us to wait at the cross-roads across the LDP viaduct, on the TTDI side. An Indon sweeper also said the same. Don't worry about there being no bus-stop, she said, the KL-bound bus will stop for you at the corner after the traffic lights.

Hello? No bus-stop? Isn't that not proper and dangerous?

Oh well, let's just experience this, I thought. So we trudged over to the said corner looking dead green under the hot sun anyone could take us for a ride.

Several other people also came over to wait so that was a relief in a way.

The  U88 Kota Damansara - Pasar Seni bus soon pulled over. Syirah used the debit card for her fare and paid cash for mine - RM5.00 altogether.

When the bus u-turned into Damansara Utama commercial centre and then into SS2 after that, I knew we were in for the long haul, as it were. The route goes through Sea Park, Paramount Gardens, Section 14, and Asia Jaya before it hits the Federal Highway and then on to Bangsar, KL Sentral and Pasar Seni. Very, very long way - it took about 60 minutes but it wasn't unpleasant and it took us to KL like the OU man and Indon sweeper said. Only we hadn't mentioned via Pusat Bandar Damansara.

But we had ample time to catch the U63 back home before the rush hour. For this we had to wait at the bus depot adjacent to the Pasar Seni LRT station. In my school days it used to be known as "Klang Bus Stand". It  was hot and stifling inside, littered with paper and plastic bags and it seemed like ages before the bus came along. This is the part of KL which probably has changed little.

Thankfully the air-conditioning in the bus was working, just about, because now we get whiffs of BO from someone at the back, mixed with the aroma of jackfruit a lady was enjoying in the seat across the aisle. So just tahan lah…

The passengers seemed more chatty too although their tongues were foreign… some Tagalog, some Myanmar, east Malaysians, and the loud ones shouting into their handphones were from the sub-continent, unmistakably.

As we approached home territory on Persiaran Kewajipan in USJ, the bus circumnavigated Taipan, USJ 11, and USJ14 taking us on a local tour before finally terminating at Subang Mewah. We had actually travelled the route from it's starting point at "Klang Bus Stand" - a journey of 60 about mins.

So that was our day out on the busses - a learning experience on the whole, which made us really earn the teh tarik and mee goreng we had at Richfield Banana Leaf Curry House before going home.

Should we try the early morning Route BET3 next?