Yesterday was the greatest and the worst.
We hiked up the coolest mountain, so lush, so mossy, so misty. Climbing over and under trees, pulling ourselves up on ropes, slipping back down a few times. Just generally covering ourselves in mud (my shoes got sucked into the mud, it was not pretty) We had a bus to catch at 5pm. It was 3pm when we reached the top of the mountain. Doable? We hoped so. What ensued was a bloody, sweaty adventure that relied on the kindness of strangers.
At the lookout we met two Malaysian guys who offered us a lift back into town on their motorbikes. We readily accepted and each jumped on the back. The rain started and the roads we're slick. (MUM IF YOU'RE READING THIS, DON'T WORRY I'M FINE!) We hit a bump and the bike slipped and we went crashing down and hit a wall. With a sore knee, shoulder and hand I got up, slightly bloody but still happy and healthy. (Sorry mum) After that we still wanted to make it to the bus, but biking was definitely out of the question, so we started walking. We had 1.5 hours left to make the bus and the walk was only an hour and 20 minutes. But the walk took us through rolling green hills covered in fields of tea, so naturally I had to stop for photos ALOT. We were running out of time so we flagged down a car. BUT ALAS we hit our first traffic jam of the day. We were sitting in stand still traffic just out of town watching the clock tick away. FINALLY we made it into town at 5:03pm. We ran to the bus stop to discover the bus had left. We thought with such bad traffic we might be able to run down the road and catch up with it. SO RAN WE DID. But alas the bus was well and truly on its way. I knew the bus wasn't leaving the next town until 5:30, so we flagged down another car and jumped in. We got dropped at the next bus station at 5:28pm and could see our bus. We thanked the 3rd kind stranger of the day and ran to the ticket office. "BUS TO KL PLEASE" We yelled as we ran. But our hopes and dreams came crashing down as the lady shook her head and said "All full, all full" "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" I yelled in agony, it was all for nothing. But just as we gave up all hope for a return to KL that night ANOTHER KIND STRANGER came up and said he was actually selling two tickets to KL, his friends had caught the earlier bus. It was like the stars had aligned and our wildest dreams had come true. We jumped on the bus filthy, sweaty, sore, thirsty, a little hungry. But on our way back to KL.
The story didn't end as sweetly as it should have though, we hit massive traffic jams and the 4 hour bus ride turned into a 7 hour bus ride. But we made it back in one piece (well mostly)
