KTM Services

I was at the Seremban KTM Station last Saturday, and I had a video shoot for some Dutch tourism students who were doing a video of young people in Malaysia. I was invited by one of my friends and the place to meet was at some cafe off Jalan Raja Chulan.

With the petrol price as it is at the moment, I decided to take public transport (PT). Bad decision. PT would mean taking the Komuter from Seremban to KL Sentral (1 hour 20 mins), taking a 5-min walk to the Monorail station, waiting for the monorail (another 5 mins), the ride from KL Sentral to Jalan Raja Chulan (15 mins) and a 5-min walk to the cafe. All of which would take me to the venue at about 3.30 (the time I needed to be there). A perfect fit if I got on the 1.38 train from Seremban.

You know how when ur overseas, you can time your meetings, classes, dates, etc. to the dot cos of the punctuality of the PT system? Malaysia? Forget it. Over my dead ass.

Anyway, I drove to the KTM station, which is about 15 mins away from my house. I got there at about 1.30pm, and the machine spitting out parking tickets was out of order, and there was a sign saying "collect your receipts at the exit booth". So i went in, parked, got out of my car and walked towards the ticket counter.

Now there are 2 automated ticket machines and 2 counters being manned. Unfortunately, the machines were (almost) out of order (as in once you choose your destination, the price comes up, but when you try slotting money in, it keeps getting rejected). And pretty much everyone knows that these machines have been malfunctioning like forever.

So there is a queue for tickets at the counters being manned, but lo and behold, only 1 counter was open, DESPITE the queue for tickets being about 30 people long. I joined the queue at about 1.35. The train was already there, ready for take-off at 1.38, and with the level of speed of service by the one person at the counter, I missed the train.

And was I surprised? Oh no. Not at all. I did think of taking the next train which was supposed to be at 1.58, but doing math for the PT system here never works, so I called it off.

In fact, PT was a mess the whole of last week, one of the reasons being the Independence Day parade's rehearsals, where some of the roads were closed and more people chose PT. Half the people I knew got to work late.

And the government wonders why there's such a brain drain in the country!