Let’s drive to East Malaysia for a Malaysia Day holiday

 

What’s your dream for Malaysia Day on Thursday? More freedom to travel after being locked down for almost two years because of the Covid-19 pandemic?

It won’t be simple or cheap to venture out of Malaysia for the immediate future. Drawing on the history of the Spanish Flu about a century ago, we can expect the next two years to be a period of extreme uncertainty.

The second anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic will be in March, and we should be able to determine our travel plans with more certainty in about six months.

We don’t need to travel halfway around the world for adventure and unique experiences. Sabah and Sarawak are almost as unknown as Argentina or Brazil to most of us in West Malaysia.

Wouldn’t it then be a cool dream to be able to plan a driving holiday from the Peninsula to Borneo, via Kuching in Sarawak or Kota Kinabalu in Sabah? And vice-versa?

Actually such a driving holiday between Borneo and West Malaysia was a reality in the 1980s. Former premier, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, wanted closer people-to-people ties between East and West Malaysia and he facilitated the Cruise Muhibbah with a Feri Malaysia ro-ro (roll-on roll-off) service.

In 1988, some of us “Orang Malaya”, participants in the Trans-Borneo International Off-road Expedition , drove our SUVs into the ferry in Kuantan Port and checked into the passenger cabins allocated to us for the 3D2N cruise to Kuching.

After a jolly time on board — good rest, good food, duty-free drinks and such — we got into our cars and “expeditioned” from Kuching to Kota Kinabalu. I used the word expeditioned because at that time, there weren’t proper roads or bridges throughout the route.

Also, we had many detours to enjoy the scenery. Especially when one of our Indonesia ferries got lost in the haze at sea off Kalimantan, Indonesia, and those of us stuck at Tanjung Redeb and Tanjung Selor made the most of the opportunity with the friendly natives.

The next year, we ferried the vehicles from Kuantan to Kota Kinabalu and drove from Kota Kinabalu to Kuching.

A while after the two Trans-Borneo expeditions, the Feri Malaysia ship caught fire and was decommissioned. Perbadanan Nasional Shipping Line, the government-owned company, never resumed the service because it was losing money and Mahathir had other priorities by then.

Over the next three years, the Covid-19 pandemic will be gradually reduced in status to an endemic.

Air travel will still be super expensive and we’d rather not risk catching the virus in Australia or the US, where medical care has always been pricey.

So why not plan for an exotic driving holiday closer to home and more for the budget conscious. This will mean a self-driving holiday in Borneo for the West Malaysians and a driving holiday to Peninsular Malaysia and onwards to the Asian mainland for Sabahans and Sarawakians.

Talking about budget conscious, Bob Teoh, the person who pioneered the Trans-Borneo expedition self-driving holiday concept, subsequently travelled the whole of Sabah and Sarawak by backpacking and public transport.

“Transport has never been an issue in Sabah, Sarawak and even Kalimantan, Indonesia. From Kuching, I could get on a van to Entikong, the border town of West Kalimantan, Indonesia for RM15 a trip. From Entikong I could get other van services onwards into Kalimantan,” Teoh recalled of his photography expeditions.

This is the opportunity for the new government to execute its Malaysian Family vision by resuming the Cruise Muhibbah concept to bring East and West Malaysians closer together.

A weekly ro-ro ferry service should be treated as a public utility for Malaysians and not as a for-profit service. Tickets should be priced reasonably so that a Malaysian family of four and their vehicle can afford to travel across the South China Sea for a self-driving holiday.

In the meantime, many of us have family and friends in all the three provinces of Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak, and we can do our own car-sharing projects. In any case, there are also car-sharing apps such as Trevo.

We should experience the natural wonders in our backyard that draw adventure-hungry visitors from China, the US, Europe and Australia. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.