So friday morning was a bit too early, but was excited to see some more Formula 1 action non the less. Got on the shuttle to the track. On the highway I noticed that more than 90% of the trees I saw, were palm trees. I have seen palm trees in Australia, but not so many. A whole forest of them. Not a real surprise if you look at the climate, so hot. Anyway, while I was dozing off while staring at palm trees, we made our way to the track. Got on a bus and I got dropped off at my gate.
There I was encountered with something I labeled as stupid. They were searching bags, I can get into that, weapons and all. The rules at the Malaysian Grand Prix state that you are not allowed to bring in outside food & drinks. Again, not a fan, but sometimes that’s the case. What I was surprised about is that water counts to that as well. It’s so hot here that you have to drink a lot of water. But my water got confiscated. I told him that it was ridiculous, which his response was that it was just his job. I told him it was still stupid but got on with my day. So we get ripped off on water since the price went times 5 at least, but that means it’s still only about a euro for a bottle, so can’t complain too much.
I promise, this will be the only negative point in this whole post, even though I might have already lost you here. If you are still reading, I did have an amazing day at the track. All the grandstands were open, so I managed to catch a whole set of different view of the track, and it is an amazing complex. The whole circuit has been build mainly to host Formula 1, and it shows. Great complex, good transport, well trained marshals and a logic layout for the grandstands. Really worth going there.
After this great day, I had to get back to my hotel. The shuttle bus wasn’t running, so it was time to grab a cab. First taxi driver walked up to me, asking where I wanted to go. I showed him the address and he told me to get in his cab. I asked him how much the ride was. He was ignoring me first then acted like he didn’t know. This is a trick, you have to set on a price first or you know for sure that they will rip you off. So I asked him “Barapa?” which means ‘how much’ in Malaysian. He told me 150 ringgit. Which is a total ripoff, it should be about 30-40 ringgit. So I told him I would prefer to walk.
The next few cab drivers weren’t keen on taking me. They either said that they didn’t know where it was, or just gave me the card back and said something in Malaysian. The hotel is pretty close to the circuit, I think they preferred rides to the city instead of wasting their spot in line. Fair enough. So I took a shuttle bus to the airport for 10 ringgit and from there took a cab to my hotel for 30 ringgit. The cab driver had a toilet refresher in his car, which made it smell like a toilet. Better than sweat I suppose?
At night I met up with my two new mates Matt and Luca. Matt is an American IT nerd who works for Intel here in Malaysia. Luca is an autograph hunter who asked if we were interested to meet some drivers. He knew where the drivers were staying. So in the morning we got up quite early and took a cab to the airport. Then we got on one of those annoying beeping cars which took us to the hotel. There was lots of security around, but we just walked into the lobby and positioned ourselves near the elevator on a comfy couch.
After 20 minutes we saw the first drivers walk by. First Kimi Raikonen incognito. He was wearing glasses and a dorky sweater. Then I saw David Coulthard. So I walked up to him. He just came back from a run with Martin Brundle. I asked him if I could have a photo with him, and he didn’t mind at all. Martin took that opportunity to bolt into the elevator though and yell to Coulthard “see you at the track”. Already felt like such a stalker.
In the next half an hour, many drivers followed. Pedro de la Rosa, Nico Hulkenberg, Vitaly Petrov and also Paul Di Resta. Paul was with his girlfriend, but since I know no shame now, I just asked her if she could take a photo of me and Paul, she didn’t seem to mind. After I found Stefano Domenicali, team principal of Ferrari, and Martin Whitmarsh, team principal of Mclaren. I managed to go on the photo with both of them at the same time. After that we were still waiting for Sebastian Vettel. Unfortunately he seemed to have skipped the lobby and have taken the elevator to the car park, so we headed off to the track.
The qualifying session was a good one. Schumacher on third position seemed very promising. We also enjoyed a nice lunch at the restaurant at the circuit. Even though the prices had gone times three since the day before, we still had some good lunch there. It was now equivalent of what you would pay in Europe if you’d eat at a cafe like Rotown. So about 15 euros including drinks and desert. Very expensive by Malaysian standards though. But we also had the privilege to cool off in the airco. After all the F1 action was done, Luca wanted to try and get some more stuff signed. So we headed for the paddock.
We had to walk around the track in the burning sun and encountered a security station. Luca did the talking and made up a lie about our friend meeting us with our passes, and the security guard found it a valid excuse and let all three of us through. We walked through a tunnel under the track and ended up seeing the F1 personnel parking lot and the gates to the paddock. The paddock is the part behind the pit lane where all the motorhomes and media is located. We were at a good spot cause every driver leaving the circuit has to pass us first. And so the waiting began.
The waiting wasn’t the most exciting but luckily there were plenty of well known drivers and media presenters to keep me occupied. I can’t write about every encounter, but one of the first was Damon Hill. He is a world champion, so I grabbed the opportunity and a simple “Damon, how’s it going? Can I go on the photo with you.” resulted in a friendly “Of course mate, where you from?” and after some small talk he set off again.
After the world champion I met some of the BBC crew. I already met Ted Kravitz the other day, and while we were enjoying some cold drinks at the terrace outside the Paddock, he walked by and greeted me. Started to feel like part of the circus now! Then Jake Humphrey walked by. Had a short chat about the excellent BBC broadcasting. After I saw Lee Mckenzie. The only one I missed from the BBC crew was Eddie Jordan really.
The first drivers started to get out. I tried getting a photo with Jenson, but he just walked to his car and simply said no. Which was a bit of a letdown. Schumacher pulled the same thing. But I did manage to get on the photo with Fernando Alonso, Daniel Riccardo, Christian Horner and finally Sebastian Vettel. It was a long day, but it was nice meeting most of the drivers up close. Most of them are friendly laid back guys.
After bargaining with a Malaysian cab driver we got back to the hotel. Andy, our top chef who gave me an awesome tour through Kuala Lumpur, cooked us some great fried rice with complimentary chicken curry on the side. I love Malaysian food. Not only is their food great, also their soft drinks. I love 100 Plus. It’s a soft drink that rehydrates you. Which, trust me, you definitely need here. You will sweat like a pig, and 3 showers a day is more like standard than excessive. After that third shower I checked into my flight online and picked some good seats with extra leg room. Which means the flights were already less than 48 hours away. Still didn’t feel like my trip was coming to an end.
So Sunday was finally race day. We got to the circuit and enjoyed some of the support races. The first support race was rather boring with Proton race cars. Which is a Malaysian brand. After the GT cars were up. There was a massive crash at the start which I had a good view off. It did take a while to clear that up, so not too much racing left, but definitely entertaining. The GP2 race wasn’t the best I’ve seen, but it did involved a car flipping, which was quite impressive. Luckily no one got hurt. After all these support races I have gotten hungry. When I got out the gate, I got this UV stamp. You can only see it under black light.
The lunch was good, nice to cool down in some airco for a bit. You keep forgetting once you are in air-conditioning that it’s freaking hot outside. So every time you get hit by it. It’s a bit of a luxury problem, I know. But after walking through the heat to my gate, I had to go into this closed off area where they check the stamps and mine had faded. The security guard said “it’s probably cause you sweated.” He made it sound like I had some say in the amount I was gonna sweat. So I told him “It’s Malaysia, what do you expect?” He didn’t laugh but the older couple behind me did. Should have seen the face of this security guard, priceless. He just let me through though. Taking my water and now accusing me of sweating, they absolutely have no idea in what country they are in it seems.
Getting back into the grand stand, I saw the lightning in the distance followed by a loud thunder. The weather was definitely turning for the worse. Half an hour later it started raining. The grid was already build up and the formation lap was about to start. After the formation lap it had officially started pouring down with rain. Nothing like rain at home, this was a proper down pour. It definitely made for an exciting few opening laps.
Unfortunately after a few incidents, the safety car came out to slow the pack down. After a few laps the race got red flagged, which means it gets suspended. After a good half an hour break it seemed to be dry enough to race again. So after three more laps behind the safety car we had a good amount of racing on our hands. The rest of the race was hectic and hard to follow. I had a great view of the first corner but I couldn’t read the times of the drivers, so this made it difficult to follow. I just decided to enjoy the overtaking moves into the first corner and watch the race again once I’m back home.
During the day I had plenty of chats with Matt about software development, since he is working for Intel here. Also about Agile project management and the like, all very nerdy but it did get me excited to start working again. I guess that’s a good sign.
So after a great race and a few good days in Malaysia I’m quite sad to leave the country. So far it has really impressed me. I actually think that we, as in Europeans or even the western world, have no clue what Asia is like. I reckon it will be booming sooner than we think. I can’t wait to spend a good few months traveling through Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and whatever other country of Asia I want to explore. It’s definitely high on my wish list.
So far every country has treated me very good. All have been very different. Tomorrow I will head to the airport to fly to Hong Kong followed by a 13 hour flight to Amsterdam. I will arrive on tuesday morning early on Schiphol. Please bare with me and give me a few days of rest, I’m knackered. But I am looking forward to see everyone again and sleep in my own bed again. Erik out!
I couldn’t have had any worse preparation for my long dreadful day of flying. I ended up chatting until the early hours of the morning. Procrastinating. Still didn’t pack my bag and it was already 5 am. Figured it was time to catch some sleep, but I ended laying awake in bed until 6 at least. Just thinking off how well Australia treated me. I didn’t really wanna leave.
So about three hours later my alarm made the amount of noise which a v8 super car couldn’t even compete with. At least, that’s how I experienced my alarm at that point. Still feeling tired I started snoozing. Half an hour later I really had to start going, since I still didn’t pack. After a good 20 minutes of sorting everything out, my backpack was filled up and I had a light break fast. It’s always weird leaving a place, knowing you won’t return. My light OCD kicked in and started checking if I had everything for the 5th time. Again this resulted in me knowing I had everything and I made my way down to the train station. I said good bye to my German host, Christian, who I have had a lot of nice conversations with while smoking some shisha.
Arriving at the Melbourne airport, I made my way down to the Tiger terminal. Tiger airways is an Australian airline. But as soon as I informed the couch surfers I was staying at through out sydney and melbourne about my plans, they all had some good jokes. Apparently Tiger Airways isn’t known for their security or punctuality. Actually, it’s more of a miracle if the service actually flies. I was starting to get a bit worried since I had to make my two connecting flights. My experience has been really good though. I was a bit early for my check in, there was no queue, not even for security. I did get checked for explosive residue. I passed the test with flying colors.
So four hours on a plane later, I arrived in Perth. Now I had about 8 hours to kill since my flight with Cathay Pacific was only at five minutes before midnight. Good thing that I had my laptop with me with plenty of series for me to watch. I ended up watching a whole bunch of episodes of my new favorite show, The Wire. So this flight to Hong Kong took 8 hours. I only managed to sleep for about an hour, and was really getting tired at this point.
My stopover at Hong Kong was only about an hour. The Hong Kong international airport is huge. I only looked around a few shops and then started making my way down to my gate. It took me about 40 minutes to get from one end, to the other. And since I’m not too fat or disoriented to find my own gate, I cannot use one of those beeping carts that drop you off at your gate. Another four hour flight and I got off at Kuala Lumpur. The customs were friendly and I managed to find my backpack eventually.
Made my way out to the meeting point where I was going to be picked up. Found a guy with a sign saying ‘Eric Aalbers’, which was good enough for me. Very nice big Malaysian with limited English. As soon as I stepped outside the air-conditioned airport it hit me, Malaysia is hot. Not the hot you get in France, or wherever you go on holiday. It doesn’t matter wether you are in the shade or the sun, it’s always hot and very humid. Good thing the van that he drove had air conditioning.
He helped made a short stop at the gas station for me to get some bottled water on my request. Then it kicked in, Malaysia is cheap. I love it. Buying a 1,5 liter bottle of coke for 3,50 Malaysian Ringlett. That’s just over 1 euro at a gas station. I was already starting to like Malaysia for this. Got a bit sick of the expensive Australia.
The hotel is called Barry Inn and is located near the airport. I chose this for good reason, since the circuit is also close to the airport. The city is about 45 minutes drive from here, but no sense in commuting in and out of the city every morning to the track. So after checking into my nice air conditioned room with a queen size bed, I went for a shower. I felt alive again. Bit of a (first world) dilemma. Being three in the afternoon, should I go to sleep? I decided not to and stick it out until at least after dinner. I made my way downstairs around 6 and met Scott, bloke from the UK who is also attending the Grand Prix.
We enjoyed a few cheap beers, about 8 ringlets for a beer, which translates into less than two euros in the hotel bar. Expensive for Malaysian standards, but I was enjoying them. Then the dinner, I went for the Chinese rice. Got a nice plate full of fried rice with plenty of veggies and meet in there. This awesome dinner only costed 6 ringlet, which is less than 1 euro 50. I could consider moving here, this is in a hotel not even at a local foot stand or anything.
After dinner I saw a lot of smoke out on the street and loud noises. We went outside to have a look, the smoke was coming from these big holes in the pavement. It was smelling funny. We asked one of the staff what was going on, apparently the mozzies are a real issue here so they decided to smoke them out. I haven’t been bitten yet, so I consider installing such a system in my bed room.
The hotel staff is really nice. The chef who cooked the amazing dinner is called Andy. I ended up chatting with him. The reception tried to sell me this taxi service for 6 hours. You get your own driver and you can go wherever you want. This would cost 350 ringgit. This is about 80 euros. Which isn’t expensive, but definitely a rip off considering you can get a meal for 6 ringgit. So I thanked the man for the offer but I’d prefer to take public transport. But now I was chatting with the chef, and I asked him if he had any interest in driving us around. He had a free day the next day and would be up for it, but he kept bugging me to say a price. I didn’t want to at first, but in the end I offered him 150 ringgit. Which is 37 euros. His counter offer was 250, so I settled for 200 ringgit. Which is 50 euro. He wasn’t too sure but I told him I would buy him lunch then. He agreed and told us to be ready at 9 in the morning. I tried convincing him that 10 would be early enough, but he insisted on 9.
So after a good night sleep I did wake up with a dry mouth and a headache. Even though I had air-conditioning it was still quite warm and replacing water with beer the night before definitely didn’t help. After making my way downstairs at 9 o clock sharp, I met up with Scott. So it turned 9:30, still no sign of Andy. Asked at the reception and he would give him a ring. Turns out that he would be there at 10. Finally he showed up at 10:20, which initially I was a bit pissed about, but I figured it might the Malaysian time and that they didn’t really care. To be honest I was glad he showed up at all.
Andy drove us into Kuala Lumpur to the Batu Caves. My host in Sydney, Jim, and his flatmate I lived with for two and a half weeks, Linda, told me about this place. It’s a temple inside a cave, you have to climb a big set of stairs first to reach it. Along those stairs are plenty of monkeys. They don’t seem to be bothered about the tourist and await to be fed. Even saw a man giving them wrapped candy. The monkey would, like a little kid, unwrap it and eat the sugar rich diet. Can’t really be good for a monkey, but I didn’t feel like starting a debate with a local. It is a bit weird, on one hand it’s a beautiful sacred place, but on the other hand it’s a mess. Trash is laying everywhere and it smells quite badly.
The Petronas towers were next on the list. There is a big shopping centre in KLCC, where the towers are located. We headed for the food court and I had a good Malaysian lunch. Andy told me it shouldn’t be hot, I still sweated a lot in the process due to the food. Andy laughed at me and enjoyed his way hotter beef with rice. After this meal we headed to the Petronas tower for some photos.
Petaling street was next on our list, we drove over there and started exploring this market like shopping street. Since I’m easy to spot as a non local, being white and tall, I had to ignore all the sales people trying to sell me shit. I did need a new wallet, so I started looking for that. Immediately you get someone on top of you. Telling you to name a price. So I told the man that I haven’t found what I was looking for yet. The wallets felt cheap and not very useful, missing a place for coins and all. So he took the Prada wallet out of my hands and replaced it with Gucci. The only difference was the label on the front, the rest was identical. Asking for a price again. At the end of the day I didn’t manage to find a decent wallet, all the vendors seem to have the same supplier.
During our adventure through this street we ran into a camera crew of Sky sports. They do the broadcasting of F1 in the UK this year. I asked them what was going on, and they told me they were waiting for Timo Glock. We decided to stick around and had a nice cold can of soda on the same street, keeping an eye out for the young german. Unfortunately Timo didn’t arrive, but Ted Kravitz did. He has been the pit reporter for the BBC F1 team. So headed over to him and had a short chat about the races so far and did take a photo with him. He seemed to be a bit awkward about it, but since Timo wasn’t around, I still fancied a photo. He is a really nice bloke though. He told me about Michael Schumacher, he was there the day before. He actually likes to buy fake watches, who would have thought that the 7 times world champion tries to save some bucks by buying fake watches.
So after our photo moment we made our way back to the car. Andy dropped Scott off at his new hotel in the city and he drove me to his suburb and bought me dinner at KFC. Not very local, but still good. Enjoyed a good day in Kuala Lumpur. It’s a great city, the people are very nice. Asian drivers are the worst though, they don’t know what an indicator is and use the horn to tell everyone else that they are coming through. But I didn’t die, so I would label it as a fun experience.
I’m taking the shuttle bus to the track tomorrow morning from the hotel. Should be a good day with two practice sessions. Let’s see some fast cars!
Could I have hoped for a better season opener? Probably not. Amazing race, best race I have been to so far.
So Thursday morning I headed to the track. Was quite easy to get there. Not busy at all, and easily managed to find my grand stand, named the Jones stand. I was overlooking the first corner from the outside of the lake. The day was filled with practices and qualifying sessions from the support races. The day was a nice warm up, good opportunity to have a good overview of the first corner. Weather wasn’t good, but it definitely got me excited to see some formula one cars on the track. On my way back home I got caught by a massive amount of rain which made me use Christian’s dryer once I arrived.
On Friday it was again easy to get to the track. I was now on the Clark stand which is at turn 9. To get there I had to walk quite a bit, but the walk was good since the track was filled with roaring engines of historic race cars. From bullet shaped f1 cars to the v12 area and everything in between. As soon as that was over, I managed to see a man flying through the air. He used a jetpack to do so. That thing was loud, quite impressive to see though.
Friday would actually have some formula one action, two free practice sessions. Both sessions were 1,5 hour long but with bad weather, not that much running. Felipe Massa managed to make a mistake and ended up in the gravel meters in front of my grand stand. After the F1 I headed for shelter, the gray clouds that were approaching quickly definitely seemed anything but friendly. I managed to get into the bridge over the track which provided a good roof over my head for the half an hour down pour.
After two days of warm ups and support races, I was up for the real thing. Finally after another free practice session the drivers would stop sand bagging and actually try to set really fast times. I expected Red Bull to take pole. I had another grand stand at the first corner, this time at the other side of the track in the Brabham grandstand. The session was eventful with even Fernando Alonso making his way into the gravel in Q2. A lot of surprises throughout the field. After the Formula one action, it was time for the A/C touring cars. Which are old touring cars, there was a lot of action going on there as well. Loved the sound of some of the cars, especially the BMW sounded good.
So finally race day arrived. Getting to the circuit was a bit more difficult. But the free trams running from the Southern Cross train station were a good solution. Plenty of Metro employees on the platforms to help it all run smoothly. I had a seat on the Fangio grand stand at the main straight. Right opposite of the Force India garages.
Throughout the day there were different air shows and support races. Had a great view of the grid once the pit lane was open and the cars made it to the track. Saw Eddie Jordan wearing one of his famous shirts. So after the formation lap all the cars lined up. It’s quite impressive the amount of sound the cars produce.
Since there will be plenty of people reading this who have no interest in Formula one at all, I will explain something. (even though you probably stopped reading at this point..) Five red lights will light up one by one. Once they are all on it will take 2-3 seconds before they will turn off, that is the signal to start the race. So once the first light came on, all the cars started revving their engines you could actually feel the grandstand shake. As soon as the five lights went off they all vanished in a matter of seconds, really impressive to be meters away from that.
An eventful race which I won’t bore you all too much with. I had a great time. So once the race was over, people started jumping off the two meter high grand stand to make their way onto the track. I felt rebellious and joined them. After pushing my way through I ended up near the podium and after a few minutes the winner, Button, followed by second place man Vettel and third place Hamilton got on the stage. It was a great atmosphere.
Before the race I felt like making it more interesting, so I made two bets. Put 10 dollars on Schumacher winning which would make me 120 bucks if he did. To cover of this big gamble, I put 10 dollar on Button. Since Button won, I got 35 dollar which still left me in the plus at the end of the day.
After this long day at the track I was eager to get back home. This was easier said than done since about two hundred thousand other people had the same idea. But you have to give it to the organizers, they are very experienced and it only took me about an hour from my grand stand to get into the centre of Melbourne again. This is nothing compared to Spa (about a two hour traffic jam outside the gates) or Monza, which seemed to take the whole night.
Today I started packing my bags. Tomorrow I will head to the airport to fly to Perth in the afternoon. Later that night I will fly to Hong Kong, from Hong Kong I will make my way down to Kuala Lumpur. The whole thing will take about 24 hours, bit of a first world problem. I will arrive on Wednesday during the day. On Thursday I will explore the city. Friday, Saturday and Sunday will be spend at the Malaysian Grand Prix.
On Monday I already got my flight back to Hong Kong and then Amsterdam. So in a bit more than a week I will be home again. To be honest, I’m quite looking forward to it. This trip has been an amazing experience, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss my own bed and other comforts of my home. I’m going to enjoy my last week, even though I will miss Australia. Great country. Now I’ll go and finish packing and go to bed, long week ahead of me.
This weekend I went to do some day trips with Paul. We went to visit the Hanging Rocks, which is a nice viewpoint. I pretended to prevent the earth from getting crushed by lifting up some rocks. Took some fancy photos of the view as well. The next day we went to the golf course with two other Couchsurfers to see some kangaroos. There were ‘heaps’ of them on the golf course. I managed to take a nice photo of a mother with a little kangaroo in her pouch.
I also managed to squeeze in another day of sight seeing in the city it self. I went to the ACMI centre. Which is the Australian Center for the Moving Image. It had a whole exhibition on video games. From the first console to some more recent games that have been very influential. Spent a few good hours playing Pong, Tomb Raider, Quake, Little Big Planet and Super Mario.
After having a great week at Paul’s place, it was time to pack up and take my backpack towards my next host, Christian. He’s a German guy living in Australia for over 6 years now. A software developer, so our nerd sides can freely come up and have debates about what operating system to run. Which there, according to Christian, is only one right answer to. Linux!
Christian picked me up at the Southern Cross train station and took me with him to drop something off at his friends place. It was a sweet apartment in the Docklands. His Somalian friend lived there and he invited me to join in their Shisha session. I enjoyed Christian schooling the Somalian about his own culture, or well Somalian culture. After that we headed off for Christian’s place.
His place is a nice one bedroom apartment which is a bit closer to the city. I have a nice comfy sofa bed in the living room. The next day I had a day to sort some stuff out. I managed to book my hotel in Malaysia. It’s only 8 kilometers from the airport, which is nice since the airport is 50 kilometers outside of Kuala Lumpur. The Sepang track is right next to the airport though, so that will save some money with local cabs. Also I got a pick up service from the airport which was included in my hotel reservation. So I can expect a Malaysian with a sign at the terminal saying Mr. Aalbers, that’s a first! Wasn’t on my bucket list, but makes me feel important non the less.
Today I met up with another Couchsurfer who is from Singapore, friendly guy named Ben. We headed off to Fitzroy by tram. It’s a nice neighborhood with a lot of small stores and cafes, really different feel from the CBD of Melbourne. After some good breakfast and some souvenir shopping, we headed towards Albert Park. I had to pick up my F1 tickets from a hotel there. I got my grandstand tickets for all four days, getting pretty psyched now.
The next four days will be spent at the track. Tomorrow there will be some demos and practice & qualifying sessions for the support races. The locals told me that the V8 super cars are supposed to be really good, definitely looking forward to seeing (or actually hearing) them. The weather forecast keeps changing. Today was very hot, 30 plus degrees. Nothing a refreshing shower at the end of the day can’t fix. The next few days there could be some rain, lower temperatures at least. Hopefully it will make an interesting race.
Already spent more than a week in Melbourne. It’s different from Sydney. A lot of people I meet ask me, which city I prefer. There is no easy answer to that. I like them both. Even though the next four days at Albert Park might change that for good.
