My First Train ride from KL to Penang

My train ride from Kuala Lumpur to Penang was a drama full of human oddities. I was in a crowded economy compartment. It was my first train ride, and its novelty excited me. However, the thrill wore off as morning dwindled into afternoon. The hot sun burnt away the balmy morning temperature, making the economy compartment unbearably hot like a kiln. We kept complaining to the train conductor about the heat. Taking pity on us, he transferred us to the air-conditioned second-class compartment behind ours; it had become quite vacant after some of the passengers had got off at the previous stop.

Two passengers in the compartment were behaving unusually. One was a transvestite, and the other was a large tomboy. The former, standing outside the toilet, kept puffing away on a cigarette and talking to a lewd middle-aged man. The push door that divided the toilet from our compartment could not close well, and the irritating cigarette fumes kept coming in. The latter—the tomboy—enjoyed harassing young girls. She paced the length of the aisle, ruffling the hair and tickling the earlobes of any young girls on whom she could lay her hands. Standing at nearly 183cm, she was unusually tall for a Malay girl. None of the girls dared to give her a piece of their minds lest she do something worse to them.

The tomboy had also attempted to disturb me but to no avail. When the train was passing through a hilly area, I went close to her seat to take pictures of some trees. When I was ready to return to my seat, she rose from hers and asked me, ‘Why don’t you take my picture? Am I not beautiful, huh!?’ I ignored her and, with a matter-of-fact facial expression, returned to my seat. To my relief, she did not continue to disturb me like she had done to the others. 

The train made another stop, and two young, good-looking boys entered the compartment. They piqued the tomboy’s interest, so she approached them. She took out a flexible ruler from her trouser pocket and said something to the two boys. A disgusted look appeared on the boys’ faces, and she roared with uncouth laughter. I wondered what she had said to them. She then flicked the head of one boy with her finger, said something which sounded to me like ‘limp’ and returned to her seat in a nonchalant manner.

Feeling bored, I rummaged in my backpack, took out a novel I had recently bought—L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables—and continued reading where I had left off. The plot captivated me, and I could not put the book down. Halfway through my reading, my eyes inadvertently strayed to the push door, and through the glass, I saw the middle-aged man hugging the transvestite. The door was not far from my seat, and I could see what they were doing. The latter soon lowered her body and disappeared from sight. In a few minutes, the man scrunched up his face in ecstasy and let out what seemed to me like a big, heavy sigh. Bile rose from the pit of my stomach, and I peeled my eyes away from the unsightly scene. 

A considerable amount of time elapsed, and I heeded nature’s call to go to the toilet. The transvestite was still outside the toilet, but she had stopped smoking. The middle-aged man had retired to his seat and was snoring loudly. From the time I entered the toilet until I left it, the transvestite’s eyes followed me flirtatiously. I could feel all my hair standing on end.

When the transvestite and the tomboy disembarked at the second-to-last station, I heaved a sigh of relief. Many young girls seemed to react in the same way. Before the transvestite left, she bade farewell to the middle-aged man and stole a glance at me. 

I wondered what benefits the two people thought they could gain from their actions. Did they always behave like that? Did they do all this to compensate for what was lacking in their lives?

Thirty minutes passed, and the grand structure of the famous Penang Bridge came into view. I had finally arrived at my destination. What a long and dramatic train ride it had been.