2/27: The Great Birthday Adventure

My birthday began the night before with a very enjoyable birthday dinner at our place with Doug and Tracy, Reeve, Gabi and Rania. (I think Rania said "Happy Birthday" with great enthusiasm at least a half-dozen times!)

Several weeks ago I had suggested to Nancy that I’d really like to celebrate by driving up to Cameron Highlands for a 2-night stay on the week-end of my 74th birthday. Cameron Highlands is an old colonial “hill -resort” where Brits in government and business used to go to escape the heat and humidity of Kuala Lumpur. It’s a 3-4 hour drive and a place we’d never visited, so we booked a very reasonably-priced room at a resort hotel on a website called latestays.com, and greatly anticipated the trip.

Nancy packed her suitcase on Thursday night, I picked her up at school at 3:20 p.m. on the 27th, and we headed out of the city to catch the “North-South Highway,” a very modern toll road, or in Brit-speak, a dual-carriageway. After driving for almost an hour and a half, Nancy got alarmed when she begin to see—and smell—smoke coming from the AC vents on the dashboard of our ’97 Rover sedan. After turning off the AC and slowing down, we begin to notice that the engine temperature was rising rapidly toward the red “danger indicator” at the top of the scale. We pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway and popped the hood to discover the obvious, i.e. – that the radiator was considerably overheated. Within just a minute or two a very friendly Malaysian in a tow-truck pulled up behind us to help out (“Providential Event #1). After checking-out the situation and allowing the engine to cool a bit, he managed to remove the radiator cap (with protection), allowing great quantities of steam to escape. In due time, he ran the engine for a while and added a lot of water to the radiator (“Providential Event #2: he had the water), he suggested that we could probably make it if we “drove slowly.” Realizing, however, that the “highlands part” of Cameron meant that we’d have to do a lot of climbing after leaving the North-South Highway, we decided to try to find a mechanic instead. The tow-truck driver was content with simply a “Terima kasih” (thank you) which was generous to say the least.

We exited the highway at the first oppor-tunity and drove into a gas station where another very kind Malaysian called a nearby mechanic on the phone. He arrived within a few minutes, and when it became apparent that we could drive the car to his shop, we did so. His diagnosis was predictable, i.e. – that it appeared that we had a clogged-up radiator.
But, for RM50 (only $14 – “Providential Event #3) he performed a quick radiator flush by means of a garden hose and an air compressor, filled up the radiator with water and sent us on our way—but not until he got in the car with me and asked me to test-drive it down the road for a couple miles at almost freeway speed to make sure the engine didn’t overheat (it didn’t: “Providential Event #4).

Meanwhile—while Nancy was waiting for the car to be ready—she used her cell phone and called the resort hotel to cancel our booking. The first person to answer the phone knew very little English, so the conversation proved difficult, to stay the least. When someone else came on the phone they suggested that Nancy should just go online to cancel since we’d booked the room online. It took considerable effort on Nancy’s part to explain our situation and convince the clerk that our car had broken-down, we had no access to a computer, and we had no possibility of keeping our reservation. Finally, she agreed to cancel our booking with only a 10% fee on the first night’s lodging.

“Providential Event #5”—at least by mutual agreement—was the decision not to risk driving on to Cameron Highlands but to drive slowly (c. 50-55 mph) and try to make it back home. After testing-out the car for 20-30 km. on the old road that parallels the North-South Highway, we got back onto the toll road and made it home without incident at about 8:30 p.m. (“Providential Event #6) after a 5-hour birthday adventure which we don’t want to repeat anytime soon. So, instead of a week-end escape, we have a quiet, completely unscheduled week-end at home while we try to get a hold of our KL mechanic and find out when we can get the car fixed! - rw