Getting from place to place on foot can be a real experience here in Malaysia. If you like thrills, chills, and excitement, look no further.
First, there's the small issue of the disappearing sidewalks. You'll be walking along thinking you're doing just fine and will arrive at your destination in plenty of time, when suddenly you run out of sidewalk. As in, the sidewalk installer person just decided one day that they were done installing sidewalk, went for lunch, and never came back. At least, that's what it looks like. No more sidewalk, no dirt path where the sidewalk should be, no grass, nothing. Just road.
Now you must decide whether to risk life and limb by walking on the side of a very busy roadway that has a shoulder barely wide enough for a motorcycle (i.e. about 4"), or whether you'd prefer to take your life in your hands by attempting to cross to the other side of the road (where there may or may not be a sidewalk anyway).
Whether you're crossing due to a lack of sidewalk, or just because the place you're going is on the other side, crossing the street here is next level stressful. This is true even on those rare occasions when you're able to cross at an intersection, because some don't have stoplights and anyway there's no guarantee that motorists (and especially motorcyclists) will actually stop at a red light.
But intersections are few and far between, and anyway traffic lights take for-EVER to change, which means sprinting across four or even six lanes of traffic is the normal way of getting from one side of the street to the other.
That is, unless you want to walk a kilometer in the hopes of finding an intersection (bonus if it has a working pedestrian crossing signal) and then doubling back to get to where you wanted to be on the other side of the street. Which we've been known to do.
But I think we're getting a little braver as we gain experience. When we first arrived we'd cross only at places where there was a median, so we only had to worry about traffic coming from one direction at a time. That way we could regroup at the halfway point then wait for an opportunity to complete our crossing.
But now we're feeling a little more confident about crossing four or more lanes of traffic at once. We've learned to follow the example of the locals, crossing halfway then stepping off the double line that divides the lanes and out into oncoming traffic just as a car is passing by us, so we can scurry behind it without forcing the next car to slow down on our account. It's all really quite straightforward once you get the hang of it.
Of course, we must also take into account the fact that people drive on the left hand side of the road here in Malaysia, so we have to remember to look in directions we're not accustomed to looking in before we step out into traffic.
Not to mention the motorcycles that can come from any direction at any moment and often at breakneck speed, as they seem to be immune to all traffic laws. And one must never, never, ever take for granted that traffic on a one way street will always travel in only one direction.
One very important tip we've learned is that there is safety in numbers when crossing the road. Anytime we can join in with others, in order to form a sort of human herd, we feel much safer dashing across the street or crossing on a red light.
Because waiting for a traffic light to turn green feels futile. 🙄
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