The Agony, the Challenge - and yet they still balik kampung

A friend arrived from London two days ago, enduring more than 13 hours of non-stop flight, painfully adjusting his body clock for the seven-hour time difference. He was on a car a few hours later heading for Kota Baru. It took him and his family almost 15 hours to reach “home”, more than the time spent on the plane.

Replicate the story all over the country. It is not surprising a two-and-a-half hour trip to Ipoh becomes a nightmarish eight-hour crawl. The trip to the Tangkak interchange from KL normally is a two-hour journey , but it will take at least five hours on a bad day.