A day moving around in public transport

When I was still living in Bukit Mertajam (my hometown), I almost never took public transport. My mum drives us to literally everywhere, and even if she can't due to whatever reason, someone else in the family would carry the job for her instead. That's why I never knew how buses work in my place despite that there is indeed a bus stop within a 100m radius from my house.

But since I am now in university, I lost access to cars and whatever you call as private transport, and the only way for me to go further than where my legs allow me to walk to is to use public transport. Sure, Grab is a thing but they are just...expensive. I would rather walk.

So, my friend came back to Malaysia recently and will be staying in KL for quite some time. I do want to meet him before I go home despite finals are so close (in fact, my first paper will start in 13 hours at the time of posting), so we decided on a place to meet, in which we chose Bandar Sunway as he will be staying near there.

Alright, place settled, Now we have another problem - how should I go there?

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His first suggestion was to let me take a Grab and pay RM40 to reach there, but as I said above I am a little poor for that. I prefer to use the public transport facilities I have around me, and probably learn how to use them properly since I will be stuck here for the next 4 years. It should be worth learning the ins and outs of these trains and buses, eh?

Bandar Sunway and my place (Salak Tinggi) is just two totally different places in Selangor, so moving there with public transport looks a little daunting at first sight. My instinct tells me that I can take the ERL to KL Sentral, then see how I can reach Bandar Sunway from there since KL Sentral is like...an inter-dimensional portal in MapleStory. Basically there's no place you cannot reach with it, but I decided to think a little further for other possible routes. Why? The ERL train ticket to KL Sentral from my place will cost me at least RM16. It would be good to save a little more on ERL train costs since it makes up most of the travel fees here.

Then...heh, there's another station nearer. The Putrajaya Sentral is just RM4.30 away from my location with ERL. Let's see how I can reach my destination from there then.

To be honest, this looks faster and cheaper.

After making sure with @mistyexe that everything on the site is actually updated (sometimes, this type of information needs more confirmation than anything else) and I won't get stuck somewhere halfway, I departed somewhere in the morning. It's not hard to go to Putrajaya Sentral as I mentioned, taking the ERL train for one station will do. The hard part...is here.

I won't lie that I have absolutely no idea how to board a bus. Misty told me that I could use a Touch n Go card instead of using tickets, just tap when boarding up, and tap again when leaving. Sounds easy enough, but where to find the card? Yep, automated vending machines. But too bad they only accept RM10 notes, all I have at that time is RM20 notes and it is so early that the convenience shops around has no change for me. Pain.

So I asked to buy a card in one of the shops, and it happened that they don't have any in-stock too. Pretty wonderful...so one of the staff went to other shops to find one for me. It took a good 10 minutes and he finally returned, "here's the last one".

Maybe I'm really lucky that day. Kappa.

The card itself takes RM10, so I put another RM10 in it as a reload. This card is pretty much usable for all forms of public transport except for ERL and ETS rides so I think it's pretty worth it considering that I will be staying here for the next few years. The expiry date for the card is pretty surprisingly long, dated at 2028/08. But whatever the credit inside will only stay for 1 year so I have to somehow burn it before next year August :3

After getting the card, I started to look for my bus 506. The station isn't that huge and there aren't too many buses around so it is actually not too hard to find it and I managed to get in it just before it departs.

To be honest, this is the first time I'm boarding a bus in Malaysia. Well, not really the first time, but it's the first time I'm using a bus alone to travel to somewhere notably far away. According to RapidKL's route planning function on the site, the trip will take around 40 minutes, but due to the bus being pretty empty (6 peeps on it including me) and it's still an early weekend, the roads aren't crowded and the bus managed to reach at that station for like...20 minutes earlier. I know it's pretty astonishing, I'm quite astonished too. I never heard buses reach their destinations earlier than schedule lul.

This trip kinda changed my perspective on buses - once upon a time I thought that they were slow, inconvenient, and somehow dirty. But yeah that's because I never took a bus in my life and that's all those horrible perceptions I had. Everything seems super smooth boarding buses - get to the station, find your bus, get into it, tap the card, and enjoy the view until you reach the destination, just remember to tap again before you leave.

I still remember the buses in my hometown, they are also as empty as this one most of the times. Probably I have found a good explanation for the horrible traffic jams we get in Bukiit Mertajam every single day then.

It just took me about 20 minutes before the bus swiftly dropped me at the bus stop in front of Tesco, in which the route planner told me to get down on. The planner wanted me to find the LRT station and go to Pusat Bandar Puchong before going for another bus, but uh...where's the LRT station?

KL is a pretty strange place. I looked here and there for LRT stations and signs or stuff like that, and after around 5 minutes of walking and looking around...

Ah okay.

Yeah, that's why I can't see it from below...it's on the other side and no one really looks up under the sun.

To my surprise, I don't even need to go to take the LRT to Pusat Bandar Puchong, because this is already Pusat Bandar Puchong. I refreshed the route planner with my updated location and it turns out that I only need to catch one more bus and there's my destination. Probably some bug in the route planner lul.

This bus is quite an interesting one, because it's actually free and many are actually using it. If not mistaken, the bus around my school (in Sepang) is also free. Probably I should do some research on it to see where it can bring me to. I had a map on it but I don't know where I threw it to...maybe there's an app for it. Even if there's not, I can write one

The vehicle looks like this when the lights are off, just similar to the one I have around my school. It is also surprising that there seems to be a bunch of people using this service here, meanwhile the free buses around my university are just empty most of the times. I guess people in the city are more used to public transport? Probably :3

Again, it dropped me at my destination a little earlier than I expected. I guess the route planner expects the traffic to move slower than usual so that no one will complain about late schedule XD, or maybe I'm just lucky because the traffic might be better during weekends. Whatever, it's just feels pretty great that I managed to not get lost somewhere in Klang Valley by using only public transport to move around :D

In general, public transport around Klang Valley seems pretty well established, at least it feels better than public transport in Penang (the island part should be pretty good, I'm talking about the mainland part, or it is also good but I don't know because I never had the chance to try it). Now I think I should keep a copy of this map to guide me whenever I need to go somewhere again.

Now it just needs destinations of buses and probably time schedules :3 probably I can do my own research and draw my own super big public transport map of KL when I have the time :) or do we have one already done? I would be happy to keep a copy.

It's been quite a ride, time to say bye and see you next time~
--Lilacse

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P/s: How to go back to my university from KL Sentral without using ERL?

Definitely looks super intense, I guess the price for ERL is worth paying haha.