Qualifying

Saturday, April 09, 2011
Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan, Malaysia
We got up and had our toast and coffee breakfast before walking to 'Kuala Lumpur Train Station' to get the train to Nilai. It was a little late but we weren't in too much of a rush so it was fine. We went into the 'Welcome Area' and saw the pit lane girls posing for photos, as I posed for one! We got a shuttle bus to our stand (F) and found our seats which were right at the far end. Andrew was a little disappointed as we couldn't see down the back straight but we could see the starting point and a fair bit of the track. We felt hungry straight away as it had taken over two hours to get to the circuit so we went to a food stall to see what was on offer. We both got a hotdog as it seemed to be the safest option. It was in a nice plastic box along with exactly seven stone cold potato wedges! The watermelon was the best thing about the meal. We caught the end of the '3rd Practice Session' and then watched the 'Malaysian Super Series' race. A poor Fiat 500 car was so far behind the other cars that everyone cheered for it when it drove past! We had a few cans of Tiger, but only a few as they were three pound per can! It was then time for the 'Qualifying Session' and as expected Vettel got pole position, followed by Hamilton, Webber and then Button. It was very tight amongst the top four so the race should be a good one!
 
We walked to get the shuttle bus back to the main entrance of the circuit but there was a huge crowd of people waiting and no sort of queue . The way the shuttle bus was organised meant that once it reached our stand it had been past every other stand so it was always full, so we decided to walk round to the main entrance to avoid the chaos. We got a bus straight away and were dropped off to get our next bus to Nilai. The queue was quite long and I thought it was going to take ages, but we then realised we were stood in the wrong bus queue and there was actually nobody in the Nilai queue! We got on the bus and got talking to someone from Durham as he recognised our accent. We had to stand right at the front of the bus so that I was literally pressed against the front windscreen! We soon pulled over onto the hard shoulder as the driver didn't know where he was going so we had to wait for another bus. Anyway, we safely made it to Nilai just as a train was pulling up to the platform. We ran as fast as we could but just missed it by a second, so we had to wait around half an hour for the next one. The bloke from Durham came back from the 7 Eleven with a bag of curry puffs for us to share. They were like a pasty only miniature in size and filled with curry flavouring. The platform filled up quickly and we weren't expecting to get a seat for the hour long journey. However, a train door stopped right in front of us and we luckily got a seat. It was dark by the time we got back to Kuala Lumpur and when we got off the train we had a right laugh at the sign on the front of the ladies only coach, which said "koc untuk" in pink! We walked back to Chinatown and made a quick stop at the 7 Eleven for some snacks before heading back to our room.
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