Fighting for a seat on local transport (again)

Boarding an Air Asia flight

Once again (as on my trip from Laos to Cambodia) I found myself in the situation where I had to fight for a seat with a Chinese woman on local transport. How does this happen?

Malaysia is the most developed country I visited on my trip so far. This means that local transport is not by a rickety old bus, but with Air Asia, the low cost airline. I know well enough how low cost airlines work: the only thing they give you for the price of the ticket is the seat. (Which is good, considering that I recently came across an article where the owner of the low cost airline Ryanair proposes standing room on flights.) I had to pay extra for checked baggage because I have my large backpack which can't go as carry-on. I also decided to pay an extra fee so that I could reserve a window seat to have a view of Borneo where I was going.

When boarding my flight I noticed that all of us tourists took regulations seriously, that is we had just one carry-on bag that is allowed. The local people, on the other hand, looked like they were boarding a bus: they carried plastic bags and tote bags and cardboard boxes and armfuls of stuff. So no one really enforces the one bag rule, good to know for next time. I saw that the local woman in front of me carried plastic bags full of bread rolls. I'll probably never understand why she had to transport so many bread rolls on a flight. Don't they have bread on Borneo?

On the airplane, one of the local Chinese-Malay women was sitting in the middle seat next to my pre-booked window seat. Her friend, the woman with the bread rolls, was in the middle seat across the aisle. And the women wanted me to exchange my precious window seat with the other middle seat so that they could sit together. I shook my head no, but they insisted, trying to explain in gestures that they are traveling together.

As I don't speak Chinese and they didn't speak English, I gave them a look that tried to convey "Hey, lady, I paid an extra fee so that I could have that seat and if you think you and your bread roll transporting friend can get me to give it up for you, you are seriously mistaken!"

They got the message. And I got my seat. And my view.

Approaching the Kota Kinabalu airport on Borneo