No food and drinks allowed!

Sunday – Race Day!

We woke up around 7, and after a quick shower, packed up and had a sumptuous breakfast at the Coffee House (again). This was the standard hotel buffet breakfast that I’ve seen in Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong and now, Malaysia. The highlight of the morning was that I broke a plate. This happened when I was trying to slice a loaf of bread, and knocked the plate off the table.

Breakfast done, we paid the bills and climbed into the bus. Thankfully, the bus driver didn’t have trouble finding the circuit, and at 9:30, we arrived at the circuit again. We had tickets for section C2 (covered hill-stand) and I had already picked out the exact location that I wanted to sit; this location would give us the best possible view of much of the track. So, in an attempt to beat the other thousands of people who would also want to sit there, we started hurrying towards C2.

In our hurry, and partly due to my misreading the map, we missed the turn-off to C2, and ended up at the main entranceway to the complex. Not too unfortunate, as there were quite a few things there to occupy our attention for the next few minutes. We has been asked to buy a Ferrari flag for a friend of ours, so we walked into the Ferrari outlet and bought the biggest flag they had. It was surprisingly not as expensive as I had expected, only 40 Euros (I had expected twice that, but didn’t really care actually…). Their other stuff, like caps and t-shirts were ridiculously priced so, though temptation called, we found it easy to resist.

(photo)

Resumed our hurry scurry towards C2. The walk was longer than we expected. As we walked we were passed by three security guards on motorbikes, one female and two male. They were driving very slowly, so I (in a moment of uncharacteristic thick-skinnedness) jogged up to them and asked them for a lift. They looked at each other and said “No” in a tone that suggested they wouldn’t have a problem personally, but when in uniform it wouldn’t be professional. Not wanting to push the matter with large people on large bikes with guns, I didn’t. However, ten yards later they stopped, had a quick discussion and motioned us over. With big smiles on our lips, we ran over and climbed onto the bikes, and got a comfortable ride (and lots of envious looks from other walkers) to the C2 gate.

A big source of imcome for the Sepang track (aside from the reasonably priced tickets) is the sale of food and beverages inside the gates. These are normally atrociously priced – in this case, RM 10 (S$ 4.50) for a bottle of water and RM 15 for a sandwich. We had packed plenty of food and drinks for the race, but were told to empty our bags at the gate. So I pulled out a bottle of water (one of three) ostentatiously from the bag, held it up to the guard, and tossed it into the pile of bottles lying at the side. He then waved us in through the turnstile, and I thought, “Hm, that was too easy.” Didn’t realise that there was another guard inside opening and checking all bags. This chap opened my backpack, peered inside, noted two bottles of water and three apples, had a brief conversation with the first guard, both of them looked at me and smiled, and waved us on! I love Malaysia :)