In short:

• You actually can process all the necessary things to pick up your bike from the port yourself.
• Don’t believe to everything they tell you as a fact (or something being a law in Malaysia – like having to have a shipping agent).
• They might not mean to lie to you – I think they are just not familiar with Carnets and how it should make (and at the end does) life easier.
• Be persistent and insist on things you believe are right or should be possible. However, always be polite.
• Total cost at the end for me was below 200 Ringgit – far less then the about 900 Ringgit estimate by the two shipping agents I tried.
• If you want to read about the details of the whole process I went through read below.

The process I went through today in detail:
Today started very positively. I took a 10 Ringgit taxi to the customs complex and things couldn’t go smoother there. From the first window I went to (Import) they sent me to another as soon as they learned that I had a Carnet. (Otherwise I would have to fill an import form that the guy in Jardine told me I would not be able to obtain at all.) In the second window the lady knew exactly what to do, pulled out a few stamps, applied them to the first page of the Carnet and told me that I would have to return there with the form certified by customs at the port after they would physically check the bike.

When that was done I called the same taxi guy that drove me there to pick me up, this time for 15 Ringgit. I told him that I would need him to wait for me at Jardine since I thought it was only a matter of picking up some form from them and paying a fee to them. However, the taxi guy showed me his taxi license that was expired for already two years and explained that he couldn’t offer me his services for the whole day and that I should call another taxi when I need it. So it seems like you can be a taxi driver in Malaysia without a license as long as you don’t spend much time with a single customer… J

Anyway, so now I was back in Jardine waiting for them to come to work (I managed to arrange the customs part within 3 quarters of an hour and they start working at 8AM, as opposed to normal businesses that start at 9m). A few minutes after 9AM a young lady that I saw there yesterday arrived and let me in. Then 20 minutes after her two young guys that I saw there yesterday as well and the second in charge guy (at least he seems to be second in charge)  that had to leave for a meeting straight away. No sign of the boss that I needed.

Before he left for the meeting the second in charge guy noticed that my bill of loading is a non-negotiable copy and warned me that that was not enough and that they wouldn’t give me my bike at the port based on this copy. So I asked the young lady if I could use their Internet to send an urgent e-mail back to Swire Australia.

Upon checking my e-mail I found that I had an “Express Delivery Order” from Swire there already. A copy was sent to the boss in Jardine as well and it stated that they should accept the copy of bill of loading to issue me with some other form or letter. OK, it seamed that I didn’t need to write to them anymore.

After being on the Internet for more than half an hour I asked if they could find out when the boss was coming. They asked me if I had the customs form confirmed from the customs so I explained I didn’t need any as I had a Carnet and that I do have it stamped from the customs. It took them about 40 minutes to figure out what to do with the carnet. With my help and lots of explaining from my side things seemed to have started moving ahead. They said that they would have to write a letter for the port authorities first and then I would have to pay their fee downstairs and pick up another form (a “Pink form”) from them. It took them about another 40 minutes to write the letter (later I found it had about 6 lines of text in it…) and then I went downstairs. There the miss at the counter had a problem with the fact that I didn’t have a shipping agent. Again!... :-( After some explaining and being persistent I persuaded her that I really didn’t need any. She told me that I needed to supply them with another form, which I apparently had to buy from the forwarding agent at the 4th floor. So I went there and in return they told me they don’t have any such form and that they didn’t know what I was talking about. They mentioned that because I have a Carnet I didn’t need any other form. OK, back to the first floor and the girl behind the counter still insisted she needed the form, because otherwise she couldn’t issue the one I needed for the port authorities. So I was going through the whole process of explaining what Carnet is, that it is basically a passport for the bike to make things much easier than they might be used to from processing their usual containers etc. The young lady from upstairs had to actually come down and help me persuade this tough cookie that there was a way to do it. So they issued some white replacement of the form I supposedly needed and told me that it might not be accepted at the port. So after another about 40 minutes there I paid 110 Ringgit fee for the paperwork and processing, got my form and went back upstairs, where I learned I had to wait for one of the young guys to take me to the port. I asked how long would that be and was told that only a short while. After 20 minutes I was getting nervous since I’d been there for close to 3 hours already and really wanted to get my bike still today. She saw it and assured me that he was coming soon and that he was only having a breakfast downstairs. Another 20 minutes later he was finally there, not paying any attention to me for a few minutes before I asked if everything was ready to go. It apparently was – FINALLY! – and so after spending over 3 hours in their offices we went. There was no car available so we borrowed a helmet for me and were on our way to the port on the Malaysia’s common 110cc motorcycle. Gee, that thing has a hard seat…

We reached the port after about 20km and went to the first office. An older small and skinny guy (in fact they all are small and skinny) took us into his office and after asking me a few question about my stay, how I was enjoying it, how did I find the Malaysian people etc. he started talking business with 'my' Jardine employee (Azizul) in Malay. What I could gather from it the letter was not written correctly. After a few minutes when I thought that there was something considerably wrong he wrote another two words on the letter and it was fine. Gee, these guys really do enjoy paperwork…

Now it was the port customs that was next on the list. The office was just across the hall. They let me wait in the lounge while they all went to one of the offices there. 15 minutes later they were back with the thing done. Back to the first office’s counter, where it was discovered that in fact not all necessary spots on the documents were stamped or filled in, so Azizul had to go back to the customs’ office. He was apparently doing this for the first time. During the wait I asked the older guy whether it would in fact be possible for me to come there alone and arrange it all myself. He said it would. Well, I just wanted to be sure that I was not going to pay for something that I could do myself. Now I knew that I could refuse to pay any additional fees to Jardine if asked for it.

Azizul was back from the customs’ office now so we could continue processing all the paperwork at the counter. It almost looked like all the guys were doing this for the first time in their lives. They were spending so much time on a couple of forms, reading them, reading them again, and once more, filling something in, and looking a long time on the copy of the three layer form again. Then the older guy came, found an error and spent long minutes explaining what needs to be written on “the one tiny field of many” on the form. In case I haven’t said that before, these guys really LOOOVE paperwork. At the end of this whole elaborate process I had to pay 43.70 Ringgit for the port charges and that was it – or was it? Sure not ;-). The older guy called two chief supervisors of the storage warehouse where my bike apparently was so that we could discuss what and how I wanted to do with the crated bike. I explained that I’d like to unpack it and assemble it right there and ride it out of the port myself. They were very helpful (this is not to say that the other people weren’t – it only takes them quite a long time to do something with an actual result) and we agreed that I could unpack my bike there and leave the crate parts in front of the warehouse to be taken away the next day. That part of the whole process was easier than I expected. OK, so now back to the customs’ office to get a custom officer to do the physical check on my bike. Carnet was again something new to them so this officer had to consult with his superior as well.

There I was, finally standing in the warehouse in front of my crated bike. So it DID arrive unharmed… That felt slightly unbelievable to me. The bike was basically the only thing present in the whole, absolutely huge warehouse. That was funny.

It was about 3PM when I started unpacking the bike. Azizul was helping. He offered his help while we were still in the port offices and although I said I would not want to take his time he said he would gladly help as a friend. That was nice and I knew I would need some help, at least with putting the front wheel back on the bike. Later this bit proved to need three people. Fortunately, there was no shortage of people around as at any one time there was between one to 8 people overlooking my efforts and (mostly) checking up the bike. You see, such a big bike is really uncommon here.

I tried to send Azizul home or back to work to his office several times, but he apparently was happier to spend his time there with me than going back to work. Just before I was finally finished re-assembling the bike and the panniers on it, which was at about 6PM I actually learned that he apparently had to wait there for me before I leave the port premises. I’m not entirely sure if he did have to (as I mentioned earlier I asked the older important officer if I could have done it myself, receiving a positive answer) but it was definitely very nice and useful that he did. I apologized for not realizing the fact that he had to wait and so I tried to speed the last things that had to be don up. Before I was finished one of the guys asked me if I wanted a drink and because I’ve been slightly fainting for the last hour or so from the lack of fluids in the hot warehouse I quickly agreed. He needed to go and buy the drinks so I offered some money. It was refused, as it was apparently Azizul who was paying for it. He refused to take any money from me. The only money he took was for petrol for my bike, which he very kindly fetched for me when I was ready to test that the engine was working. (The tank was empty, as it has to be free of any fuel for shipping, together with the battery disconnected.)  He even refused to keep the change from the petrol purchase when he returned. That was unbelievable. Whether he had to wait for me there at the port or not, he did, he helped me to put the bike back together, he got me fuel from a nearby petrol station and he even bought me a drink!… That was truly unbelievable. All that, together with the fact that he spent most of the day arranging things for me, for only 110 Ringgit. At this point this charge seemed much more than reasonable to me.

So at the end, the whole “exercise” cost me less then 200 Ringgit (Jardine fee – 110, taxi – 45 and port charges 43.70). That is a far better figure than the about 900 Ringgit in case I went through a shipping agent. Well, I did forget about the hotel charges for two nights, which was another 50 Ringgit for the two nights I spent there at the end, but if I used the forwarding agent it would be probably double that amount just for the hotel as well as they said that I would have my bike probably on Friday, if I was lucky then on Thursday the earliest, while I have managed myself to get it today, which is Wednesday.

The conclusion is obvious: If something doesn’t feel right than it probably isn’t. I couldn’t believe that things had to be so expensive for what one would thing is a simple operation and so, against to what everybody was telling me about impossible this and impossible that, I risked spending my own time and some money on taxis to arrange things myself and it all worked out well.

So now I have my own transport again… Hurray!!! 

After I left the port premises I decided I would go back to the hotel for a second night and start riding early next morning as it was too late today. I had a very nice Chinesse dinner with three glasses of Chinesse tea and 5 little chicken kebab sticks for 5.30 Ringgit, locked up my bike on the street, took my panniers inside the hotel and went to sleep.