Photo taken from intranet source to illustrate how mat rempits look like.
In
Malaysia, an illegal street racer is known as a ‘mat rempit’. These illegal
street racers normally choose to race on straight and clear roads at night.
There are many roads fond by these illegal racers and one particular frequent
road in Penang is the coastal highway just in front of Free Trade Zone 3. Well,
the story is not about ‘mat rempits’ but a lesser known local ‘ghost rider’.
For one thing, ghost rider is not sole proprietor of the western world you
know.
As usual,
the Penang coastal way is used by many users including the ‘invisible’ ones.
One of these ghostly users who used to roam at night is what I dubbed as the ‘Honda
cup ghost rider’. This Penang ghost rider is claimed to have roamed between
Batu Maung to somewhere before Tesco. No one really sees the actual face of
this local ghost rider for it always turned its back to its spectators. From
the back, this ghost rider always rides on an old Honda cup 70cc, it is seen to
have worn a windbreaker jacket and a Bermuda pants.
On another
side, allow me to furnish some back ground of this coastal highway: This
highway has seen many deadly road accidents over the years and it is not a
surprised that many of these accidents are caused by ‘mat rempits’. Some of my
technicians in a former factory had lost their lives in road accidents along
this coastal high way. Amongst the victims was a couple who planned to get
married but only one survived to tell his side of the story.
Let us just
call this couple as Siful and Minah. Siful was a season mat rempit and he had
participated in many road racings in Penang and Prai too. Normally Saiful would
race just after his evening shift (somewhere after 9pm) during weekends when
the traffic is less.
As the
story goes, this was just another Saturday night after Saiful has knocked off
from his shift. After a short supper, he rode on his 125cc Suzuki to fetch
Minah to the usual starting point opposite the factory he worked in. There were
already many mat rempits waiting. After a while, many spectators started to
gather along the coastal high way and the race started at 10pm sharp.
Saiful was
a season motorcycle racer and not surprised that he had taken the lead as soon
as the race has started. Before he would raise his hands and pronounce his
victory, Saiful suddenly saw an old Honda cup riding slowly in front of him.
Saiful thought that he would quickly overtakes the old Honda cup and then takes
a U-turn back to the starting point to claim his prize.
Surprisingly
speaking, no matter how fast Saiful went; his Suzuki could never pass the slower
Honda cup. Saiful persisted for a while and his Suzuki finally approached the
Honda cup and as a sense of success rose in his heart, the Honda cup rider
suddenly turned his head towards Saiful and there wasn’t anything under the
windbreaker hood; it was just plain and hollow! Saiful panic and lost his
balance.
At that
point, Saiful was going at somewhere around 120km/hour and a slight off balance
caused his bike to ram onto the wall of a flyover in front. Consequently Saiful
was seriously hurt and Minah lost her life.
At a later
date when I visited Saiful in the hospital, he told me this story. Some mat
rempits who visited Saiful claimed that they have not seen any Honda cup
around. What was there was Saiful speeding towards the dark empty road for no
apparent reason.
It is said
that the ghostly Penang ghost rider still roams that stretch of the road at night,
but if you drive carefully; then it will not harm you.
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