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After nearly 3 weeks, and around 1800km, it was time to say ram laa and bid a sad farewell to Thailand and say terima kasih Malaysia.  The night before I crossed out of Thailand I had once again slept in my tent in Thaleban National Park which was just a few kilometers short of the Malaysian border.

I have now been in Malaysia for nearly a week but a serious lack of wifi action has severely hindered my ability to update you on my adventures.  Fear no more though as I am once again connected back in the digital age with a brand new SIM and here is an update on my adventures so far.

The road to the border was through a mountain range and I had met a man in Pak Bara who had said that the road to the border was very steep.

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Although there were mountains all around me the climb was not too bad and I arrived at the border around 9am.

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At passport control the border guard wanted me to tell him all about my trip when I told him that I had cycled from Vietnam.  Even though there was a queue of people behind me he was not the least interested in them and we had a good chat for the next 10 minutes.  The people queuing behind me had given up by this stage and joined another queue.  When I left the border guard gave me two bananas – not sure if they keep a supply especially for cyclists or what.

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I then headed downhill and on my merry way to cover the 90 km that would take me towards Alor Setar which was where I was headed that evening.  For my route through Malaysia a friend of a friend named Lee, who himself had recently cycled the whole on Malaysia, had sent me route maps for Malaysia and so there really was no planning involved for the next few weeks on the bike.

My planned route would take me down the west coast for a few hundred kilometers as far as the island of Panang where I would then head inland and over the Cameron Highlands, the mountain range which runs like a dragon back through the centre of Malaysia, before arriving at Kuantan on the east coast of Malaysia.  From here I would follow the coast towards Singapore.

There are far shorter, and easier, routes to Singapore but I fancied seeing the beautiful highlands, visiting Taman Negara National Park, and cycling the more traditional ‘Muslim’ east coast on my way cycle through Malaysia.

About 10km after the border I encountered the hills that the man in Pak Bara had warned me about and yep they were very steep.  I was in my ‘granny’ gear for over an hour as I ground my way up the hills.

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The view from the top across Perlis State Park were spectacular, and I was relieved to see that once I had descended out of the mountains that the road in front of me was flat.

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The scenery had once again changed from rubber plantations back to padi fields.

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As the road was now flat I soon made short change of the remaining 70km cycle towards Alor Satar where I found a hotel for the night.

I even had time to get a trim as my beard was getting fairly long and food was starting to get stuck in it.  I found a local barber who gave me a trim for 5 RM which is about 1 pound.

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The other thing about everywhere that I have stayed is that they have a kettle which makes my morning tea and pot noodle routine much easier and a lot less messy.

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The other slight change is that now I have a choice – either pot noodle or my new favourite which is porridge.

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It is not porridge as you may know it as it is rice rather than rolled oats.  A delicious alternative to start the day though.

The other major change to my daily routine on the bike is that Malaysians are not really coffee drinkers which makes finding a decent coffee stop fairly hard, and when you do find coffee it is normally Nescafe which just does not have the same taste.  Instead, my new drink is Tea Ice, tea with condensed milk served over ice, or Teh Tarek which is hot ‘pulled’ tea (just like a cuppa back home).

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The other main feature that has been added to the landscape are mosques which I pass every couple of kilometers.

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At certain times of the day I hear them announce the call to prayer over the loudhailer that is attached to the outside of each mosque.  It is quite a mellow sound, as long as it is not right next to your hotel room, and adds to the ‘exotic’ feel as you cycle through the countryside.

After the smooth roads of Thailand the bumpy and lumpy Malaysian roads are definitely adding a boneshaker factor to my daily workouts.  In Malaysia, they have toll roads and federal roads (A-roads).  I think that they definitely invest the budget in the toll roads as the side roads are shockingly bad in lots of places.  The advantage of there being toll roads is that they take much of the truck traffic off the side roads.

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Farming in Malaysia seems to be is more mechanised than in Thailand, and therefore on a bigger scale which can be seen in the much larger size of the padi fields.

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What I saw on the map before setting off that morning from Alor Setar were waterways, which must be irrigation channels, and next to them were tracks.  I decided to follow these that morning rather than taking the main roads.

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Here is a video I shot as I cycled along the irrigation channels:

I really had a great morning just pottering long the irrigation channels and they eventually led me to the coast line.

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In fact, I had such a good time that when it was going dark I found myself in the middle of nowhere and there were no towns of any size marked on the map. I have no idea where locals stay outside of the cities but I had passed nothing that remotely looked like a guesthouse sign.  What I had passed were signs for homestays though and so I was not too concerned.

As I had a lot of kilometers to cover over the next few days I just cycled until it was dark and then stopped at a place with a homestay sign.  The problem was that what I hadn’t realized was that you were essentially renting the whole house rather than a room, and although there were plenty available the owners, when you rang the number on the sign outside the house, were often living miles away and it would take them 40 minutes to drive with the keys.

About the fourth place that I passed and rang the number on the sign said that the keys were with the house next door to the property, and so this was where I stayed the night.  For, £20 I had the whole 3 bed house to myself and the neighbours let me in.

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The neighbours had told me that there was a roadside restaurant about 1 km up the road where I could get something to eat, and so after showering and washing my clothes in the washing machine in the house that is where I headed to get some food.  When I got back the owner of the house and his daughter were parked outside waiting for me to return.  They had brought fresh bed linen and gave the house a quick clean. Apparently, they lived in Georgetown which was a city about 40 minutes’ drive away. The owner was very surprised that I was a tourist as the house really was in the middle of nowhere.

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Lee, my virtual tour guide, had suggested that for the next night I should head to Taiping.  Without much thought, or expectation, I duly set off the next morning to cover the 90km distance.

En-route that day I cycled past a beautiful ‘chinese’ temple which was on the other side of the road to where I was cycling and there was a barrier across the middle of the road.  It looked so good that I did something that I would not normally do and cycled to the next intersection and doubled back on myself to go take a look at the temple.  There are quite a few photos as it really was a fairly special space.

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The one aspect of cycling in Malaysia that I was not looking forward to was cycling through the millions of hectares of oil palm plantations that has been planted in the country basically wiping out the native vegetation.  The oil palm tree was introduced to Malaysia by the British in the late 1800’s as an ornamental plant. In the 1920’s, the first commercial planting took place in laying the foundations for the vast oil palm plantations and the palm oil industry in Malaysia today.

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Each oil palm tree that is planted will start bearing ‘fruit’ after about 30 months and will continue to be productive for the next 20 to 30 years; thus ensuring a consistent supply of oil.

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(I never climbed the tree to take the photo above – it was taken from a bridge)

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Today, Malaysia is one the largest producers and exporters of palm oil in the world, accounting for 11% of the world’s oils & fats production and the industry provides employment to more than half a million people and livelihood to an estimated one million people.

Luckily for me though the route that Lee has mapped has only taken me past a few plantations which has accounted for about just 3 hours of riding in the time that I have been in Malaysia which is great.

When I arrived in Taiping I am not sure what I was expecting but boy did it exceed my expectations. Taiping is a town that is shabby chic and a great place to spend the night.

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I arrived on a Sunday night just as it was getting towards dusk.  I found somewhere to stay and the guy on reception said that I should just dump my stuff in the room and cycle to the lake area at the eastern side of the town as everybody would be out exercising and promenading, and this is what I did.

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Once I had finished doing a bit of promenading, which my wife will tell you I love to do, I headed back to the hotel to shower and wash my cycling clothes etc before heading out for some food.  The guy at reception up until this point had not let me down and so I asked him for a recommendation for food.  He said to head to the hawker market which was a couple of blocks away.

If there is one thing that Malaysians love more than anything, except their family of course, then it definitely is food. Malaysia is a melting pot of different cultures and has such a diverse range of food to match. It really doesn’t matter what time of day it is, as you will always find somewhere to eat; you will even find whole families heading out for food at midnight.

Many of the restaurants, even though owned by one person, will have 3 or 4 different food stalls, each cooking dishes from different regions of asia, for you to choose from. There is often no menu as Malays just seem to know what to order which makes it slightly confusing being a tourist.

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At least about 80% of the population speak some english though which really helps when ordering food in a restaurant without a menu.

Then there are the ‘hawker’ food centers where you can normally choose from over 20 different cuisines, each one from a different part of Asia , and each ‘hawker’ specialising in just a couple of dishes. You sit at a table in the middle of the food stalls and can just order from the many different ‘hawker’ stalls. When the food arrives you pay. Malaysia is definitely a foodies heaven.

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The other side to Malay cuisine is what I have called ‘the back of your car restaurant’.  Generally around 10am each day you will start to see cars pull up by the side of the road and out of the back come tables, cooking equipment, a gas bottle and a wok. They will then set up a food stall by the side of the road.

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These stalls generally sell cordial type drinks and fried snacks such as deep fried sweet potato or banana in batter.  The cost is usually 1 RM which is about 10 pence for 3 pieces of sweet potato or 5 pieces of banana.

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Then around 5pm you will get a second wave of ‘car restaurants’ setting up to cater for the evening crowd where they sell meals rather than snacks.  These tend to be prepared in advance and then sold for you to take home to eat.

Back in Taiping after food it was still quite early and I fancied a beer so headed to a bar that I saw across the road from the hawker market.

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When I arrived the place was empty but as the night went on it slowly got busier and around 9pm a pair of musicians took center stage.  It was an excellent way to end the evening and I could have easily spent a couple of days in Taiping.

The next day it was time for me to finally go and meet Lee who was the person who was acting as my ‘virtual tour guide’.  We had connected through Ramzul who is a Malaysian friend that I trained  with when I lived in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.  Lee had himself cycled around Malaysia with a friend the year before and was currently an undergraduate student at Petronas University of Technolgy in Seri Iskandar.

The university is a ‘private’ university which is owned by Petronas, the national oil company of Malaysia.  Lee is attending here on a scholarship whereby Petronas pay for his degree and he then has to work for them for, I think, 5 years when he graduates.

As Lee is at university he is living in halls and so couldn’t host me.  Instead, he had already paid for a hotel for me for the night which was amazing.

Lee had already told me that he had lectures until 7pm that evening and so I had spent the morning in Taiping and had not set off cycling until after lunch.  Lee had recommended that I meet him in Mcdonalds as they have free wifi which meant that I could catch up with stuff.  I have been really surprised by the lack of wifi in Malaysia as, compared to Thailnad, it really seems to be a technological desert.  Instead, everybody seems to have data packages with huge allowances of 12 GB or more per month.

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Once Lee had guided me to the hotel I had a quick shower before meeting him for food.

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For dinner we had Nasi Goreng Pattaya (fried rice encased in an omelet), dal curry with chapati and for desert roti tisu (fried roti with sugar and drisseled with condensed milk). All washed down with teh tarik (not sure what the translation is but it is ‘pulled’ tea).

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We had a great night swapping cycling stories and the next morning I met him bright and early for breakfast as he had to go for lectures at 9am. I packed and cycled the fully loaded bike to meet him at his campus gates. He then gave me a quick tour of his campus before cycling 5km for breakfast.  The locals really will travel a long way to get the best food.

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The mosque on campus

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The library and concert hall

Lee told me that you needed to be careful where you parked your bike as his had been ‘clamped’ before as he had not parked it in the designated zone.  There seemed to be fairly strict rules such as to get into the library you had to wear enclosed shoes, long pants and a collared shirt.  Even the security guards could issue a ‘fine’ if they saw you not wearing your student lanyard ID.

The restaurant that we cycled to for breakfast was a ‘chinese’ restaurant and Lee ordered a selection of dishes.

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While we were in the restaurant a local man came over and chatted as he himself was a cycling enthusiast and a couple of weeks ago he and a few friends had cycled up to the Cameron Highlands on the very road that I would be cycling that day.  The difference being that I would have 20 kg of luggage along for the ride.

After breakfast, it was time to say a sad farewell to Lee who had been a great ‘host’ in Seri Iskandar, and had taken me on a Malaysian ‘culinary experience’ in the short time that I had been there.  To complete the experience Lee could not see me leave without trying one last delicacy, Nasi Lemak (rice cooked in coconut milk and pandan leaf which is considered the national dish), and as we had just eaten breakfast he bought it for me as a takeaway to snack on later.

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Whilst Lee headed off for lectures in front of me lay the Cameron Highlands which would be the toughest test of my cycling legs to date and I had over 9 hours and 3500m of climbing ahead of me before I would get off the bike that evening.  More about that in my next update.

Cheers

Stewart

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Terima Kasih Malaysia
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2 thoughts on “Terima Kasih Malaysia

  • August 10, 2016 at 11:16 pm
    Permalink

    Hi Stewart,
    Kids will be delighted to see another update on your adventure. Missing Deirbhle already here!

    Reply
    • August 11, 2016 at 11:46 am
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      Hi Claire,
      I hear from Deirbhle that Uncle Stewart is terrified of snakes. I will try to find some more wildlife to keep the kids entertained but the monkeys here that I have seen in the forest are far bigger and more ‘flighty’. They tend to turn tail as soon as I see them.
      Take care and lots of love to the family.
      Stewart

      Reply

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