Pulau Tioman to Kuala Rompin, Malaysia
72 km
The ferry picked us up at our dock at 7:30, and after many stops at other docks on the island, we arrived in Mersing around 10:30. We ate breakfast and bought some lunch snacks and headed out at about noon.
The ride was very nice, with light rain a couple times throughout the day and always a breeze. We are facing a headwind every day we head North up the coast, but it’s not too bad when we’re inland a ways and the trees block some of it. We also had lots of hellos, thumbs up and smiles today.
We found a nice hotel in Kuala Rompin for RM35 with air conditioning and a sizable room at the Hotel Kenkana. There are only two budget hotels in town, the other is in the same row of buildings with a larger sign but we didn’t even check in there when we saw this room. The other option is the beach resort, a pretty nice hotel with rooms starting at RM 140. The rooms were nice but we want to stay on a budget unless we have good reason to splurge.
We had dinner next to the hotel on the corner, a typical Malaysian-looking place. We had a nice waiter who answered a couple of our questions about food (and we are finally getting a good variety of things we can order, all super yummy!). Once we ordered Dave noticed there were Osama Bin Laden portraits everywhere. Yes, they were on all the walls, all sizes and poses. These guys were real fans. Uh, wow. That’s probably why, when the waiter asked with a smile where we were from and we answered, he sort of got a blank expression and said “America,” and then walked back to the kitchen. Then I looked around a bit. I was the only woman, and all the men looked very conservative, with hats and everything. They were all busy talking over coffee. But then everyone started getting up to go and all the restaurant staff were putting up chairs, sweeping, cleaning counters and all that. It was just before 7:00 pm. All the places we’ve been to so far are open and bustling until we head back to our hotel for bed and probably long after. This was weird. When the food came, it was good. But we ate quickly because we were the last people left and they were practically mopping us into a corner. OK, folks, we’re leaving!
A note about the people: Malaysia is a Muslim country. We have seen covered and uncovered women, we have seen traditionally dressed men in those little hats and others in Hawaiian shirts. But all of them, so far, have been nothing but kind and friendly. Certainly we’ll see more places like this restaurant, but one-on-one, people treat us really well here.
3 comments Post Categories: 2008 SE Asia Bike Tour, Malaysia
I went on Google Earth to see where you are going and to check out some pictures of what you are seeing. Any underwater pictures? That would be so neat to see.
You are missing a wopper of a winter in Wisconsin this year. We are having blizzard conditions right now. Got to leave work early today. Your lovely pictures make me yearn for warmer tropical climates.
Michelle how is the shoulder? You haven’t said anything about it.
Look forward to reading more about your adventures.
Stay safe,
Jean
Hello, why not traevl to my hometown in Kuching? I haven’t seen any review about kuching yet
A start is a start. But why “not for prifot”??? Liquidity is an economy of scale. It requires a lot of investment before it begins to show results. You don’t encourage people to put in that kind of work without the possibility of handsome rewards. Nobody is going to toil away, building market infrastructure, providing tech support, advertising their market to expand their trader base and so on, when prifot is basically banned.This is the entire problem with IEM. Their noble little “small stakes, not for prifot” enterprise has crappy predictive power compared to BF and Intrade, whose liquidity still sucks, but at least the for-prifots have enough pooled money to add SOME value. Again: prediction markets are good at aggregating complex, diffuse information. But no individual is going to go through the work of aggregating complex, diffuse information unless s/he’s rewarded for that work. IEM’s ivory-tower, prifot-is-bad approach basically slams the door to aggregating any information worth more than the size of the deposit.The IEM approach is not workable. It will give birth to a lot of tiny pools of capital which will not reward information discovery. Then, the next group of people that wants to expand the scope of prediction markets will have to justify the subperformance of the IEM model, on top of all the other idiotic “protect the dumb little guy, to hell with innovation” excuses that have strangled PMs in the United States thus far.I “guess” this is better than nothing, but it’s infuriating nonetheless.