111 km

This morning we were serenaded by what we called the Car Alarm Bird and the Twilight Zone Bird. We had slept well and were both in great moods because the morning was so pleasantly cool. Dave was singing little songs and whistling, as he often does. It was a beautiful morning.

After a few rolling hills we started mostly heading downhill. The cool, high mountain air was wonderful and we enjoyed every moment knowing it would soon end. We had breakfast just outside of Penkalan Hulu, at a roti restaurant. We had the best roti telor so far on this trip (egg folded into super-thin flatbread which is then fried, egg is sometimes spelled telur, sometimes telor, depending on the region). We sat at a table with some local fire and rescue guys and had a nice chat with them. As we were leaving we met Tukiman, a professor of psychology from North Sumatra University who was home to visit family for the weekend. We’d sure love to visit Sumatra sometime, and if we do, we’ll try to look Tukiman up. He was a pleasure to talk to, even for just a few minutes.

Our Bikes Open Doors and Conversations

Traveling by bicycle is such a wonderful way to meet people. Because we’re riding, we see small towns that most tourists never see. Because we arrive by bicycle, we are often respected for our efforts to see the country, and most often it is because of our bicycles that conversations begin. We have met so many wonderful people on this trip because we are accessible on these bicycles. We’re not encased in an air-conditioned bus or car that separates us, we are among the locals and eating where the locals eat. I feel fortunate to be able to have this time to travel, because bike touring takes time. And this time is passing by much too quickly.

79 km

More rolling through the mountainous jungle today as we continue West across the Malaysian peninsula. We are very close to the Thai border as we near the end today. Palm plantations line both sides of the road.

We stopped for drinks and ice cream at the highway intersection outside of Girik, and the women at the mini-mart told us the road ahead had huge mountains to climb, steep hills. They said we could take an easy route around them, and they drew a map. After three days of climbing and descending, I was ready to avoid any unnecessary hills I could. They spoke good English, and explained the turns three times through, making it sound very easy. We took the map and headed out.

Well. That didn’t work out very well. The turns were not where they should have been (“about 12k to here, then four k to this turn…”), nor were they labeled with signs like the women said. We made some turns and may have avoided a little of the steep climbing, but very soon we found ourselves back on the same main highway we were trying to detour around, with plenty of climbing to do.

Oh well, at least we didn’t get completely lost, because these roads were not on our Malaysia map. We did, however, enjoy a nice quiet road and some friendly, smiling people along the way. We also heard the 4:45 call to prayer in a small hillside mosque as we stopped for a snack. We weren’t sure, but we didn’t think the mosque had the usual speaker system set up. We think he was wailing at the top of his lungs without the help of a microphone, and it showed in his poor scratchy voice. Ouch. He mostly hit the notes, and we gave him high marks for effort. By now we’ve heard many, many calls to prayer throughout many days as we’ve ridden through and stayed in all these towns. Some of the voices coming from the tower speakers sound forced, but many are sweet and smooth and melodic as they waft over the sounds of the bustling towns.

We finally called it quits high up in the mountains today, 16 km before Penkalan Hulu. We rode down into the cool, quiet shade of a palm plantation and found a spot near a stream running through. As we were setting up camp we heard a scooter slowly making it’s way toward us over the hill. I was so nervous, thinking they’d get mad and throw us off the plantation, and there wasn’t any free jungle in sight. But the old man who puttered by on the little road above us looked down and nodded as we said hello, and he turned around and rode back. That’s all we heard. So we finished setting up and bathed in the clear stream. Three nights in a row camping, and each spot offered a cool place to bathe. What luck!

The many layers of insect and frog sounds blended to lull us asleep on this clear night.

67 km

Another day of climbing, but also some long and fun descending too! The mountains, once we got up a ways, are cooler and breezier than the lowlands, and we enjoy the sounds of more birds and insects. We are seeing signs for elephants on the highway (like cow signs in the U.S.) and we’ve even seen elephant dung right on the side of the road, but no elephants yet! We’d LOVE to see one or two run across the road, but with all this traffic I just can’t imagine it. They probably wait to cross at night.

We do see or hear monkeys every now and then swinging through the trees. They don’t vocalize much, but they sure can make a crashing noise when they’re really moving.

We were told we’d find a resort on Pulau Banding, a very small island in the middle of Lake Temengor, but when we got there late in the afternoon, sweaty and so tired from the hills, we found that it was closed for renovations until March. So, we rode back and forth and around looking for a place to stay or camp, and ended up finding a good spot on the East side of the lake, just before the bridge that leads to Pulau Banding. There’s a small road that goes down to a flooded dock (built too low on this man-made reservoir?) and also splits off to go to a cleared area that was either a quarry or a logged area.

We had a quiet camp there. We went down to the floating restaurant at the flooded dock for dinner. We crossed to the other side of the bridge from that dock where we found steps that went down to the water. There we took a swim and rinsed out our clothes. Camping after a long hot day is OK when you can get a bath! The lake was cool and refreshing.

View of Lake Temengor from our campsite.

While lying in the tent this evening we both thought we heard an elephant trumpet somewhere in the dark distance. Later, we heard a grunting/growling noise not too far outside the tent. Monkeys. Don’t know why they were making that noise, but I didn’t like it too much!

First Challenge is Breakfast

Breakfast attempt #1: No food left, just kopi (Malaysian coffee).

Breakfast attempt #2: A roti joint, fresh out of roti!

Breakfast attempt #3: We are welcomed to the cafe and sit down to order. No nasi lemak left (rice & egg, one of our usual breakfasts), they don’t make roti here, but they do have rice and chicken curry or meat curry. That’s it. We say we don’t eat chicken or meat, vegetarians. We get some kopi and chat a bit with the friendly locals, including a teacher. (Kopi is a mix of coffee and herbs and doesn’t taste great if you’re expecting real coffee, but it’s good once you get used to it. I order kopi, which means it comes with condensed milk and sugar. Dave gets kopi-o, which is just with sugar.) After a few minutes, the teacher, who speaks English pretty well, asks if we want rice and an egg, a hard-boiled egg. We say yes! We sit and drink our coffee a few more minutes, and out comes a dish with three hard-boiled eggs. Only when I go to crack the shell it gives easily and egg spills out. It is BARELY COOKED. In fact, only the edges are barely cooked, the middle is raw. Ugh.

We look at each other and start scraping out the cooked part of the egg with the wee spoons they’ve given us. Oh my. But soon they deliver plates with some rice. We mix the egg with the rice and force it down, trying to smile a little because we’re being watched. As soon as we manage to finish we get out of there. We want to quickly put that behind us and move on quickly.

Breakfast attempt #4: Success! We find a roadside cafe with a cheerful woman who lets us point to food and order exactly what we want. We order plain rice (nasi), FRIED eggs (telur GORENG), chili sauces (sambal and also plain chili), and cucumber. We finally felt full.

Rice, fried egg, chili sauce = nasi lemak. This one served up on a banana leaf.

The Hard Hilly Ride

Today we start climbing. And we climb, and climb. At first it’s rolling hills that we tackle, but then we just keep going up.

It was a hot day, and with breakfast #3 to get it started, well, I had problems. My stomach at first was just a little queasy, then in the afternoon it was downright nauseous. The grade was so steep that I was pushing at a pretty high intensity just to keep moving, and with the heat and everything, I just felt like puking. (Hey Kat, do you remember how we’d almost puke in the weight room sometimes while doing squats? Now THAT was fun, right?)

We had not tackled real climbing yet on this trip, so that was also a factor. And it was so hot and humid that I sometimes had to take off my sunglasses because they were too fogged up and the sweat was just dripping off of me. Seriously, I was not having fun. But you have to be prepared for the not-fun times if you want to experience the great fun of bike touring. So we pedal on. But, yes, I was grumpy.

All we needed to be able to stop for the day was water, enough to filter for drinking. We finally found it – a stream rushing down the side of the mountain. There was a sort of rest stop there, with bathrooms and a couple of picnic tables. I sat in the shade with my feet in the cool water while Dave scouted out a place to camp. He found a great spot just back a half kilometer or so, up a logging road to a cleared area, up that stream a ways. We had the privacy to bathe in the stream, then we washed out our clothes and filtered water.

Wild Animal!

We then went for a sunset walk up another branch of the logging road and enjoyed the evening sounds of birds and insects. While we were walking back we came around a corner and saw an animal walking up the road that came from the highway. It looked up for a half second before turning and galloping back down the road. I first thought “German shepherd” when I saw it, because it was dark, with what looked like a long snout and big ears, but it was too tall and big, and it didn’t run like a dog. We went down to look at the tracks (and Dave got a picture the next morning) and they were of a hoofed animal. Dave’s best guess is a tapir, but we’re just not sure after looking it up in the net. It was pretty exciting to see a large animal in the jungle, even if we don’t know what it was.

70 km

Boat ride to the Mainland

The boat ride was smooth as marmalade this morning as we left Pulau Perhentian for Kuala Besut. The boat came at 8:00 a.m. and we were stepping off at about 8:40. What a difference smooth seas make. It was fun! I was smiling! No arm stiffness or neck soreness was necessary. We got sprayed just a wee bit, and the breeze was cool on our faces. It was a lovely way to greet the day. Now we head West across the peninsula.

Not Our Crash

A few kilometers after Kuala Besut we stopped for breakfast #2 (I’d been so nervous I couldn’t do much more than a piece of toast and coffee before leaving the island) and while we were joking and smiling with the locals in the roadside cafe we heard a loud crunch. Dave said he immediately thought the bikes had been hit, but I’d turned around in time to see that a scooter had been hit. A young mother and her toddler were just slowing to pull into the cafe when they were hit from behind. The mother instinctively folded around her baby and rolled, coming away with only the back of her hand scraped. The child was fine, and in fact he didn’t even cry out loud.

We were curious to see if we’d finally see some police in action, as we see grand “Polis” buildings in every town but never see them out and about. But no, after maybe ten minutes the driver pulled away while talking on his cell phone. It was all no big deal, as the husband, whom we’d been joking with, laughed it off after a while, while the woman who’d been hit motioned to us laughingly that he’d been hit on the scooter TWICE already. Huh. Funny thing, this getting hit by a scooter. Ha ha, let’s all finish our coffee.

Dave and I have bar-end mirrors that we check constantly while riding, but especially through towns. There are little roadside cafes and food stands before, throughout, and after every town we go through. People pull off the road, or sometimes park in the far left lane to visit these places while traffic is supposed to veer around them. Add to that at least as many scooters as cars, plus bicycles all sharing the same lane and these situations get tricky. We’re very careful, and for the most part it works very well. The way I see it is that the cars slow or swerve to make room for scooters on their left. The scooters swerve or slow to get around the bikes. The bikes just need to make sure they don’t get “doored”, or hit by an opening door on the left, or run into pedestrians or cars inching out into the road.

Note to Jan (Mother Snowberg) and Grandma: please do not let this keep you up at night. We’ve gotten through a month and most of peninsular Malaysia alive and without even a close incident. It works very well, but we are also extremely diligent in watching the mirror and the road ahead and keep to the flow of things. It’s OK, but this was a wake-up to be even more careful.

Another Generous Malaysian, Yet Another Friend

Around 1:00 we stopped in some shade and were getting ready to pull out the food bag and have ourselves a hearty snack. Before we could, though, we were approached by a car. The driver got out and asked if everything was OK and if we needed help. He gave us his card: he’s Nik Mahadi Hassan, a journalist with TV3, one of the main stations of Malaysia. We chatted for a couple of minutes, and he asked us to come to his house for lunch instead. It was only a couple of km. back. We agreed, and followed him back to his house. He had us sit in his beautiful living room (our sweaty, dirty selves!) with a cool breeze from the ceiling fan blowing. He served cold juice and brought out oranges and bananas. He then brought beans and bread and butter.

We ate a great meal while we talked about the similarities and differences between our countries. We also got confirmation that we’d made the best choice in choosing to enter Thailand from the West side. He grew up in the border town where the main East side highway crosses into Thailand, and even he does not recommend going through there any more due to the Islamist militant insurgency that has been wreaking havoc since 2004. We enjoyed talking with Nik and meeting his wife and some of his seven children. And we so appreciated the respite from the intense sun and the lunch in his home. How many times can I say we are amazed at the generosity of the people we are meeting on this trip?

Pakistan, No. U.S.? Very Good Country

Down the road some more, this afternoon we stopped at a tiny store that had a cooler full of sodas. We grabbed our favorites (Coke for Dave, and 100 Plus for me–like gatorade only carbonated and tastes like Squirt), and ice cream bars from the freezer and sat on the front steps in the shade. A minute later a young man pulls up on a scooter. He approaches Dave first (always, men address Dave first, and usually include me later) and shakes his hand, touching his hand to his heart afterward in the Malaysian way. He then tentatively asks “From where?” and Dave answers, “United States.” The young man smiles, nods, and squats in front of us. He is a serious sort. He’s quietly looking at the map, then points and asks “To where?” and Dave answers. They proceed like this, a couple of words at a time, and finally I’m included as I also answer some of the questions. We are communicating a lot with few words, smiling and shrugging sometimes when neither of us can get a point across. His name is Ahtuh, and he’s from Pakistan, going to University in Malaysia to become a doctor. He will go back to Pakistan when he’s done, but he tells us Pakistan is not good right now. His one word explanation: “Al Quaida,” and he shakes his head. He looks up at Dave, “America. Very good.” Thumbs up. “Pakistan…” and he moves his hands in a flat motion.

Quiet again. He does not rush to fill in the silence, and neither do we. We are getting used to this way of communicating with few common words. This culture does not need to fill all the silent seconds, and we are slowing to the pace as well. Maybe it’s me who is slowing, because Dave I think has always been OK with it. It is comfortable when you realize there is not always something to say. Few words sometimes say more. When we stand up to go we exchange meaningful handshakes with Ahtuh, and I think we all feel the richness of this moment and we wish each other well all around.

Today we took the Jungle Trek to the other side of the island. We saw two kinds of monkeys, crazy huge ants, birds with very complex calls, monitor lizards, and lots of fish and coral while swimming. We trekked and swam, trekked more and swam again. It felt good to get some hiking in, and of course the swimming is amazing when there’s coral and so many fish, and so refreshing after working up a sweat.

On the way back we saw a new kind of monkey hanging out near a government building. We stopped to look at them and say hi, but when we did they hissed and one charged me, showing his fangs. I have to say, it was darn scary! I will give these monkeys their space next time. Yow.

Nice monkey!

Mean monkey!

Tonight we’re eating dinner (right now!) at the posh Perhentian Resort, a good walk along an up-and-down wooden walkway around the point. We heard there’s free wireless, and it’s true. So, after many days without a post, tonight is the night.

Tomorrow we will take the speed boat back to the coast at Kuala Besut. From there we will head west for three or four days maybe, up and over the middle part of the peninsula through the jungle and mountains to Pulau Pinang, another island. We will get to see how different the West coast is from the East, and visit a region many have told us we must not miss. The food is supposed to be terrific, and it is not the monsoon season there. I guess we should prepare for more heat from there on.

Eat, swim, read. Repeat.

My camera memory card crashed today and all pictures were lost from the last week. Very unfortunate.

The road from Kuala Terengganu yesterday to Kuala Besut today was a quiet coastal road recommended by Al–thanks Al for all the great advice so far! It really was great to get off of the busy highway and be able to look around more, and actually hear ourselves talk to each other. Riding this bike tour makes me appreciate what a special ride the Great Divide was. It was so remote and quiet most of the time, we could sometimes go hours without having to really watch for cars, all the time hearing the birds sing and the air whoosh through the pines. This is a different kind of tour, and after riding some highways, already I look forward to these quieter roads like today.

We arrived in Kuala Besut at about 12:40, and almost immediately were approached about a boat to the islands. The young man was very helpful with information, even offering to let us park our bikes in their office while we were at the island. There are no roads or paths to ride on the Perhentians, and taking a bike isn’t recommended. But it was all very fast and he was putting the pressure on big time, so Dave wanted to check around just a bit before we got on board. He found out that the kid was right, that’s the only boat going out today and the price was fair, though higher for the monsoon season. We decided to go with it, so we stashed our bikes, grabbed all our panniers and got on the boat.

The ride was insane, in my opinion, but Dave was laughing his way through it. He’s nuts. But he’s been on rougher boat rides while working in the Maldives. I had prepared myself for another ferry boat ride like we had to Pulau Tioman, which was slightly alarming, but not so bad once I relaxed. At the very end. This time we were faced with a speed boat ride in a much smaller, open boat. Yikes.

The ocean was rough from the monsoon winds. Even though it hadn’t been stormy in the full monsoon way, the winds still work the seas up into a choppy mess, and we crossed right over that choppy water, sometimes flying through the air and landing so hard I thought the boat would break. Dave says boats don’t break from that, but I don’t quite believe him. Yikes! The swells were big, but uneven. So we’d skip over the top of some of them, landing hard on the other side, and others we’d go up and down with the swell like a roller coaster. Dave had told me to keep my eye on the horizon to avoid getting sick, and it worked. Boy was I concentrating on that horizon.

I was sitting next to a bar, and I held on to that bar behind me so hard that my entire right side is stiff and sore, and the fingernails of my left hand are still numb from gripping the seat. Yes, I am over dramatic. No one else on that boat looked like they were gripping so hard, but I couldn’t help it. I sort of enjoyed little bits of the ride when we weren’t flying off the far side of a swell, the driver was obviously slowing and working through some of it so that we wouldn’t, but then he’d speed right up again and I’d tense right back up. All this stuff IS going to teach me to relax and go with the flow, right? I certainly hope so. I really do need to relax.

We checked out all the accommodations, four different places with different types of rooms, and as is our habit, we decided on the first one we had seen. We’re staying at the Reef, and the owner, Anuar, just arrived for the season yesterday, so we think we’re some of the first customers. He gave us a beautiful chalet for 50RM, a discount from the usual 80RM price because of the season. Anuar later gave us some great information about the island and some advice for where to swim and hike. He’s a very laid back, quiet man but very friendly. We really enjoy it here.

63 km

My shoulder has been aching a bit more the last couple of days, so we took a shorter day today and also followed the advice of Chris from the Crazy Guy on a Bike website, which was to stay at the Penarik Inn. Great advice, Chris. The owner greeted us immediately as we rode up, saying “Welcome! Welcome! You are welcome here!” and served us up some tea.

After drinking our tea and feeling a little refreshed, we checked out the chalet, and it was rustic and airy, with a nice bathroom attached. They charged 35RM for the 40RM room because it’s still the off season. They get a lot of cyclists here, especially Dutch cyclists, and they seemed happy to see us arrive on bikes.

We then changed our clothes and walked down to the beach to swim. Well, this still being the monsoon season, the water was quite rough and it was a steep beach. Dave decided to swim in the waves while I stood and watched. He found a styrofoam buoy with a rope attached, and he started slinging it into the surf and then swimming out after it. It was pretty fun to watch.

The owner’s son made us a delicious dinner of egg soup, fish with curry sauce, rice, and a sweet mung-bean dessert.

It stormed sometime in the night, and our breezy bungalow was cool and quiet.