21st -26th Into Thailand!

I messed up a bit and didn't post the post I wrote a few days ago - I have now, and here's another one! 

We woke up in the morning after our nice relaxing afternoon feeling refreshed and re-energised. We were leaving the mountains and heading for Thailand.

Firstly, I really didn’t write about how beautiful this part of Malaysia, and actually all of Malaysia is. The mountains are rainforest, lush and green rolling hills with panoramic views round every corner. There are palm trees everywhere, monkeys swinging in the trees, elephant dung on the road and birdsong all around. The flat countryside is beautiful in its own way, with sudden rock formations springing up everywhere, and more lush vegetation. The people (unused to tourists) are very generous, often giving us free drinks or extra food (in one case this was another pineapple which was a nightmare to carry and we had to give away). Everything is really cheap, and the food is delicious. I feel a little bit world weary and “cupeth brimeth over” (or something like that) these days which is awful and I’m going to make a real effort to look around with fresh eyes, not travelledfor7monthsandreallytired eyes.

We left the hotel early again and set off into the rolling countryside. We immediately got very lost and ended up in the middle of some sort of army camp, with soldiers marching all around us chanting. This was exciting, but annoying as we had to retrace our steps all the way back to the hotel, and by this time (8:25) it was already an unpleasant temperature for cycling. The road was beautiful, sweeping round corners and going on bridges over deep lush valleys. At one point mum said “shhh, I think I hear an elephant” but it could easily have not been. Let’s pretend it was though hey. Soon the landscape flattened out, making way for palm oil plantations. From my experience, palm oil seems to be Malaysia’s main industry, we’ve seen thousands of acres of plantations. At one point we stole a couple of beads of oil to burn, but they were absolutely rubbish. It was soon time to stop cycling again and we saw a homestay sign in a village full of palm oil workers. This homestay seemed to be run by 6 women and when we asked how much it cost they laughed for HOURS and came up with 20 pounds, with we agreed with because we’re both too pathetic to haggle even when it’s obvious you should. Honestly this is such a disadvantage of being British. We went out to the night market for food and had lots of delicious things, noodles, satay, doughnuts and a peanut omelette which I’m surprised isn’t a worldwide phenomenon. This tiny village was absolutely buzzing for the market. I think people eat out a lot in Malaysia, as its so affordable and there are so many cafés/markets. Each tiny village has approx. 10 cafés.

The next day (March 23^rD) we left and headed for the coast. We stopped for our usual Roti Canai and a couple of games of backgammon (I haven’t written about backgammon in a representative way at all, we play about 5 games a day) and then came across a Tesco! I know globalisation is bad and capitalism kills love and big industries are destroying lives but we couldn’t resist. It was huge, air conditioned and full of things that I’ve been missing, like muesli, shortbread, orange juice, bread, vegetables... After this we obviously had to spend quite a lot of time eating and by then we were right in the blasting heat of the afternoon sun. We rode up to the coast road which turned out to be a gravel track, and had to turn around and go all the way back to the main road. We dived into a marble bus shelter to wait out the worst of it. Lots of motorbikes kept riding up and talking to us, which got a bit old after a while. One of them told us that somebody had been spreading the word that there were two tourists at the shelter and people could go and practise their English! Anyway although most of them claimed to have only learnt English from watching TV, it was at a pretty high standard. After an hour or so of unpaid teaching we left again and rode along a glorious coast road that actually was a coast road. There was a rocky embankment between it and the sea which was full of couples and young families enjoying the twilight as the sun set over the water.

 At one point we stopped for Chendol, which is “Malaysian water” which nobody seems capable of explaining the contents of. Flour? Anyway the woman running the stall was so impressed that we came from the UK she gave it to us for free. This made me feel deeply ashamed because Britain really screwed Malaysia over, just like the rest of the world We arrived in Koala Perlis just as it was getting dark, and it turned out to be a huge touristy town. This is Malaysian tourism, not western tourism. The hotels were all expensive and we found one super dodge one that was quite cheap. It was grim though. Grim.

We set off on our last morning in Malaysia feeling quite sad, it’s a shame getting used to and enjoying a country and then having to leave. I’ve actually been really sad leaving everywhere (except Senegal when I would have done almost anything to leave), especially places that I know I probably won’t come back to. We were going to the Wang Kelian border because our Swede cycle tourist friends had told us you could ride through a deserted cave just before it and miss out the hill! How cool does that sound? I was practically writing my Instagram caption already. 

We arrived at Gua Kelam, where they had assured us we would find the cave, and it all started to go wrong. It was a huge tourist attraction with paid entry, and when we asked the man if we could take our bikes and go through to Thailand, he practically laughed us out of there (they'll laugh you out of there Bryn). Mum was all for turning around for the long ride to the other border post but I was clinging on to that Instagram and recruited a fluent English speaking Malaysian to translate. After hours of discussion it turns out that the cave was further down the road! Fab news. We set off down the road, ignoring the unpaved path to the left, and got to a hill that was like a wall. It was 46.1 degrees, and impossible to cycle up. We pushed our bikes hoping all the time this cave would appear (it would be cold in the cave) and got to the top 1 hour 45 minutes later. There were some silver linings to this, on the way up a car stopped and said they recognised us from somebody’s facebook page! We’ve obviously hit the bigtime. And, as you can see, the view from the top was breathtaking. 

Those rock formations are pretty fab. We descended down the hill and into Thailand. The border post was full of bus loads of people wearing not enough clothes and trying to find themselves who were getting visa extensions, so it took a while. Soon we were across, changed all of our money and headed off on the same road but a different country. We didn’t have long to cycle in and we were both pretty tired (mum claimed not to be but then fell asleep as soon as we got here) and we soon found a hotel by a petrol station. The room is very nice and very cheap, but I think it’s a bit dodgy as you can hire it for “temporary” use and the lifesize woman on the bathroom door is not wearing any clothes. It’s lucky she’s got long hair, that’s all I can say…

We left in the morning feeling apprehensive about the day to come, traditionally we have a terrible time on our first day in a country. In France we got hideously lost for hours and ended up on a motorway, Spain we couldn’t find anywhere to stay and had to cycle up a mountain in the dark, Morocco was the most scared I’ve been so far, Mauritania we stopped cycling at 12 because it was so horrendous, Senegal we stayed in a hostel with no running water next to a prostitute… Anyway I could go on. It even poured with rain for our first day in Australia. Thailand broke the trend though as it was a fab day! The roads were quiet and pretty, the people friendly, and the weather much less hot than the past few days in Malaysia. We even found a snazzy café with proper coffee. We did some decent kilometres and started looking for a place to stay. After a couple of deadend roads.

 We arrived at a beach town which looked like it would be a likely place to stay. We asked people for directions to a hotel, but seemed incapable of communicating with anyone. Even my drama GCSE skills were not enough!! When people did seem to grasp what we wanted they made vague gestures and talked in thai. I obviously don’t think everyone should speak English, but some people here seem to be incapable of grasping the fact we don’t understand Thai, and just keep speaking, as if we might dredge up some vocab from somewhere. Eventually we found a lovely resort made up of incredibly cheap beach huts. We went out for rice and vegetables in a beachside café which were delicious. The owner handed us a menu and we laughed because every single thing was in Thai. Mum thinks she’s learning to read Thai, but there are 44 consonants and 42 vowels and three different fonts. She essentially hasn’t learnt to read any Thai. She was very excited when she saw a roadsign in Arabic, but after a few minutes claimed “My Arabic’s left me”. Anyway I digress... After this we had an argument about air conditioning. I'm a fan, because otherwise it's impossible to sleep. Mum's not, because she thinks we won't "acclimatise", and some self-righteous stuff about the environment, which means unless we're not sharing a room every night is a debate! We compromised by putting on a sleep timer... This was in a place called Pak Phanang! 

Making our way up Malaysia

March 15 - Nenasi to Gebeng https://www.strava.com/activities/901829345
We woke up and left Nenasi early, and enjoyed it only being slightly too hot to cycle at 7:30. We were making decent progress up the flat east coast with a cross wind. We stopped at coffee time and had Roti Canai, a pancake type thing which came with curry sauce, fish sauce and condensed milk. I had half condensed milk and half curry, but I didn't separate the halves enough. It was quite nice in the end actually. We also discovered lemon iced tea. I cannot over sell the deliciousness of this. It's freshly made and cold and sweet and INCREDIBLE. Since then we've had about 5 a day (it only costs 20p each and there's a stall selling it every kilometre). We cycled on in the unbearable heat until it all got too much and we collapsed under a palm tree by the beach. This sounds idyllic but it wasn't. Malaysia have got a massive problem with waste disposal and there are rubbish tips everywhere. These piles of rubbish all seem to smell v strongly. There are also biting insects everywhere. After our long break we had around 50km to go until a cheap chalet on the beach we'd heard about from somebody else. We arrived in Kuantan, a huge town which had been signposted for ages. Suddenly our nice quiet road turned into 4 lanes, with turnings everywhere and motorbikes, buses, vans pulling out all over the place. There were lots of sets of traffic lights and at every set I thought that if it lasted any longer I'd probably die it was so hot.

Eventually we made it out of the town centre and the cycling got easier. We came across a hotel and I suggested we stop but Mum voted to continue out of the town. Every time I suggest we stop early/have a rest she looks at me like I'm absolutely pathetic so I shut up and we kept cycling. Somehow we got a bit lost and ended up in this industrial port area, and it was getting seriously dark now. At least it was cooler. We dodgily picked our way along the hard shoulder until we got to the village. Phew. We arrived at the budget chalets and a man was cleaning outside. He looked at us and made a very clear "go away" gesture and shouted CLOSED. A nearby man on a motorbike came to the rescue and told us to follow him to another hotel. We've followed people lots of times and usually they've massively overestimated our speed and we have to grit our teeth to catch up. Eventually we arrived at the POSHEST hotel I've ever seen. No joke. It had 3 security guards at the entrance. It's a regular problem that everyone thinks all white people are rich. It's a bit of a dilemma with us because white people are rich, but cyclists are poor? Anyway he took us on a bit further to one more in our budget, and it included breakfast! We kicked back and relaxed, but then it turns out the fan was broken and we had to switch rooms. This was highly embarrassing as the receptionist came in and the room smelt awful, and we'd only been in it for about 5 minutes.

March 16th - Gebeng - Kuala Dungun https://www.strava.com/activities/908404042
We tried to leave early and woke up ready to claim our free breakfast at 7. Unsurprisingly I don't think many people turn up that early and nothing was actually ready. The second disappointment was that breakfast was rice, a fried egg and a sauce full of fish that were practically swimming. Even Mum wouldn't eat these. I was convinced the plain rice had been fish contaminated and even the egg had a definite fishy aftertaste. (I'm sorry about the heavy phoebe refuses to eat fish themes in this blog lately). We finally managed to leave and stopped a few kilometres down the road at a turtle sanctuary. Turtles are cool. After this we pressed on. I'm running out of ways to say how hot it is. It's like that feeling when you open the oven door and get hit by a blast of heat, all the time. (and the oven's cooking fish) (sorry). Anyway that's mainly what you have to focus on all day, being too hot. For our break this day we stopped in Macdonalds, which is air conditioned and has free wifi. Before this trip I'd only been to Maccies twice in my life, both drunk, but recently I've turned into a fan. We had chips and bumped into Shogan, a japanese cyclist who has been on the road for 7 years.

 He was wearing so many clothes it made me feel ill, including wooly gloves??? I mean seriously it was 42 degrees. After we left him we cycled up a very busy road until we got to a city. We found a pretty nasty chalet place which was overpriced and they were having a bonfire outside. There was also no drinking water. In times like this I'd infinitely rather be in the tent than a cheap hotel. We ventured into town to try and find some food and ordered noodle soup. It came and looked delicious, but was so spicy we were both crying. Mine had 4 chillies in. Everyone was laughing at us (in a sort of supportive way) and it took us hours to eat. After that we were both exhausted and sleep came v quickly.

March 17th - Kuala Dungun - Merang
We left Kuala Dungun early enough to avoid the worst of the traffic, and headed up the coast again. By now the road was getting really busy and the towns were getting more and more built up. We still hadn't seen a white person though. It was really really hot again. Advantages of the built up ness was that we found a supermarket with food other than dried fish in!! We stocked up on pasta, vegetables and actual cheese! In fact I felt very emotional in this supermarket at my reunion with cheese <3. This coastline is beautiful, with really long beaches and palm trees, but nobody seems to realise it's beautiful. None of the cafés face the sea and the beaches are so littered with rubbish. The sea is also far too hot. Like unpleasantly hot. I do find it hard to trust a warm sea. To be honest I don't really have anything else interesting/funny/insightful to say about today. We arrived at another notverynice cheap hotel and fell asleep. This notverynice cheap hotel had the added disadvantage of having to boil all our drinking water.

March 18th - Merang - Mechang
This was our last view of the sea for a while, and we made the most of it with lemon iced tea on the beach before we turned inland. Mum had sold these mountains to me as a desolate wilderness with elephants roaming up and down the roads and tigers prowling the hard shoulder. Instead it looked exactly like the coast road but without the beach. There were just as many lorries and stalls by the hard shoulder. We rode along until it got dark and then saw a sign for accommodation. The owner told us that his rooms were too messy, but that we could camp. Great, we thought. We tucked into some DELICIOUS satay. Honestly I've put delicious in capitals because it's deserved. I could have eaten it all day, and at 10p a chicken skewer we could have. After this we put the tent up, waited until it was an acceptable sleeping time and got into the tent. Honestly I was sweating more than I had been cycling all day. It was 33 degrees, in the dark... We ditched the top layer of our tent which improved things a lot, and eventually we got to sleep.


March 19th - Mechang - Halfway up the Mountain
Soon we were actually into the hills, and things did get a lot more beautiful. We climbed and climbed and the temperature climbed and climbed until we both had enough and stopped in a nice marble bus shelter for a few hours. After lunch we kept climbing and climbing and climbing and climbing and  the storm clouds were getting more and more aggressive and the sky was getting darker and darker... We knew there was somewhere to camp at the top of the mountain, but we also knew that we didn't have two more hours to get there. Suddenly there was a massive covered area off to the left and we dived in there. It looked like an abandoned café, or perhaps one that was being built but hadn't opened. Minutes after we arrived the storm hit. The rain was so loud we couldn't hear each other talk, and the lightening and thunder rolled. There was a house across from us with a man standing in the doorstep shouting occasionally, but we had no idea what he was saying. Things were pretty low at this point, compounded when the lighter, which was our only source of food and drinking water, stopped working. I was pretty scared of this man, who continued to watch us. We put up our tent and got a couple of last clicks out of the lighter to get the trangia going. After a bowl of pasta we both felt better. The rain continued to drum down on the roof, which wasn't as waterproof as it first appeared. Suddenly there was a light from the house, moving towards us! The man had got in his car to drive approximately 50 metres to come and talk to us. We met him at the side of the shelter, and it turns out he just wanted to offer us some food! That was nice! Muchly relieved we refused and he drove back home again. We retired to the tent and listened to desert island dics (Caitlin Moran and Katherine Grainger). In the middle of the night I had a dream that we'd pitched our tent in the middle of a dark the road and there was a car coming. Panicking I leapt out of bed and dived at the tent wall, waking up as I hit the hard stone floor screaming. Poor Mum.

March 20th - Halfway up the Mountain to Banding Lake
We managed to do most of the rest of the climbing in the cool of the morning, and eventually reached the top. The view was nice, but limited as we were in a cloud, bringing back traumatic memories of Christ the Redeemer. Luckily the lack of view was made up for by the fact that everyone thought we were complete legends. Loads of people asked for pictures and thought we were heroes. We also saw the first white person in the whole of Malaysia. It turns out she was a ukrainian cycle tourist who had got a lift up the hill (not because of the climbing but because she was scared of being attacked by elephants). I talked about the long climb and she made some scathing comments about how you could smoke a cigarette climbing this hill, which I found quite offensive considering she hadn't even done it. Personally I'd love to be attacked by an elephant. On the way down for saw another two cycle tourists who were fab. They'd spent a year cycling from Sweden, with no transport except bicycles, and they were a week away from finishing in Singapore. They gave us lots of tips on the next few legs, and were very funny. I feel very starved of normal conversation and outside stimulus and this was great. We soon got to a beautiful mountain lake, where we decided to finish for the day. We went to a snazzy hotel for lunch with a stunning view, and an exciting moment when a monkey landed on the table next to us! Before heading down to the budget accommodation option. This was actually awesome. It was tiny floating huts on a pontoon which had clearly never been visited by a health and safety officer. The walkway out was two planks which weren't fixed down at all. I held my breath as I wheeled all of my possessions over it. The pontoon was lined with fisherman while their wives sat depressingly inside the huts. Sometimes they'd catch a fish which was exciting for everyone in the vicinity, and involved a victory dance that made the whole pontoon shake. There was a kitchen with lots of open flames and a wooden structure, and also lots of people smoking. Luckily it poured with rain at regular intervals. Honestly other countries are just extraordinary, and I'm not some sort of health and safety regulation nutter, it really was crazy.

March 21st - Banding Lake to Gerik
We started the day with another death defying walk over the dodgy planks until we hit the road again.  We had another long climb which we managed to do before the heat (I've written that sentence before) and had Roti Canai at the bottom, before rolling into Gerik. This looked like a nice town so we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon and night here and get some proper rest. In the heat of the day I wrote this blog post and we did some washing, before going out in the evening for a beer!!!!!!! and some chinese food. We made friends with an american couple who spoke mandarin and they offered to translate, so I deeply emphasised my hatred of fish and love of vegetables. Sure enough, a gorgeous looking dish of vegetables and rice arrived, WITH PRAWNS IN. Honestly I don't want to become somebody who overuses capitals but seriously enough. The town we're in is much more chinesy than the rest of malaysia, and it's the first time (almost literally) I've seen women not wearing hijabs. In the rest of the country tiny children have been wearing them.