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!