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.