I have managed to cut down the material from the bike ride Nicholas and I did from Bangkok to Singapore.
When I can get to some great bandwidth I’ll upload the HD version.
On July 12th 2009 Nicholas Ward and Adam Teale left Bangkok Thailand and rode their bicycles south through Thailand and Malaysia, and after 2100km and nearly a month of riding, made it to Singapore
Here it is via Vimeo:
Dude, where’s my Jakkayarn? from Adam Teale on Vimeo.
Download the 854×480 h264 version
Could this be it???
Yes.
WE MADE IT TO SINGAPORE!!!
But what a hell of day!
I was joking about having some contracted some kind of disease yesterday. But today I felt very ill all day. But it could just be fatigue combined with lots of mosquito bites. TIme will tell.
After working out what would possibly be our last route to take we said cheerio to Batu Pahat and headed to Pontian Kechil.
Luckily as we got into the ride my flu symptoms started to go away ad we were able to get some distance covered.
(The entrance to Singapore we think we should have taken).
After 100km or so we made it to the home stretch and everything was coming up roses. The guy at the toll booth / customs to exit Malaysia let us through without having to pay.
(free exit)
So here we are, passing into Singapore Immigration. Everything looked great. Until a couple of officials came running up to us and looked very worried.
We’d joked about how we’ll probably accidently break the law in Singapore.
Before we knew it we were inside explaining why we had ridden our bikes into Singapore.
Apparently it had been 20 years since the last time someone rode in through this bridge. Why?
Well it turns out …. IT IS ILLEGAL!
The Customs officials were going to send us back to Malaysia to reenter Singapore from the Jahor Bahru entrance. If I hadn’t just cycled 120km I’d have been ok with it but I was exhausted.
LUCKILY after a few phone calls to their superiors the Customs guys let us through and escorted us to the highway (which is also illegal to ride on).
(Tiger beer brewery!)
Awesome – Nicholas and I got flat tyres within 5 minutes of each other . It felt like we were never going to make it to Singapore!
So here we are. We made it to Singapore!
It feels weird. It’s been nearly a month on the road. We’ve ridden something like 2100km!
I have felt better.
Total KM: 150km
So close to Singapore! Nearly the home stretch! That’s if can make it…
I am covered in some sort of bites, assuming them to be mosquito bites, but yes I’m not a doctor. Fingers crossed I don’t have dengue, n1h1, malaria or any other excellent disease.
We said goodbye to Steven and the Shirah’s guesthouse and continued towards Singapore eventually stopping at a town called Batu Pahat.
Got some great vegetarian food here with ‘fake meat’ (why even bother?).
BP is a pretty decent sized town but was a bit of a struggle to find a place to sleep. Ended up in a brothel but the price for the room inc. girl for the night was too high. 🙂
Ended up at the cheapest place we could find called “Fairyland” – 30RM.
Total KM: 95km
We have spent the past 2 days hanging out in the peaceful port town of Melacca full of history and tasty food.
My favourite being the “Hainanese Chicken Rice Balls”.
Balls of rice cooked/soaked/steamed?? in chicken stock – apparently the tastier ones are made with real chicken stock.
We stayed at the coolest place on our journey yet – 15RM a night at the “Shirah’s Guesthouse” run by 2 great guys Steven and Zaki.
Rice ball. Tasty food which Mr.Teale can not have enough of. To be honest I have to control myself too.
Cruising around the historic city. So many old house and buildings.
Outside the Museum of Melaka.
Some Arty store down town China town.
Another nice ‘Wall’ for Adam.
Having a break.
Having some local noodle dish. Big dish 4 RM each. Another delicious dish.
Taking off for some more local food.
Adam, Zaki and Steven. Mr. Teale trying to convince these guys to buy a mac.
Shirah’s Guest house.. Best people best Atmosphere.
Here are some folks online who are doing some inspiring cycling in different places around the world.
Tanya & Kelly currently cycling through Asia and are keeping up a great blog of their adventure:
http://grannygear.wordpress.com
Hannah sent me a link to a friend of hers who is cycling around the world for 8 years!!!
Great website to follow him on:
http://www.cyclestrongman.com
A Japanese guy who has been cycling around the world for the past 11 years!!
He has travelled more than 100,000 kilometres!
http://www.daisukebike.be/en/index.html
Not a bunch to say except that the highlight of the day was getting fresh pineapple and pineapple juice just as we entered Malacca.
Amazing pineapple!
Had some good luck finding a place to stay – Shirah’s guesthouse run by a guy called Steven – sounds like he’s travelled a lot!
Looking forward to checking out Malacca tomorrow.
Total KM: 66km
Leaving KL was like lost in a maze. So we just head south. We must did 5 Uturns that morning. But eventually we got to the suburbs at about dawn. Saw some Chinese folks doing Tai-Chi.
stop and have some breakfast at a Indian restaurant. Asking for directions. I realise that we it,s not so far away to Singapore(400 km or so).
A lot less traffic when we were out of KL. And the weather was just right.
An Ocean of Palm tree Plantation. Hill over hill over hill… It was terrible. It was hot as hell. The smell was awful. Imagine that all these hills use to be forest with an eco-system. Nothing but the palm trees that these guys(below) planted. So I wonder if these palm trees could survive if there’s no one to take care of them? Anyway we tried to escape it asap. Eventually as we got closer to the coast the forest came back again giving an idea what this place use to be.
Port Dickson, Teluk-pantai touristy place for the Malaysian.
We tried to find a hotel. Kept asking and kept going. Until there was no hotels left. So we had to go back a few km.
Total KM: 102km
We started the day with Chinese food on the corner of ChinaTown. The food was excellent, I had something similar to thai’s ??????? dish, Mr Teale had some Pad Mee, Not so expensive 5-6RM but a massive dish.
And then we head off to The Petronas Twin Towers, by The Rapid KL. 1.60 Ringgits from China Town station to KLCC.
as soon as we got there adam needed to take a piss, but there was no toilets around. So he took it somewhere no one can see..
There you go. The twin towers.. and that is not my snot. i think that is a lens flare. Anyway Adam manage to get us free tickets to the tower bridge, but at 6 o’clock. So we had a bit of time to kill.
Walking along the garden following people around and suddenly we found ourselves in a PC fair. Adam was suffocating so we need to leave the fair.
KL Tower. 38 Ranggit to go to the top… No fuckin way.
The Monorail back to China Town for Dinner. Packed!
As we were walking back to the place we had breakfast. We notice this very very small Vegetarian restaurant. So we went in there instead. very good food I must say, We both had a couple of dishes.
some KL graffiti.
it’s time for The Twin Towers. Got there just in time. Because we didn’t expected the evening KL Rapid traffic.
Petronas Elevator buttons.
Not a bad view.
Whaever..
Not on purpose, My finger was numb..
trying to compete with the Twins.
China Town night time.
Walking back to the hotel from Petronas towers, saw a bit of the Night life here. Saw a nice quote on the wall in the Backpacker Hotel. Early night. Tomorrow head off at dawn.
Hot day. More palm tree fields. Stinking hot.
The muggy air (which Nicholas and I are blaming on the Sime Darby palm tree plantations) finally turned to friendly smog and before we knew it we were in KL.
The city is big and we had to ask for directions a lot to find our home for the next few days down at Wheeler’s Guesthouse in Chinatown. 15RM/night – scored a great free dinner too!
Lots to see tomorrow!
Total KM: 75km
Another flat! This time Nicholas.
We spent most of today riding the highway through palm trees. Fields and fields of palm trees that spread into infinity, and then the occasional oil mill.
Kuala Selangor is quite cool though. It is close to the sea and i think is connected to it by a river?
You can come here to go on a tour to see the fireflies. We had Chinese for dinner instead.
Total KM: 100km
