cycling – Adam Teale

Day 27: Batu Pahat to Singapore

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 road we should have taken

(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

Day 26: Malacca to Batu Pahat

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

Day 24-25: Malacca

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.

Inspiring cycling folks

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

Day 23: Blue Lagoon (Tanjung Tanah Merah) to Melaka

View Larger Map

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

Day 22: Kuala Lumpur to Blue Lagoon (Tanjung Tanah Merah)

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

Here we go again

We have a blogg, thanks to Mr. Teale here the blog is going on! I’m still working at the office while he’s having the time of his life in HK!! lol anyway it’s 19.28 thailand time, and still waiting for the clients comments,

can’t wait to go to Singaporee!!

We have a blog!

Here we go!

So, what the hell are we doing?

Riding a bicycle from Bangkok via Malaysia to Singapore. Duh!

Well a few months back when I was traveling I had the good fortune to meet a bunch of crazy people. Crazy people doing crazy things. Well crazy to me at the time. People such as a French guy called Yann. I met Yann in Iran. Yann told me he rode from Singapore, via China and all the *stans, to get to Iran, and was continuing on home to France. At that point he’d covered 18,000 kms. Oh yeah, he did it on a $S300 mountain bike. 🙂

Meeting people such as Yann has led me to wonder why I am not doing such cool things as these folks. So on my way back to Thailand I decided I was going to buy a bicycle and ride to Singapore. I figured if I could at least to something like this I would be guaranteed fame, fortune and all the beautiful ladies of the world! Well not really, but probably. 🙂 It turned out that Nicholas, & our good friend & resident bicycle guru Boat, were getting their bicycle on too, and were pretty interested in joining me to Singapore.

After some slight delays, such as having to work, here we go.

July 12th 2009 we set off from Bangkok en route to … Hua Hin i think – is that right Ward?

* I’m sitting here at my Dad’s place here in Hong Kong, preparing for the ride with a egg tart in one hand, and a vodka & soda in the other. You see I was just informed that Nicholas, the half farang half thai guy who is doing this ride with me, has just bought a brand new bicycle. And he is riding it. I am not doing anything at the moment and I know this will be to my detriment. Oh well 😛