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

6 Comments

• At Tue 24, November 2009, Patrick wrote:

  Awesome video Mr Teale!

  Where are you at now btw?

• At Tue 24, November 2009, Bart Verkoeijen wrote:

  Hahaha, awesome video. Gives a nice touch to all the reading. :-) Loved the spy cam. :-D

• At Thu 26, November 2009, Adam wrote:

  Thanks Guys!

  @Patrick - am in southern thailand hanging out on Koh Lanta island. You gotta check it out sometime!

• At Thu 26, November 2009, Luke wrote:

  Thanks for sharing the trip with us, great work on the bike-cam and editing. You two rock.

  L

• At Fri 27, November 2009, ano wrote:

  well done sir. quite jealous. next trip?

• At Fri 27, November 2009, Adam wrote:

  cheers fellas!

  @ano - Next trip - not sure, heading to Sydney to work until July next year. By then I'm sure i'll be keen to go on an adventure again!

  What about you dude??

“hey Nick… how’s you going?”
“…I’m running on auto-pilot…”

Around 160km per day seems to be a limit we reach before weird things begin to happen.
Time slows down, your body starts to spasm, the bike shorts feel tighter than normal, your hands are now more numb than ever. And you can’t stop thinking about what weird fizzy drink you are going to buy when you arrive at the destination.

After a previous day of loafing around Georgetown eating everything to be seen we left Georgetown bright and early.
Crossing the bridge to Butterworth on the mainland was pretty simple. We’d heard you had to pay a toll to get onto the E1 but that doesn’t seem to happen until you get out of Butterworth.




We stopped for a quick Nasi Lemak and checked the map. The E1 was the most direct route, but tolls are for sissies, there are lots of trucks, oh yeah and bikes aren’t allowed on the E1.
That solved that problem.
So we took Highway 1 all the way.
It worked out much better anyway as we were able to stop when ever we wanted.

The ride was pretty great. After passing Butterworth there was a bit of a strong wind in our face as a storm seemed to brew above us. But we powered on, out rode the storm and then spent the rest of the day in bright sunshine with a nice cool breeze blowing from the side. Very lucky! This whole rainy season idea hasn’t really hit us, or if it has, it hasn’t been bad like everyone said it would be.

So far in Malaysia we have had food at places where it’s a bit of a “choose your own adventure” style place. Lots of curries and things to choose from. Prices seem to range between 4-8RM per plate.

We pressed on and passed through a mountain range that reminded me a little of what we road through back in Thailand just before getting to Nakhon Si Thammarat. It was now pretty hot and I was sweating heavy. So when I noticed nice stream falling from the mountains and running under a bridge I figured we should stop. Well it looked nice, there was a waterfall and cascading pools of water.

Unfortunately the good swimming hole had a bunch of fishing lines dangling in it, and the other ones were deep enough to get your feet wet. Ahh and the one at the bottom had a family that had stopped to clean up their baby – leaving it’s shat-in nappy nicely positioned on a rock in the middle of the creek. Why do people litter?

We reached Kuala Kangar – the point where the E1 toll-way goes directly to Ipoh, and Highway 1 splits and does a long detour around a mountain to eventually get to Ipoh. We stopped for a snack in Sungai Siput at a small outside Chinese cafe/restaurant. I managed to order 2 ‘dung lai cha’ (all that time in hong kong is really paying off…) and Nick somehow managed to order us a chicken-rice dish.

I don’t know if it’s just the bike pants, but we are getting a lot of laughs and attention in Malaysia!

After the snack, which I think was around the 160km mark for us today, we slugged on for another hour or so and pulled into iPoh.

On the ouskirts of iPoh are some rocky outcrop/hills (can’t think of the right words to describe them – similar to what you get in Krabbi in Thailand) with some Chinese temples of some sort at the bottom with smaller temple-type buildings on the top.

At this point we went to the closest cheapest place we could find (the Hotel Tokyo – 43RM/night) and crashed out.
Since checking in we have discovered that Ipoh is quite massive and there was probably much better deals to be had for 43RM. It’s a pretty run down old place – the toilet doesn’t flush and the “hot” shower dribbles.

Malaysia is a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. The Indian, Muslim, Chinese and Malay cultures all mixing in someway together is very cool to say the least.

It’s great to hear different language being spoken at the same time, and Malaysia definitely has a lot of different food to try out.

Total KM: 185km

3 Comments

• At Tue 28, July 2009, Bart Verkoeijen wrote:

  Beautiful scenery along the road. I'm pretty amazed to see all those different types of clouds in just one day.

  I'd call those "hill's", limestone cliffs. But hey, that's just me, so I guess my Dutchy way of saying it is incorrect anyhow. :-)

  Good you're picking up on the Cantonese. Next try: "dung leng cha" without somebody insulting with a female body part... ;-)

  Come on, it's not that hard to order chicken rice, get those arms flapping! :-D

• At Tue 28, July 2009, the tall guy wrote:

  :) I tried the chicken dance - people just laughed. Might have received a better response had I not been wearing bike shorts.

  Yeah i think they are pretty much hills.

  Cool "old chinese painting" hills

• At Tue 28, July 2009, Bart Verkoeijen wrote:

  Yep, that's it. Planning on going there sometime, Guillin looks magnificent!

Georgetown is colourful, saturated, friendly, multicultural and fantastic.
I think it’s definitely been one of the more enjoyable places on this journey so far!

Maybe it’s because it’s buzzing with many different people Indian, Muslim, Chinese, Malay, Nepalese and most likely countless others.

So much food! It’s the first real place where the mixture of culture is so outstanding.
We had breakfast at a dim sum place called “Old Winston”.

Due to it’s colonial history as a trading port (East India company days??) Georgetown is UNESCO heritage listed.

“forged from the mercantile and exchanges of Malay, Chinese, and Indian cultures and three successive European colonial powers for almost 500 years, each with its imprints on the architecture and urban form, technology and monumental art. Both towns show different stages of development and the successive changes over a long span of time and are thus complementary.” – http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1223

We spent the day cruising around taking photos, cleaning grease off my bicycle and eating roti, samosa and drinking cold milk tea.
The SD Guesthouse on “Love Lane” was a great place to stay – 25RM for a double. Free wifi too! Cool area in/near Chinatown full of hostels that were once shops/warehouses.

Great city, make sure you check it out if you are ever in Malaysia!

Total KM: 4 milk teas.

4 Comments

• At Tue 28, July 2009, Ash Vijayaratnam wrote:

  Hey Adam!

  While ur in Penang, you absolutely have to go on a trishaw tour. The places u can go is unbelieveable!

  Cheers!

• At Tue 28, July 2009, Bart Verkoeijen wrote:

  Yes Penang is G-R-E-A-T! :-)

• At Tue 28, July 2009, the tall guy wrote:

  Ash! Are those the tricycle rickshaw folks?

  Would have been cool!

• At Thu 30, July 2009, Lachlan wrote:

  "Chicks and Furniture" makes me laugh way more than it probably should.

Not much to say about today, spent most of it waiting for the ferry from Langkawi to Penang – the 2pm was fully booked so had to wait until 5:15pm. Caught up on emails and drank milo from a box.

The ferry was about 75RM plus an extra 10-20RM for our bikes. The boat folks lashed the bikes onto the front of the ferry. I can’t really see where the extra RM went.
The journey took about 3 hours.

Total KM: ummm… should this be in knots?