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
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?
Day 12 began with an attempt to ride from Kuah over to Pantai Cenang (a.k.a Cenang Beach).
I think I must have got up out of the wrong side of bed today, or maybe the humidity is just annoying.
An attempt to ride over in the morning just ended up being hot and frustrating, with the tray on the back of my bike finally giving way – the single bracket that joins the frame to the bar under the seat snapped!
Grabbed some breakfast at a local place for about 14RM (2 people inc. 2 milk teas) and I asked the gentleman who served us if he knew where i could get my bike fixed. He got his son to take us up the street and show us the place!
2RM later I was back on the road thanks to the helpful guys at the local scooter/bike repair shop.
The middle of the day was pretty hot and humid so just killed that off catching up on web based cool stuff and then hot back on our bikes around 4pm – was a little cooler.
The ride over to Pantai Cenang must be about 20km or so maximum. It’s a really nice ride, a bit hilly but we were able to gun through it a bit without the weight of our bags to hold us back.
Good fun on the downhills
We got to Pantai Cenang after about 45 minutes just as the sun was starting to head home.
It’s a pretty spectacular view here and a nice beach too. The sun continued to set and created one of those amazing ‘matte-painting’ style vistas that looked kinda fake. 🙂
It’s nice here, but maybe the kind of nice that you use when you talk about someone who is nice. Not cool. Not crazy. Not unbelievable. Just nice, & clean.
Nice place, but i’ve got no problem staying in Kuah for 40RM/night at the Hotel Asia.
Leaving Pantai Cenang guess what happened?
NICHOLAS GOT A FLAT TYRE.
It was inevitable, funny we made it the whole was through Thailand without any troubles!
Fixed the tyre and rode back in the dark covered in grease – munching on millions of mosquitos on the way.
Total KM: 40?
I think since Nakhon Si Tammarat there has been a pretty gradual change in feel of “Thai-ness”.
The culture moves from predominately Buddhist to a mixture of both Muslim and Buddhist (and probably a bunch more).
My love for kapow-moo and lahd-nah is now replaced with a love for roti and beef curries. Yummo!
Yep, it’s all about the food.
We left Hat Yai around 7am and rode pretty solidly until Sadao where it started to hammer down rain, and not friendly warm rain, COLD bone chillin rain. We killed a bit of time there and I asked Nicholas if he thought this part of Thailand seemed a little ‘less friendly’ than the previous places we’d been riding through.
I found in Hat Yai, and en route to the border of Malaysia, people were more stand-offish and there weren’t the abundance of smiley Thai folks. We’re both not really sure why. We put it down to perhaps the recent murders and bombings that have been a big issue for the past few years. Anyway, it’s still very beautiful and the people are as well!
End Mission 1.
Begin Mission 2.
We made it to Malaysia!
1200km+ of pedalling along and who knows how many litre of water, sponsor, pepsi and other sugared drinks we are chilling on the island of Langkawi in upper west side Malaysia.
The border crossing was easy, took about 5 minutes to get out of Thailand – had to fill out the form – and about 5 minutes to get into Malaysia. The folks all laughed when we told them we were riding to Singapore, but then gave us props for riding all the way from Bangkok.
It wasn’t too strange riding into another country, except that the E1 doesn’t have any space on the side of the lanes for cyclers/breakdowns/dead dogs to go. But we soon headed west on the 194 and made it to Kuala Perlis. It was a pretty slow but nice ride, countryside is picturesque like Thailand but in some ways maybe even more green – is that possible?
Not a whole lot in Kuala Perlis except for some nice girls working at a cafe who helped us get lunch.
I realised that a few Bahasa Malay words sounded pretty damn close to the Bahasa Indonesia I learnt back in primary school and for a stint at Telopea Park high school. I can count from 1-10, say thankyou, ask how someone is, and what there name is. And sing some song about a hat on my head “topi saya bundar, bundar topi saya…..”
The reason for riding to Kuala Perlis was to get the ferry to Langkawi island.
Ferry – 18RM (Malaysian Ringgit – roughly 10 times less a number than Thai Baht) per person plus 10RM per bicycle.
The reviews i read on the net said that Langkawi is a place for old people and that if you are 2 girls in their early 20’s you would be better off heading to Phuket. I figured both Nicholas and I aren’t girls in our early 20’s and i don’t think much of Phuket anyway.
Oh yeah, Langkawi Island is TAX FREE. 1 Tiger beer – 1.8RM!
So here we are, in a place called Kuah, staying at the Hotel Asia for 40RM a night, drinking a cheap beer and wondering where to wander through Malaysia.
Tomorrow the plan is to ride over to Pantai Centang (Centang beach) and see what that’s all about.1
Total KM: about 100km
