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
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.
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.
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
rest day – lots of wifi abuse and Indian food.
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?
We made it to Malaysia after 1200km+ !
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?
