After a sleep disturb night because Craig called me at 4 a.m (cheers mate), in his defence he did ask if it was ok and it was great to catch up with him. I got going pretty late as I got chatting to a couple from Bali who were interested in what I was doing and gave me some wise words of encouragement, once moving after about 13km the heavens opened, when it rains here it like someone is pouring a bucket of water over your head. I decided not to push myself too hard over the first days as I haven’t ridden a bike for almost a month and the legs will need a few cobwebs blowing out. I got to the border crossing with Malaysia after mid-day, being my first I was rather excited and even more excited to be going into a new country. The first thing I noticed about Malaysia was how dirty it was compared to Singapore, rubbish was thrown everywhere and the general feel wasn’t a clean one.
Getting out of Johor Bahru proved to be more difficult than it should have been, after a break to collect my thoughts I realized I’d missed the turn I needed to take to be on highway 1 but being a great believer of all roads lead to Rome I blindly headed off in the general direction I thought I needed to be. After wasting time going back on myself I eventually found the road I needed to be on which was 4 lanes of high speed traffic! Not having confidence in Malaysian driving I was filling my pants with anything that want to come out. I soon discovered Malays are much more considerate drivers than most Australians and New Zealanders I have had the pleasure be in the way of, Malays drivers were giving me plenty of room and warm smiles to go with. At a petrol station I’d stopped at to get a drink a man approached me and he spoke really good English which I hadn’t come across yet, he asked me about my trip then proceeded to giving me his card and said any problems, just call him.
As time was getting on I decided I had to put in the time on the bike but opting to pull in at another town to get a drink the bike gods smiled on me but letting the rain fall as hard I think is earthly possible, it came down so hard the rain even came up! I then carried on till I got to Pontain where I chose to stop, but finding somewhere cheap to stay was never going to happen here, in a local bike shop they told me you won’t find anywhere cheaper than 60/70 Ringgit (rm), I managed to haggle a place to RM50 which is still way over my budget but what the heck I didn’t fancy camping. I then set about food and found a quirky outdoor eatery which was really cheap, RM3.5, although not being a tourist spot no one spoke much English so ordering was a bit random. Good to be back on the bike and first impressions of Malaysia are that of friendly people, we’ll see how the legs are tomorrow
Rain for the loss.
ReplyDeleteGood luck.