Sorry for not keeping up here. :frown: We ended up spending too much time online and not enough time enjoying ourselves, so this fell by the wayside. If people are still interested, I will keep posting!

Nice.

3/2 Ride into Cambodia
 

It was already hot when we made our way downstairs at around 7:30 am for breakfast. While we were waiting for our food, we saw a motorbike ferry pull up to the town dock. When we crossed to Don Khong two days ago, we went to the vehicle ferry dock, which was about 2.5 miles south of town. I mentioned to Re that if this ferry was still here when we were ready to leave, that maybe we could take it instead. Several of the boat pilots gathered around while we loaded up the bikes, and I asked the one who spoke some English about the motorcycle ferry that was docked below. He motioned to another man sitting at the table who was suddenly interested to see us on our bikes. I asked how much, and through our go-between, the pilot said, 40,000 kip (5 bucks). That was what we paid coming to the island, so I quickly agreed to the price. Judging by the hoots and laughter from the other pilots, we were clearly overpaying. But, oh well. We rode the narrow, sand path down the hill to the riverbank, up the ramp, and onto the deck.

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A closer examination of the ferry revealed that it only had two hulls and seemed even ricketier than our previous ride.

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Our pilot fired up the engine, and we slowly made our way back across the Mekong. Re looked a little nervous riding back down the ramp and into the waiting sand, but she made it with no problem, and I soon followed.

We rejoined Highway 13 after a couple of miles and quickly rode the short distance to the border. Just shy of the border, we stopped to spend some of our remaining kip on fuel. Our bikes were nearly empty, so we filled them up and then put about eight liters in my jerrycan.

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We arrived at the Laos side of the border at about 10:00 am, and then the fun began. The border crossing here is notorious for overcharging passengers, both on the Laos and on the Cambodia side. We made it through Customs with no issues and no bribes requested, but that all changed once we reached Immigration. The officers here demand a 2 USD “stamping fee” to stamp you out of the country. This is nothing more than a bribe, and we refused to pay. Over the next hour and a half, we repeatedly presented our passports to be stamped, and repeatedly refused to pay. We enlisted the help of some other bus passengers, who decided to join our “Occupy the Laos Border” movement, and seven other travelers also refused to pay. At one point, the officer tried to keep the passports of an older German couple who wouldn't pay, and then things got heated. The officer relented and returned their passports but was getting very upset. Since their bus was waiting, they decided to skip being stamped out of Laos and instead, headed directly for Immigration on the Cambodia side. Since they never reappeared, it apparently worked. We did not want to take our chances on the Cambodia side, since it's even more corrupt by reputation, so we sat and waited, occasionally pleading our case. I guess the officer got tired of seeing us there, because he eventually stamped our passports, no bribe required.

By now, it was extremely hot out, and we were sweating our butts off. We rode to the Cambodia side, where the overcharging began again. My resolve had been sweated away, but Re still had some fight left in her. We did pay the 1 USD each for the “health check” but refused to overpay for our visas. Initially, we were told it would be 23 USD for each of our 20 USD visas, but after 15 minutes or so, of smiling and saying we didn't understand why we had to pay extra, they relented and gave us our visas for 20 USD each. The final request for more money, more money, more money was at the final checkpoint, where they wanted another 3 USD each for a “stamping fee.” Re simply told them, “No,” and so they stamped our new visas without another word. In the end, it took us about two hours to cross the border, but we saved ourselves a few dollars and felt like we took a bit of a stand against these corrupt practices. While we were on the Laos side, we spoke with several other travelers who couldn't understand why we wouldn't just pay the two dollars. We explained that three years ago, it was no dollars, and last year, it was a buck. Now they want two, and how much will it be next year? We counted the number of people who did pay the two dollars on the Laos side, and in the hour and a half we were there, the corrupt officials collected nearly 150 USD, and they are just getting bolder. Cambodia's border crossings have been notoriously corrupt for many years, and we were sad to see Laos playing catchup.

But, no matter, we were now in our 14th country of this trip and riding south. And it was HOT. And ugly. This part of northern Cambodia is dry and dusty and brown. It seems to be an even more impoverished area than Laos. Once we neared Stung Treng and the Mekong, the landscape turned a little green, but a few minutes later, we left the river behind, and it all turned brown again. Our goal for the night was to reach the town of Ban Lung, approximately 80 miles east of Stung Treng. We turned off of Highway 7, which was a well-paved and fast road, onto Highway 78, which was not. At first, the dirt surface was reasonably smooth and hard, and we were able to ride at about 30 mph for the first five miles. Over the next five miles, the road got progressively worse. The dirt got looser, corrugation appeared, and traffic was surprisingly heavy with trucks and minivans making scary passes. As a result, our speed dropped to between 15 and 20 mph. Since it was now 2:00 pm and we had another 70 miles to Ban Lung, we decided to stop and talk this over. Neither Re nor I was enjoying this riding, and the route would require us to take the same road back, so we'd have to do 160 miles of these conditions. The only reason we were going to Ban Lung was to see a volcanic lake, which suddenly didn't seem so important. We decided that if we kept our speed at about 15 mph, we could make it, but the question was, why would we? Instead, we returned (slowly) to Highway 7. On the ride back, the wisdom of our decision was confirmed when out of the dust we saw an oncoming minibus overtaking a truck and coming right for us. It was shades of India, as we dove for the soft edge of the road, and I distinctly heard the clank of the minibus hitting Re's rear view mirror. Remember, our mirrors only clear the ends of our handlebars by about an inch... .

Once back on Highway 7, we continued our fast ride to Kratie. Kratie was going to be our second stop in Cambodia because of its proximity to an Irawaddy dolphin viewing area. On the way, Re motioned to her bike, so we pulled over to see what the issue was. She said it was making a loud, funny noise, so we swapped bikes so I could check it out. The noise was from the chain area, and the bike was gently lurching. Awesome. We hopped off, unpacked the tools, and I removed the chain case, to once again, try to figure out what's going on. Her chain has a distinct tight spot, but adjusting the chain loose enough causes the rest of the chain to oscillate. We did loosen the chain slightly, and we will have to look into it more tomorrow. We pulled into Kratie at about 5:00 pm and stopped at the first ATM we spotted. Cambodia does have its own currency, the riel, but almost all prices are given in USD. Consequently, when we hit the ATM, it gave us our money in USD. Re found a nice, small hotel across the street from the Mekong and the market. The other nice feature of the hotel is that they would let us park our bikes in the lobby overnight. After unloading our gear into the room, we walked out to the market and had a delicious meal of freshly grilled beef, pork, sausage, and rice on the riverfront. We washed dinner down with a couple of Angkors, the local brew, before heading back to the hotel to shower off the quarter inch of dust we'd accumulated today.


160 miles in 6 hours including better than an hour to cover 20 miles of dirt road. I'm puzzled by Re's chain. We'll install our spare sprockets tomorrow to see if that makes a difference. Border costs: 40 USD for visas, and 2 USD for “health check.”

3/3 Sprockets and Dolphins
 

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After breakfast of fresh fruit and coffee, we unrolled the tarp on the sidewalk in front of our hotel and got to work. We did bring a set of spare sprockets with us, and I decided that swapping them might help us figure out what's going on with Re's bike. I've read several reports on the internet about how some Chinese sprockets aren't as concentric as they could be. Obviously, our bikes are from Taiwan, but I figured it couldn't hurt, and it would eliminate one variable. We removed the chain case halves, and the front sprocket. I compared the new front sprocket with the old one and could see no discernible wear on the old sprocket and they appear to be identical in every other respect. We reinstalled the sprocket using blue Loc-tite and then removed the rear wheel. When I lifted up the back end of the bike so Re could slide out the rear wheel, her rack made some ominous sounds. After I set the bike back down, we looked underneath and could see that not only had the old cracks reappeared, but there were at least four new ones. Ugh. I know they say not all crack is bad, but... I was at least glad to see that Re's rear sprocket was still firmly attached to the hub, but the blue Loc-tite we used on the bolts last time made removing them difficult. Once we removed the sprocket, Re noticed that one of the bolt holes wasn't exactly round. I looked at it, and sure enough, the metal was deformed on one side of the hole, and the hole, indeed, was slightly elongated. We surmised that this must have been a result of the bolt backing out and catching the chain case mount when we were in Namibia.

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It makes sense that an impact strong enough to bend that sprocket mounting bolt as much as it did could have also affected the sprocket. (The photo above is from the incident in Namibia, showing the bent bolt) Other than that, the sprockets appeared to be identical, so we installed the new one before reassembling the rear end. We left the chain adjustment slightly loose, as the tight spot seemed to be better, but unfortunately, it was still there. Next stop: new chain. Since we haven't seen any bike shops in Kratie, Re will have to live with this chain for a little while longer. While we had the tools out, I also adjusted Re's front brake and clutch. After packing up the tools and rolling up the tarp, it was shower time.

Before lunch, we took the opportunity to catch up on some emails and work on our Cambodia itinerary a little. Re walked off to the market and returned with baguettes and iced coffee for lunch, which were delicious. In the early afternoon, we uploaded some more photos to our Smugmug account, worked on some writing, and firmed up our Cambodia itinerary.

Our big plan for the afternoon was to ride to Kampi and take a boat trip to see the endangered, freshwater Irrawaddy dolphins that live in the Mekong in that area. Recommendations are that you go later in the afternoon when it's cooler and also make a stop on the return journey at Phnom Sombok to see the sunset. Around 3:00 pm, we hopped on our bikes and rode approximately 10 miles to Kampi. The ride was scenic, running along the Mekong, but the pavement was uneven, making for a bouncy ride. We arrived in Kampi, found the site from which the dolphin boats leave, paid our 18 bucks for tickets, and headed down the riverbank for our boat. As our captain drove the boat towards the group of boats already out on the river, we could see dolphins surfacing in the distance. Over the next hour or so, we moved to various observation points in the river and sighted dolphins many times.

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We tried to take some photos, but since our camera is still broken, all we ended up with was pictures of the water. Re did remember to bring our binoculars, so we were able to get some decent views of the animals when they broke the surface.

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Irrawaddy dolphins are kind of funny looking animals. Personally, I think they look a bit like penises. Re had read that the river people believe that spirits of the departed inhabit the dolphins. There used to be many more dolphins in Cambodia until the Khmer Rouge started a program to exterminate them, apparently in an attempt to extinguish these animist beliefs. The good news is, conservation efforts are paying off, and in recent years, there's been an increase in their numbers.

Having seen enough dolphins, we headed back to dry land and south to Phnom Sombok. When we arrived at the base of the hill, we saw the staircase that would take us 70 meters to the top of the hill. That seemed like a lot of steps. Lucky for me, I had spotted a sign that seemed to point to a road that went up the hill before we pulled into the parking area. We turned the bikes around and rode up what turned out to be one of the steepest hills we've ridden up yet. At the top of the hill, we found a small parking area, but we still had over 300 steps to the top of the hill. We climbed to the top and watched the sun sink over the Mekong and the fields below. Not wanting to descend that hill in the dark, we left before dusk and made our way back into town.

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We did see the sun set on our way back.

Before dinner, Re did some research on hotels and restaurants in the next few towns we would visit. For dinner, we had decided to return to the same market stall as last night, but when we got there, we found an empty space in the line of food carts. Bummer. Since we had no plan B, we walked up and down, looking at our options, before settling on a noodle stand with an enthusiastic proprietress. When the food arrived, I had another one of those premonitions that I should not eat this, but instead, I did. The meal wasn't sitting very well, and to make matters worse, when we went to pay for our food, the bill was much higher than it should have been. Shame on us for not asking, but whereas every other stand's price for beer was 2500 riel, here our friendly, smiley cook was charging us 4000 riel. It's not the money, since the difference is less than 1 USD, it's the feeling of being taken advantage of. And the funny feeling in my tummy. Later in the evening, my tummy wasn't feeling very good, and just before I went to bed, I had to make a mad dash for the bathroom. Son of a bitch.

30 miles in about 1.5 hours. Re says that chain is making less noise and is less jerky, but that there is still a problem.

3/4 Ride to Kampong Cham
 

After the trouble before bed last night, I also got up twice during the night and made the mad dash to the toilet. And twice again this morning while we packed up and got ready to go. Re left me whimpering in the bathroom and went down to the first aid kit on the bike to get our last course of Azithromycin for me. After I took the Azith, Re cut up a pineapple she bought yesterday for breakfast. Since I wanted to see how it would sit in my stomach before we hit the road, it was after 10:00 am when we finally started riding. While I rode to the gas station to get fuel for the day, Re exchanged the Lao kip that we had forgotten to exchange before leaving the country. Since kip cannot be changed outside of Laos, we got whacked with a really bad exchange rate. Oh well.

Our goal for today was Kampong Cham, a city further down the Mekong. Not much to say about the ride today, other than it was again hot, ugly, and boring. We stopped for fuel and lunch somewhere near the Vietnam border. Since I wasn't feeling confident enough in my sphincter strength to risk eating much, we made do with Diet Cokes and Alaskan King Crab-flavored chips (made in Vietnam?) from the gas station. We only had a couple of hours to go after lunch, and the scenery remained largely the same. The only change was that traffic got more aggressive as we neared Kampong Cham. We crossed the Mekong and rolled into town around 3:00 pm and found a very nice room at the very nice Mekong Hotel, with a balcony overlooking the river. I was not feeling particularly well, so Re left me to take a nap while she went out and explored the town.

Later that evening, I was feeling much better, so we went out for dinner and both had some delicious Khmer dishes. After dinner, I felt much better. The Azithromycin seems to have worked as advertised this time. After a dessert of cookies and watermelon, we decided to take the evening off and actually watch some English-language TV for the first time in a couple of weeks. We watched about 15 minutes of CNN before switching over to something else better for my blood pressure.

160 miles in about 5 hours. We're definitely going to need to change Re's chain soon.

3/5 Ride to Phnom Penh
 

Last night, we decided that our next stop would be Phnom Penh, where we could hopefully sort out Re's bike once and for all (or at least, for a little while). But before we headed to Phnom Penh, there were a couple of sights we wanted to see in Kampong Cham this morning. After finally rolling out of bed at around 7:00 am, and having a breakfast of fruit and coffee, we said goodbye to our nice room, loaded up the bikes, and hit the road.

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Our first stop was the bamboo bridge that runs from Kampong Cham to the island of Koh Paen, in the Mekong River. The bamboo bridge is an elaborate, maybe, half mile long bridge that connects the island to the mainland during the dry season. Every year, they disassemble and reassemble the bridge when the river is low enough. We found our way to the dirt road that leads down to the bridge, then slowly made our way onto the bamboo surface.

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The bridge is kind of spooky to ride on because the surface is covered with split bamboo that bounces when you ride over it, making a very strange noise. The other scary thing about it (for me, at least) is that the surface isn't exactly level, and there are only short bamboo uprights between you and a big splash.

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The other freaky thing is that the bridge is only slightly wider than one normal lane, and occasionally, you may meet an oncoming car, or more likely, a donkey cart loaded with wood or cured tobacco. We both made it across fine, but then ran into the fare collectors, who grossly overcharged us. We paid the toll and then rode across bamboo mats that covered the sand until we reached firmer ground. The island itself is very large. We rode for at least 10 to 15 minutes and never came to the other side, and in fact, my GPS showed a network of roads (floating magically in the water, since my map doesn't actually show the island).

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After riding through small towns, past a couple of wats, and through rice paddy, we turned around and headed back to the bridge. The return trip was no less nervous for me, since the right side of the bridge seemed to be even less level than the left.

Safely back on dry land, we headed to Wat Nokor, which is an 11th century ruined temple made of laterite and sandstone.

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The construction was similar to the temples at Angkor, but these were built by Mahayana Buddhists. We pulled into Wat Nokor, parked our bikes under a big tree, and then explored the grounds on foot.

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A modern Buddhist temple has been built in and around the ruins, so it's a bit of an odd juxtaposition.

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We spent 30 minutes or so walking around and sweating our asses off. Since it was getting too hot to stand around anymore, we hopped back on the bikes and rode off in search of some air flow.

It was now around 11:30, so we headed for Phnom Penh. Today's ride was only a few hours, but the landscape did change fairly dramatically during the ride. We came to our first real areas of organized agriculture and rode through large groves of trees, ponds of lotus flowers, and expanses of rice paddy. The other change for the day was that the roads were in fairly poor shape, and traffic was increasingly aggressive and unpredictable. After weeks of easy riding in Thailand and Laos, it felt at many points like we were back in India. My GPS guided us into the city and to the front steps of the Sunday Guesthouse. We stayed at the Sunday last time we were in Phnom Penh and found it to be a good combination of price, location, and amenities. Funnily enough, the room we are staying in is one of the rooms we stayed in last time as well. We parked our bikes, unloaded our gear, changed our boots for sandals, and walked up to the Sorya Market to look for a new camera. We found several camera stores in the Sorya area, and found a couple of options for cameras. The good news was that the two models we were interested in were more than an hundred dollars less than they were in Bangkok, but the bad news was, we couldn't decide which model to buy. So we walked the three quarters of a mile back to the guesthouse, empty-handed.

Phnom Penh is one place we don't need to discuss where we're going for dinner, since we've both been fantasizing about tonight's dinner for weeks. Last time we were here, we found our favorite restaurant in Phnom Penh- Nike's Pizza House. Cheese and expert preparation is what makes Nike's special. Cheese is a rare commodity in most of the countries we've visited recently, so if you get any, it's usually not much. Cambodia, or at least, Phnom Penh, is a different story. They import cheeses from all over the world and they are not afraid to use them. We walked the familiar route down to Nike's and ordered the best thing on the menu: the calzones. Re ordered hers filled with spinach, blue cheese, mozzarella, garlic cheddar, parmesan, and tomato sauce. I ordered mine with salami, tomato sauce, ham, mushrooms, blue cheese, and mozzarella. They can cook them one of two ways: baked or deep-fried. Guess which we went for? Oh yeah, deep-fried. When the crispy, brown, fried footballs of love showed up on our plates, we did what we usually do: cut them down the center and swap them half for half. As soon as our knives sank into the crust, cheese started to ooze out and pool on the plate. Oh, the cheesemanity! They were as good as we remembered, and we washed them down with an Angkor. After dinner we stopped at the Lucky grocery store for some pastries and beer. Re also picked up a box of her “natural” hair color to take care of the two inches of roots she's been showing. Back at the room, we kicked on the A/C and enjoyed our pastries while we caught up on some emails.

80 miles in about 2 hours.

3/6 Camera Shopping
 

After we finally rolled out of bed, Re walked up to the local market for iced coffee, baguettes, and a watermelon. Back at the room, she sliced up the watermelon, and we took our goodies up to the lounge where we chatted with Torsten and Marin, a German couple who are in the midst of bicycling from Germany to New Zealand. They are a fascinating couple who have already been on the road for a year and a half and have ridden through Iran, the Stans, and China, just to name a few. We spent a couple hours talking about our experiences on the road, and I must say that Re and I were more than a little jealous of some of the places they've been, but certainly not jealous of all the pedaling.

We finally realized it was nearly 11:00, and we needed to get a camera today. We jumped in the shower and then promptly went to lunch. I have been jonesing for a hamburger for a month now, and I knew just where to get a good one. We walked over to the Java Cafe near the Independence Monument and were glad to see that it was still there. The Java Cafe is a bit of a splurge for budget travelers, but it has a nice atmosphere and the food is excellent. For some dumb reason, Re ordered the quiche and a salad, which was apparently very good. But I went for the burger. They grind their own meat, bake their own buns, and the burger came covered in a mushroom and cheese sauce. It was definitely the burger I have been daydreaming about.

After lunch, we walked back up to Sorya Market area and hit the camera shops again. But no one was bargaining. As I said yesterday, their prices were very good, but they can always be better. Re tried negotiating at several shops without any success, so we took a break, went into the Sorya Mall, and cooled off in their A/C for a little while. Over an ice cream cone, we decided that Re would give it one more shot on our preferred model, but we would pay their asking price if we couldn't do any better. Re made one more run at the store and was able to finally negotiate a 10 USD discount. Yay! So ten minutes later, she walked out with our brand-new, Panasonic Lumix TZ18, 16X optical zoom, 14.1 megapixel, new camera. And then we walked the three quarters of a mile back to the guesthouse. This had actually turned into an all day trip since it was nearly 4:00 pm when we finally made it back to the room. While we cooled off, Re worked on some writing for a while, and then we returned to Nike's, this time for a couple of their excellent pasta dishes and some garlic bread. After dinner, it was time for some more writing.


0 miles.

3/7 Visas, Carburetors, and Re's Rack
 

Since yesterday's breakfast was so enjoyable, we repeated it today. Fruit, coffee, and baguettes in the lounge with Torsten and Marin. About an hour into our conversation, Torsten mentioned that they were going to pick up their Thai visas today. Whoops. Guess what we forgot we were supposed to be doing while we were in Phnom Penh?! One of the big things we meant to do here was get our visas for our return to Thailand. Torsten told us that they had to wait for five days to get their visas(!) and that the Consulate only accepted applications until 11:30 am. Since it was already after 10:00, we excused ourselves and ran for the shower. After we got cleaned up, we got together all the necessary photos, money, and passports, and went down to the bikes. Since the Thai Consulate appeared to be about 2 miles away, we decided to ride.

Re's bike started up fine, but for some unknown reason, mine was very reluctant to start. Eventually, it did start, but it wasn't running cleanly. We pulled out onto the road and over the next ten blocks or so, my bike ran progressively worse. It eventually stalled and wouldn't restart. Of course, by now it was 11:00 am and hot, hot, hot in the sun. I pulled out my Swiss Army knife and opened the drain on the carb bowl. Plenty of fuel spilled onto the ground, so I pulled the sparkplug, which appeared fine and sparked brightly. Huh. Since it was now after 11:00, Re made for the Consulate, while I pushed my bike back to the hotel. Before she left, we made sure she had all the paperwork, but I forgot that she also had the room key. So after pushing the bike back to the hotel, I was now sweat-soaked and locked out of the room. I was able to borrow the housekeeper's key to get into the room and cool off for a while.

After an hour or so, Re returned with the good news that not only was she able to forge my signature on my visa application, but also, she was able to sweet talk the official into having our visas ready in only two days. Sweet! We headed out for lunch and then returned to see what was wrong with my bike. We unrolled the tarp, got out the tools, and dropped the bowl off the carb. In the bottom of the bowl, there was a drift of fine, whitish powder, and we also found that the pilot jet was partially blocked. We were able to clean the jet and then reassembled the carburetor. A quick thumb of the starter button, and my bike started up and settled into a nice, even idle. I am puzzled by the crap in the bowl, because we just installed a new fuel filter that claimed to be a genuine Honda part less than a month ago. Oh well, as long as it's running.

Since we already had the tools out and were grubby, it seemed like a good time to get Re's rack welded. We removed her top case and undid the four bolts that secure the rack.

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Once we removed it, we could see the extent of the damage, and it was bad. One of the men who works at the hotel pointed us in the direction of a welder, so we walked out to find him. A few blocks from the hotel, we found an area where old motorcycles are made into new motorcycles. Many small shops here take the best parts out of five bikes and make four very good looking bikes out of them. Everywhere, people were painting, polishing, and cleaning up secondhand underbones. We spied a man sitting on the side of the street making a crashed kickstand look like new. Once again, our welder spoke no English, but understood what we needed done.

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After he finished the kickstand, he immediately set to work on the rack, and 20 minutes later, he handed us back a freshly welded rack. This time, the repair cost a whole 2.50 USD. Cambodia is very expensive! We tromped back to the hotel and reinstalled the rack and top case. When it breaks again, we'll have to get some steel added, since there's not much left to weld. We headed back to the room to get clean and dirty and then spent some time doing some writing.

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Later that evening, we went back out for some more fried calzones before returning to the hotel for a relaxing evening.

4 miles for Re, less than a mile for me.

3/8 Tuol Sleng and the Russian Market
 

Re returned this morning with iced coffee, fruit, and still hot from the fryer, fried dough sticks. I walked upstairs to look for Torsten and Marin, but they had already left, so Re and I dined alone. After breakfast and a shower, we rode the bikes down to Tuol Sleng. The Tuol Sleng Museum is an old high school that was transformed into Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge used S-21 as a detention and torture facility for suspected enemies of the cause. After the prisoners were tortured into outlandish confessions, they were transported to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, where they were murdered. By the late 70s, they were killing as many as 100 victims a day. We arrived in time to watch a French documentary about the Khmer Rouge before touring the grounds. The movie and museum were sobering, and I kind of wish I had not come here. On display in some of the old classrooms were the bedframes that the victims were chained to while they were tortured, and many of the original pieces of torture equipment were also on display. But the most haunting part of the museum is the, literally, thousands of photographs of the victims that were taken the day they arrived at S-21. When you consider that only seven prisoners left this place alive, it is very sad to see the faces of the people who did not. I expected to see the faces of adult men, but what I was not prepared to see was the women with babies in their arms, and children who appeared to be as young as five years old. All enemies of the state, and all murdered.

After touring the museum, we rode a little further south to the Psar Tuol Tom Pong Market, which is also known as the “Russian Market.” We visited here on our last trip and knew it would be the best place to find cheap, cotton boxer shorts to help soothe our barking butts. We also recalled that there was a large section of the market devoted to new and used motorcycle parts and accessories. As we rode to the market, my bike started to cough and sputter, but was running well enough at small throttle openings to allow us to keep going. We spied several motorcycle shops right outside the market, and I went into one of them to look for a chain. Apparently, there are no 420 o-ring chains available in Cambodia, because the English speaking shop assistant told me he'd never seen one. He did, however, have a non o-ring chain that I purchased for the exorbitant price of 4.50 USD. See, I told you Cambodia is expensive! The bad news on the chain was that it was 100 links, and we need 96 links. And of course, I didn't pack a file in our tool kit. I'm sure somebody can solve this problem for us for a dollar.

Chain in hand, we went into the market itself, where the first order of business was finding some lunch. After soup and some fruit shakes, we made our way into the warren of clothing stalls. There, Re found us some “genuine” Calvin Klein cotton boxers. Stylish! I wandered off to look in the tool section, while Re purchased herself a new krama (a traditional Khmer scarf that can be used as a sarong, headwrap, or dust blocking scarf). Riding back to the hotel, my bike coughed and bucked the entire way, but did make it under its own power this time. Sigh. Since it was hot again today and the sky was getting dark in the distance, we decided to put off working on my bike, and instead, opted for a repeat of yesterday afternoon.

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Later, we grabbed our rain jackets and walked out to the aptly named, Chinese Noodle Restaurant. Here, they unsurprisingly make Chinese noodles, delicious ones at that. After they hand stretch the noodles, they either fry them or put them in soups with a variety of accompaniments.

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We watched the guys pulling and stretching the dough while we decided on what to order. We had one plate of fried dumplings, one plate of fried noodles with beef, and one plate of green beans and black mushrooms. These dishes plus two Diet Cokes cost 7 USD, and they were damned tasty and worth every penny. While we were eating, it did begin to sprinkle, and there was lightning in the sky. On the walk back, we stopped for some pastries at the Bayon Bakery and some beer at the Caltex. High class all the way.

5 miles. WTF is up with my bike?

3/9 More Bike Maintenance, Visas, and No Museums.
 

After breakfast, we once again sat down bikeside and got to work. Once again, we pulled the bowl off my carburetor, but this time, we found no schmutz in the bowl. A glance through the pilot jet revealed no problem there either. Today, the main jet was the culprit. It was nearly completely plugged, so we blew it out and put everything back together. Once again the engine fired up immediately and settled into a nice idle. I sent Re out to have her new chain shortened while I removed the chain case and the old chain. Re returned a few minutes later with a 96-link chain and a story of a novel way to remove a link. Apparently, the mechanic to whom she entrusted the job, had a small, metal plate with a nut welded to it. He placed one end of the pin that needed to be removed in the nut and then pounded on the other side of the pin with a hammer. Once the pin began to move, he then used a small screwdriver as a punch to pound the pin through the rest of the way. The price for such mechanical precision? A mere 50 cents. And here, I thought you needed a grinder or file. The chain didn't look any worse for the wear, so we installed it with a new clip-type master link, and adjusted the chain. The rear wheel now spun easily, with no apparent tight spots to be found. We reinstalled the chain case and lubed the chain.

Our plan for the rest of the morning and early afternoon was to tour the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda near the riverfront of Phnom Penh. Something just didn't seem right about the plan, so I checked the listing for the sights in the Lonely Planet. Sure enough, they are closed from 11:00 am until 2:30 pm for lunch. Since we need to be at the Thai Embassy at 3:30 pm, it doesn't look like we'll be doing any touring today. Since we had plenty of time on our hands, we decided to try a restaurant a little further afield than our usual haunts. This place was supposed to have Malaysian and Padang food, and we are big fans of both. So we grabbed our hats, water, and map, and set out on foot. We found the street easily enough, but when we arrived at the address listed, we found a bicycle shop. We walked up and down the street looking for the restaurant, to no avail. The only other thing we had to do today was hit the ATM, and the nearest branch of the Canadia bank was as the Sorya Mall, so we headed there instead. We got a bit lost, but eventually found our way. In addition to the ATM, Sorya also has a food court on the 4th floor, where we had loklak and fruit shakes for lunch. Since the mall was cool, and outside the mall was really hot, we were in no hurry to leave. Eventually, we made the long, hot walk back to the hotel, where Re did a little writing.

Shortly after 3:00 pm, we fired up the bikes and started riding toward the Thai Consulate. Within eight blocks, my bike started running shittily again. We continued to the Thai Consulate, but by the time we got there, my bike was barely running. While Re waited to pick up our passports and new visas, I again checked to make sure there was fuel in the bowl and bright spark. Since two miles is a long way to push a Symba, especially on a very hot day, I rode the lurching and bucking beast back to the hotel. Thoroughly pissed off at the bike (or more accurately, at my diagnostic and wrenching skills), I parked the bike and decided I needed to think about it a bit more. While Re worked on some writing, I paged through the Symba shop manual pdf to see where else crap could be entering the system. I dunno.

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We decided to return to the Chinese Noodle Restaurant for dinner tonight, where we had bowls of noodle soup and some more of the delicious green beans with black mushrooms. We picked up some pastries at the bakery and some shoju for the drinkies. Back in the room, Re worked on some more writing while I watched River Monsters.

5 miles. Okay, seriously, WTF is wrong with my bike?

3/10 Bike Maintenance and No Museums
 

After breakfast, we once again sat down next to my bike, took off the legshields, and got to work. This time, I was determined to clean everywhere. I removed the carburetor and completely disassembled it. The needle and slide were both spotlessly clean, as was the carb bowl. The pilot jet was again partially plugged, and the main jet tube had some sore of white deposit on the ouside of it. This same deposit was found on the A/F screw. I blew out all the passages of the carb as best I could, before reassembling and reinstalling the carb. I've been inside plenty of carbs before, but I have never seen anything like this fine, white, powdery substance. I don't know if it's some sort of artifact resulting from the wide variety of fuels we've been mixing? While I was working on the carb, Re removed the visible fuel lines and rinsed them out. As I finished putting stuff together, Re walked around the corner to a local bike shop and returned with a fresh bottle of oil. In the meantime, I also removed the air box and air filter. I cleaned the air filter with some gasoline and then re-oiled it with the new oil that Re bought. Since we were cleaning one air filter, it seemed like a good idea to clean the other one. A few minutes later, we were installing a freshly cleaned and oiled air filter in Re's bike. After washing up, I thumbed the started button on my bike, and just like yesterday, and the day before, it fired right up and settled into a nice, even idle. I adjusted the idle speed down a little bit and then took it out for a test ride. After about four miles on the streets of Phnom Penh, it was still running great. Yay!

While we were working on the bikes, Re and I were also talking about our future plans and the rest of this trip. We continued to talk in the shower and then on our way down to lunch at the Java Cafe. It is seeming more and more likely that we will be eliminating Australia from our itinerary, and Indonesia looks vulnerable too. For lunch, we had paninis (I have never had a panini before, but it sounded good).

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Mine was filled with pastrami and emmenthal cheese, while Re had the roasted veggies with emmenthal as well. The verandah at the Java Cafe is a good place to take it easy, so we decided once again, to skip the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, and instead, spent more time talking at the Java.

Later, we walked along the Mekong and then along the Tonle River. We sat on a wall overlooking the water and pondered whether we could just buy a little boat to carry us and our little Symbas to the sea. Actually, most of our conversation today has revolved around the best way for us to live overseas for a few years while making some money. Late in the afternoon, we went back to our room for a fruit snack and some more research. Since it was to be our last night in Phnom Penh, we couldn't leave without one more round of fried calzones at Nike's. After dinner, we picked up some chocolate eclairs and more shoju for a nightcap.


4 miles for me. I am cautiously optimistic that my fuel problem is solved.

3/11 Ride to Siem Reap
 

One consequence of yesterday's conversation is that we will be accelerating our trip a little bit. With that in mind, we've crossed off a couple of destinations in Cambodia. Instead, we decided to head the 200 or so miles to Siem Reap. Seam Reap is best known as being the home of Angkor Wat, a huge temple complex which we visited during our last trip. But this time, we won't visit Angkor Wat, we will instead see some of the more outlying temples on a day trip from Siem Reap.

After another breakfast of fruit, coffee, and baguettes, we showered and loaded up the bikes. With fingers crossed that my fueling problem was solved, we pulled out of the hotel at 9:00 am. Leaving Phnom Penh was hectic and slow. It took us about an hour and a half to cover the first 26 miles, but fortunately, the traffic soon got much lighter. The little bit of rain we've had over the last couple of days seemed to go a long way toward greening up the countryside since it didn't seem as brown today. The roads continued to be busy and occasionally potholed, until we reached the junction with Highway 7. Once we turned west to stay on Highway 6, the road surface got better, but the road did get noticeably narrower. There was some crazy overtaking by oncoming traffic, but in general, it was a good ride.

As we got closer to Siem Reap, the scenery changed.

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It became much greener and we rode next to lakes and bright green rice paddy.

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The day did get very hot, and we stopped several times for water breaks. We didn't seem to mind the heat as much today, since we knew what awaited us once we made it to our hotel. We arrived at the Angkor Friendship Inn at 3:30 pm. We stayed here for five nights during our last visit, so we knew about their pool. When we arrived, Sophia, the manager, recognized us from our last visit. We dumped our stuff in the room, put on our bathing suits, and jumped in the pool. We spent an hour or so splashing in the water before getting a shower.

Later, we went out for dinner at a little restaurant in the old market, where we had many lunches the last time we were here. As we were finishing our food, another couple sat down at the table next to us and said, “Aren't you the people riding the little bikes in India?” Excuse me, are we now internationally famous? No. we actually met this couple and her parents in Hampi at Christmastime. The four of the would come to our guesthouse to have breakfast in the restaurant upstairs, and we spoke at length with “the mom” about traveling in Africa. It is a small world.

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Apparently, Fabian and Tanja recently left her parents in India and came to Bangkok with their bicycles. They are going to do some riding in southeast Asia while Tanja's parents continue their now more than five-year round the world bicycle trip. We had a pleasant evening chatting with them about our respective trips before we said goodnight and went back to the room.


215 miles in 6.5 hours. My bike is running great, and Re's new chain seems to have solved her problems.

3/12 Adventure Riding, Cambodia Style
 

Since our guesthouse includes breakfast in the room rate, we walked downstairs and had eggs, bacon(!), toast, and coffee. After finishing a second cup of coffee, we returned to the room, put on our gear, and headed out on the bikes. Our destination for today was Koh Ker, which is a temple complex approximately 80 miles northeast of Siem Reap. This used to be one of the most inaccessible temple ruins in Cambodia, but the guidebook said that the area had recently been de-mined, and a new toll road had been opened. The difficulty with the trip today, is that the new road doesn't show up on our several year old map and is also not found in my GPS. Instead, we have some vague directions to ride east of town on Highway 6 and then turn north at Dam Dek. I understood that Dam Dek was approximately ten miles east of Siem Reap, so when, at the ten mile mark, we spied a likely looking road, we turned north. Signs on the road said that it would eventually lead to Anlong Veng, but they didn't mention Koh Ker. After 20 miles or so, Re beeped her horn and signaled to pull over. She was concerned that we were not on the right road, and she was correct. The toll road was supposed to start in Beng Melea, and a quick look at my GPS showed that Beng Melea was in fact, about 15 miles due east of our location. It also showed that the road we were on was Highway 67, and that about seven miles south, we could take Highway 66 to Beng Melea.

We made a U-turn, headed back south, and shortly found ourselves on “Highway” 66. The road started out promisingly enough, it was two lanes wide and was hard-packed dirt and gravel. The hard-pack did not last long. We soon found ourselves on a road that continued to narrow, and the road surface was now largely two to three-inch deep sand.

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We slithered and snaked our way down the road and then came to an area of deep mud in the middle of a field. We continued on, and a short while later, we came to a very rudimentary bridge that crossed a narrow stream.

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The bridge surface was only inches above the water, and it was made out of scrap lumber and half-rounds of trees.

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Since Re's lighter, I sent her across first. At least we wouldn't have far to fall. Prior to this bridge, there had been tire tracks left by four-wheeled vehicles, but after this bridge, there were only motorcycle tracks in the dirt.

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The highway also narrowed to a single lane and wound its way through people's fields, past their houses, and occasionally, through the trees. We weren't making very good time as we bumped and bounced our way over the sometimes hard ground and slid our way through the sand washes.

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In the trees, we came upon another bridge that was a little scarier than the last one. It was made entirely of half-rounds of trees, but the ravine that it spanned was eight to nine-feet deep. This time, I elected to go first, and when I pulled out onto the center board, I was dismayed when the board flexed downward under my weight. But, I hate to backtrack, so over it I went. Of course, it held. I am sure that dozens of motorbikes cross it every day.

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Maybe a mile farther, we came across a small pond where the road should be. Not sure that we wanted to tackle this on our little bikes, we backtracked to see if there was an alternate route. No luck, there were streams on either side of the road, so we either had to go through, or we had to backtrack all the way back to Highway 67. I may have mentioned my aversion to backtracking.

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We scouted the water and could see that there were some motorbike tire tracks in the mud, but we could not tell how deep the muddy water was in the center. The right shoreline looked like our best opportunity, but it was choked with trees, brush, and some prickly vines. I walked out part way and removed some of the dead branches that hung into the water while the mud sucked my boots in. The water didn't appear deeper than ten inches or so near the shore, so we decided to go for it.

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After giving Re a quick pep talk about water crossings, I jumped on my mighty Symba and crawled toward the water. For the first 15 or 20 feet, I was able to stay reasonably close to the shoreline but then had to steer into deeper water to avoid some tree limbs sticking out from the shore. I didn't stop to measure the water depth, but I did hear the eerie sound of my exhaust system being completely submerged. I leaned back in toward the shore and promptly got hung up on a tree limb. The limb was about 1.5 inches across and had either been broken or cut off. It was stiff enough to stop my forward momentum, and as a result, my front wheel sank farther into the mud. I stayed on the gas the entire time, as I reached over with my left hand to move the branch. Re said the rooster tail was impressive, but that she had stopped taking pictures in anticipation of having to help me unstick my bike. Once I was free of the branch, I was able to drive the remaining ten feet up onto drier land. Before Re made her attempt, I fought my way back to the offending limb on foot and pulled it out of the way. That seemed to help, as Re made it through without bogging down or having to detour into the deeper water.

Once she was on drier land, we assessed the next obstacle. Between us and the road was a muddy area approximately ten feet wide, with a small stream running through it. My attempt was unsuccessful and my rear wheel got stuck in the stream channel. I tried to power my way out, but instead, sank the rear wheel up to the swingarm in the mud.

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I got off to assess the situation and had to laugh when I saw my bike standing on its own and the stream running through my rear wheel. Re lent a hand, and we were able to pick up the back end enough to shove it onto firmer ground. The ground was too muddy for me to risk getting back onto the bike, so instead, I started it up and walked it to terra firma. When it was time for Re to try, I walked behind her bike and was able to help lift the rear wheel through the stream and muddiest areas.

After another relatively dry and sandy section, we came to another shallow water crossing, and Re decided to show me how it is done. We continued down the single-track road and came to another muddy area with a number of streams running through.

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We picked the driest and shallowest areas we could, and made it through with no problems.

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Then, we came to another scary, narrow bridge, but this one was actually made out of cut lumber (so it has to be better, right?)

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After this last bridge, the road got even narrower, and then we came to an area of rice paddy. Just when we thought the road couldn't get any less road-like, the tire tracks we were following veered up a ramp and onto the narrow, earthen dikes that separate the paddy. The ramp up was about two feet wide, ten feet long, and rose a distance of at least four feet. I hit it first in second gear and did not make it to the top. I could feel the bike lugging and opted to roll backwards down the ramp. I kicked it into first and told Re to do the same. The ramp was tricky because from the path, you had to turn left onto the ramp, ride up the ramp, then make a slight right onto the dike. Once up on the dike, I found myself on a narrow strip of dirt approximately two feet wide and at least three feet above the surface of the surrounding fields. I stopped to watch Re not make it up the ramp. As she neared the top of the ramp, I saw her bike slow drastically. Oh no, someone forgot the first rule of motorcycling: when in doubt, gas it. I could see the panicked look in her eyes when she reached out with her feet and found air. Not wanting to see the inevitable outcome of Re's latest encounter with physics, I instead, found a place to put my kickstand down, shimmied off the bike, and turned to see Re standing next to her Symba.

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Fortunately, she was fine, and the bike was too. After taking the, “look what I did” photo, we got the bike upright and walked it up the ramp.

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We continued through the rice fields for another mile or so before rejoining the single track that eventually led us to the paved road near Beng Melea. A check of the odometer and the watch revealed that it had taken us about two hours to cover the last 20 miles. It was a fun ride, but we were now both very tired and soaked to the skin.

We turned north, and after about five miles of lovely pavement, we reached the tollgate that led to Koh Ker and Beng Melea. Since it was another 50 miles to Koh Ker, and it was already after noon, and since Beng Melea was only two miles away, we decided to visit it instead. We paid for the admission tickets, rode through the tollbooth, and a couple minutes later, parked our bikes at the entrance.

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Beng Melea is another Angkor-era temple complex built in the 1100s with the same layout as Angkor Wat.

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The temple here is massive, and while some of it remains intact, much of it is just a jumble of gigantic, carved stones.

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We walked around, climbed over, and took many pictures over the next two hours. By the middle of the afternoon, we were both thoroughly hot and tired, so we trudged back to the bikes, put on our still damp gear, and headed south. This time, we took the sealed road all the way back to the pool. After soaking in the water for a while, we queued up photos to load to Smugmug and then walked out to dinner at the market. Re had amok with chicken, and I had the “Cambodian taco,” which is really more like banh xeo. The restaurant was having a special on draft Cambodia beer, so Re and I enjoyed a few before calling it a night. Between the exercise and the libations, we should sleep well tonight.


105 miles in about 6 hours. By my count, this completes day 225 of the trip. So far, our daily expenses have totaled 12,908 USD for an average of 57 USD per day.

3/13 Utility Day in Siem Reap
 

After yesterday's exertions, it was a slow morning. Both of us awoke with sore hips from too much paddling in the sand. We eventually wandered down to breakfast and then back up to the room, where I worked on some writing, while Re washed our muddy, smelly boots. While she was at it, she also washed our helmet liners since they were nasty too.

We decided to take a break for lunch and headed downstairs, where we found Allen and Maureen, an Australian couple doing missionary work at a local orphanage and school. We had met them briefly on the day we arrived, and they were most interested in our trip. After chatting with them for a few minutes, we ended up heading out to a lunch place they knew. While we ate, we talked a little about our trip, and they told us of some of their adventures too. Currently, they are volunteering at a local orphanage, where they are putting in an extensive garden and some orchards to help them become more self-sufficient. Before Cambodia, they spent a couple of years in Papua New Guinea, and they had some interesting experiences there as well.

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After lunch, we said our goodbyes, and we returned to the hotel to sit by the pool and so some writing and relaxing. Once we'd had enough sun, we went back to the room to spend some more time planning and researching our post-trip plans. Later, we went out for dinner at one of the fancier places that specialize in western food, where we both had some excellent pasta and garlic bread.

3/14 Ride to Battambang
 

Our goal for today is Battambang, which is Cambodia's second largest city and is located about 40 miles south of Siem Reap. Unfortunately, the Tonle Sap lake is also between Siem Reap and Battambang, so the ride will actually be more like 100 miles. To try and avoid the worst of the heat, we got up early, had breakfast, and got ready to go. Since it had been 350 miles or so since we put on Re's new chain, I decided to check the tension and give it a lube. Her chain was slightly loose, so I gave it a quick adjustment. I haven't check the tire pressures in a couple of days, and was surprised to find that Re's front tire was down to about 19 psi. Normally, we run 30 in the front, so 99 pumps later, she was good to go. The other tires were all down 2 to 3 psi, but other than that, the bikes were ready to go.

When we pulled out of the parking lot at 9:00 am, it was already hot. The ride itself was easy, but not too scenic.

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We did see some water buffaloes up to their necks in the mud, but that was about it. We rode west, and then south, coming within about 25 miles of the Thai border. For some reason, I felt a strong pull to go back to Thailand, but there were a few things we wanted to see in Battambang before we left. It's funny to me that on our last trip, I didn't care for Thailand that much, and yet, this time, I keep being drawn back to it.

Shortly after we turned south, Re slowed and pulled off the side of the road. I pulled over to wait, and when she caught up, she said her bike had made “that funny noise” again. She has reported a kind of whistling or whirring noise a couple of times during this trip, and the first time it occurred was our very first day in Oregon. We swapped bikes so I could listen for the problem, and I did hear it this time. It seems to only occur when we ride faster than 45 mph and is a loud whirring that seems to be coming from the front wheel area. The sound does not change when the front brake is applied and only goes away when the bike speed drops below about 5 mph. This is the third time it's happened in Cambodia, and the only other time was in Oregon. My first guess is that it's wheel bearing related, but I don't hear any other groaning or whirring under normal riding conditions. Our front tires are getting close to needing replaced, so I will inspect the bearings when we have the front wheel off. We are carrying one complete set of front and rear wheel bearings, so at least we have the parts if that is the problem. Other than the noise, both bikes are running very well. The new chain seems to have solved the problems with Re's bike, and my bike seems to be getting even better fuel economy.

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About 30 miles from Battambang, we stopped for a lunch of bamboo tubes full of sticky rice, black beans, and coconut. We arrived in Battambang at around 1:00 pm and found a very swanky room at the Royal Hotel. While I took a break and enjoyed the A/C, Re walked out to find some fruit at the market for us to snack on. After planning tomorrow's activities, we took a walk along the riverfront and found some dinner.


115 miles in about 4 hours. Between Re's loss of air and bearing noise, I think we'll be changing front tires soon.

3/15 Battambang Touring
 

We are really only in Battambang for one thing: the bamboo train. The bamboo train is also known as the nori (apparently, a French word for lorry) and is a homemade train car that runs along the old single track rail line left over from the French occupation. We have read that you can put small motorbikes on the train and take them along on the scenic ride also. This morning, Re went to the market and came back with fried dough, fruit, and iced coffee.

After showering and getting on our gear, we hopped on the bikes and rode to the “train station.” The station is located down a dirt road outside of the city and consists of one old building and a collection of bamboo trains.

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The trains themselves are nothing more than a 6' x 10' bamboo platform that sits on two, old railroad trucks and is powered by a small agricultural motor that drives one of the trucks with a v-belt. The v-belt is manually tensioned by the train operator to provide drive. The fares are set by the tourist policemen and appear to be non-negotiable.

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We paid our 12 USD for a private train ride and then two guys picked up our bikes by the footpegs and slotted them onto the train.

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A quick picture later, and we started rolling down the tracks. Or, more accurately, wobbling down the tracks.

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The track has been unused and unmaintained for many, many years, and the rails are no longer straight or level. The ride took us along the tracks towards Phnom Penh and through the agricultural countryside. I couldn't reach my GPS, but I would estimate that our top speed was less than 10 mph, which was plenty fast when you consider that we were sitting on an open-sided bamboo platform barely a foot off the tracks. The most interesting part of the trip was when we met two different oncoming trains. The rules of the tracks are that the less heavily laden train must get off the tracks to allow the other to pass. Since we had motorbikes, we won both times.

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The trains slowly come to a halt, the passengers disembark, the v-belt is unhooked, and the whole platform of the train is lifted off by the convenient carrying handles.

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Then the trucks are removed, the winning train passes, and then the losing train is reassembled and continues on its way. This trip was actually even more fun than I expected it to be, and Re and I immediately started plotting as to how to get one of our own. How many miles of old, unused tracks are there in the US? Could you use a Symba as the motive power for one of these things? Hmm. After about an hour, we came to the end of the line, where our bikes were unloaded, and we reluctantly bid farewell to our bamboo train. If you ever find yourself in Battambang, this is one ride worth taking.

Since we were now well and truly out in the middle of the countryside (if you don't have motorbikes, you simply ride the train back into town), we followed the dirt road through the fields and farms back to Battambang. The other sight we wanted to see was Phnom Sampeau, which is a mountain with a temple complex about ten miles south of Battambang. We followed the GPS directions and soon found ourselves at the base of the hill. When we were flagged down by the parking attendants, my GPS said we were still more than a mile froom the top of the hill. The parking attendants insisted that we were not allowed to ride up the hill and that we had to park our bikes. I gestured at all the other motorbikes and cars that drove by, but apparently, farang can't ride up the hill, because of course, there are handy motorbike taxis for you to take. Grr. Instead, we locked our gear and helmets to the bikes and walked up the hill under the noon sun. As my dad would say, only mad dogs and Englishmen... . We slowly trudged up the hill and eventually made it to the top. We stopped to see a wat partway up the hill that had some cool caves attached before reaching the Was Phnom Sampeau at the top of the hill.

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Here we were treated to panoramic views of the surrounding countryside and some pretty temples to boot.

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We also climbed down the steps to the hidden valley at the top of the mountain. I don't know how many steps it was down into the valley, but it seemed like twice as many on the way back up. Between the heat, humidity, and all the walking, we were both well and truly knackered. We decided to take a break and eat a watermelon before we walked back down to the bikes. For our return journey, we took the steps down the mountain, of which there were supposed to be more than 1,000. Once we made it back to the bikes, we were hot and tired. We rode back into town to cool off at the hotel and work on Thailand plans.

Re and I have been trying to figure out where our trip goes after Thailand, and we have definitively decided to cross Australia off the list. When talking with Allen and Maureen at lunch a couple of days ago, they confirmed what my research has shown: that Australia would be a very expensive end to the trip. They told us that hotels are a minimum of 100 AUD per night. Camping I n an organized campground would be a minimum of 20 to 25 AUD per night, and petrol is currently 1.70 AUD per liter. Ouch. These costs, coupled with the long distances we'd have to cover and the general pain in the assness of getting motorbikes into Australia, led us to the conclusion that we will not be going “down under.” The problem with this decision is that it significantly complicates the Indonesia portion of the trip. We can cross by boat from Malaysia to the island of Sumatra, Indonesia and ride down the island chain to West or East Timor, but then what?! Originally, the bikes would cross to Australia from East Timor by boat, but if we aren't going to Australia... East Timor is a long way from anywhere else with a major international airport. The only possibility I can find that doesn't involve riding back up the Indonesian islands to at least Bali is putting the bikes on the Perkins ship that runs from Dili, East Timor to Singapore. The ship ride and our flights to Singapore would be a significant amount of money, and then there's the problem of temporarily importing the bikes to Singapore. Singapore is notoriously expensive for everything, and that includes temporarily importing foreign registered motorcycles. It would apparently cost us hundreds of dollars for the privilege of immediately riding our bikes the less that twelve miles from the harbor in Singapore to the Malaysian border, or we would have to figure out how to get the bikes from the port to the airport without importing them. Consequently, Indonesia's position in our itinerary is looking less and less certain. If we strike Indonesia from the list, it now, strangely, doesn't leave us with much trip left. To make matters worse, we are both feeling a little homesick and a little like we want to get on to whatever our next adventure is. It's a confusing time to be us. One possibility that this does open up, is the chance to see the Formula 1 race in Malaysia next weekend. We attended the race two years ago. It was a fun time, and Malaysia has the cheapest F1 ticket available. There are two problems with this possibility. The first, is that the racetrack is more than a thousand miles away. The second, is that we currently have two month Thai visas in our passports that cost us 40 bucks a pop. We certainly don't want to waste our visas on a four day ride to Malaysia, when we could get a free 15-day visa-less entry, just by showing up at the Thai border. We don't know right now if we could just take the 15 days and save our visas and return to Thailand after we are finished touring Malaysia. We'll find out tomorrow! Since we were both thoroughly confused but feeling like we'd come to a bit of a conclusion, it was dinnertime. We walked out for another dinner of Khmer food, which was good, but not great.


30 miles in 2 hours.

3/16 Back to Thailand
 

We had a repeat of yesterday's breakfast in the room this morning and then hit the road by 8:30 am. It was a relatively boring ride back to the border at Poipet. It was again, hot, and the roads were kind of busy, but we made it to the border by 11:15. In contrast to entering Cambodia, exiting it was no problem. Poipet has long been a notorious rip-off zone on the Cambodia side, but no one asked us for a single bribe, and everything was taken care of very quickly. The Thai side was another kettle of fish. While there were no bribes solicited, we did wait in line for almost two hours to get through Immigration in the hot sun. The best news of the day was that Re was able to explain to the Immigration officer that we wanted to save our two-month visas, and instead get stamped into Thailand for 15 days. The officer reconfirmed what Re was trying to do and said that would be fine. She stamped us both in for 15 days, so F1, here we come! Customs, on the other hand, was a breeze. The TM-2 and TM-4 documents that I didn't have when we crossed into Laos turned out to be no problem when reentering Thailand. A friendly Customs agent filled out the paperwork for me, and the only fee on either side of the border was 40 Baht (1.33 USD) for photocopies of our Carnet documents that were attached to our new TM-2 paperwork. After the documents were completed, we only had to wait about 20 minutes before all our paperwork was complete and we were free to go. The bad news about this process, was that it was now 2:30 pm, and it took us 3 hours and 15 minutes to get through the border.

Our original destination for the day, and still our destination, was Ayuthaya. Ayuthaya is a picturesque city about 50 miles north of Bangkok and was one of the original capitals of Thailand. There are lots of old temples in the city, and the city is notable in that it is surrounded by a natural moat. But none of that really matters, since we're going to Ayuthaya so Re can see the elephants. We still had 160 miles to go, so we blasted out of the border as fast as 7hp can. Since we were racing the sun, it really wasn't a very enjoyable ride. The eastern part of central Thailand is flat, boring, and mostly agricultural. It was however, much greener than Cambodia, and the roads were excellent. We did run into a rogue thunderstorm and rode through the rain for about 1.5 miles. On the other side of the rain, the sky was much more overcast and made for a cooler, more pleasant ride. The sun was finally setting around 6:30 pm, and we still had 31 miles and a fuel stop to go. We normally refuel every 100 miles, but since the carb work in Phnom Penh, we've extended it to 110 miles between fill-ups. Tonight, the 110 miles occurred two miles short of Ayuthaya. So we stopped to refill under the street lights and then rode the short distance to the backpacker ghetto. Tonight, our guesthouse found us, since we could not find the one we were looking for. While we were stopped, consulting the GPS, a lady asked if we were looking for a room, and it turned out we were parked in front of the Toto Guesthouse. They had a good room for a decent price and gated parking. Sold. We unloaded our gear and then walked out to find dinner. The place we found appeared to be mostly a drinking establishment, but their menu sounded good, and their prices were right. A little trepidatiously, we ordered Penang curry and Massaman curry, but were more than pleasantly surprised when our very delicious dinners arrived.


265 miles in 11.5 hours. Over 3 hours at the border, but it only cost us 1.33 USD, and we saved our 2-month visas for later!

3/17 Elephants and a Long Ride to Chumphon
 

Ahh, it's good to be back in Thailand, where you can just walk two blocks to the 7Eleven for yogurt, coffee, and cereal. But the tradeoff for the convenience is that even though it takes less time to buy, it's not as good as freshly fried donuts, half a watermelon and real, strong coffee. But we were in a hurry this morning, so it was worthwhile. After a shower, we loaded everything on the bikes and rolled out before 8:00 am.

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We made the ten minute ride to the Elephant Kraal, and suddenly, elephants! The elephant kraal is a restored version of the wooden stockade that was used for the roundup of wild elephants and as the former training site for the war elephants. Now it serves as the home to rescued elephants who are used to give rides to the temples in town. The best part about the kraal is that it is free to visit, they only charge 50 baht if you want to take pictures.

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Of course, we bought the camera permit, and while I was doing so, a baby elephant found Re to play with. Most of the elephants are penned or chained, but for some reason, this little guy was out running around. The young ones and their mothers are kept in a separate area, and you can buy a basket of cucumbers for 50 baht (1.66 USD) to feed to them.

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After a few minutes of being pushed around the yard by the baby elephant, Re bought a basket of cucumbers and fed the young ones and their moms. At one point, I was a little horrified to see half of Re's arm inside a juvenile elephant's mouth. She was laughing, but the 8-year old mahout (elephant trainer) was looking a little concerned.

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After Re exhausted her first basket, we got a second one and made the rounds again. The baby elephant was hilarious, because he didn't want any cucumbers, but did attempt to nudge and push us away from the others as we tried to feed them.

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He also tried to squish us against one of the fences a couple of times. No malice, he was just having fun, and so were we.

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We walked around and looked at some of the adult elephants as well, some of whom were being washed.

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We also stopped to admire the oldest elephant we've ever seen. Re could have stayed all day, but after nearly an hour, I had to get us back on the road, since our ride today looked to be about 330 miles.

At 9:00 am, we waved goodbye to our new friends and headed south. I was a little concerned by the GPS directions today, because they appeared to take us to the ring road around Bangkok that we couldn't get on last time (due to being on two wheels). The ride today was warm, but not brutally hot since there were clouds blocking some of the sun. after a couple of hours, we got to the entrance of the ring road, and as we feared, no motorbikes were allowed. Crap. I flicked on the “avoid highways” option in my GPS, and our 330 mile ride suddenly became 380 miles. Double crap. The next several hours of riding were no fun. We were off the highway and on the surface streets riding through Bangkok. I had hoped we'd skirt the edge of Bangkok, but no such luck. We rode directly into the center of Bangkok and eventually found ourselves staring at the bridge near Hualumphong train station that we'd climbed over and past the barbed wire to avoid backtracking when we were searching for a camera many weeks ago. Triple crap. At least that means we were near the river, and the bulk of Bangkok would soon be behind us.

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Once we crossed the river, we came to the entrance ramp for Highway 35. Yay! Open road! Then we saw the “no motorcycles” sign. Quadruple crap. It was about noon, and we still had a lot of miles to go. We spent the next 30 miles fighting our way through traffic on the access road that parallels the 35. Sometime after 1:00 pm, I spied a McDonald's a few miles before Samut Song Khram, and we pulled in for lunch. I checked our mileage and determined that it had taken us over four hours to cover the last 90 miles. I didn't figure that we could safely make it to Chumphon, so we went inside and had a Big Mac extra value meal, super-sized. As we sat and enjoyed the A/C, I looked at the map and figured we could make it to Prachuap Khiri Khan before 6:00 pm, and maybe that should be our new goal. Re said, “**** no. They have khao mok khai in Chumphon.” She did make an excellent point. They do have excellent khao mok khai (KMK) in Chumphon. KMK is a Thai-Muslim version of chicken biryani and is one of our favorite meals in southern Thailand.

The rest of the afternoon was the worst kind of riding for our little bikes. We were finally able to get on the 35, and then took it to the 4, where we turned south. This was all highway riding, and our bikes are underpowered for making time on this kind of road. The scenery was basically scrubby, deciduous trees, some palms, and fields. Not ugly, but not pretty either. In the middle of the afternoon, Re's bike made the bearing noise again, and once again, we were riding north of 45 mph. We swapped bikes for about 50 miles, but I kept our speeds around 43 mph, and we had no further problems. I need to investigate this, just not today. When the sun went down around 7:00 pm, we still had about 80 miles to go. I like many things about our Symbas, but our headlights are not one of them. I've been spoiled by the headlights on several of my previous bikes, including my Moto Guzzi 1100 Sport, VFR750, and especially, my V-Strom. The weak Symba headlights are made even worse by the fact that our jerrycans cut off the bottoms of the beams.

Regardless, we made it to Chumphon by just after 9:00pm, and through sheer dumb luck, found the Suriwong Hotel, where we have stayed a couple of times. The KMK restaurant is just up the block, so while Re went inside to register, I walked up to see if they were still open. To my dismay, they were cleaning up. Seeing me standing in the doorway, a woman came over and asked what I needed. I asked what time they close and gestured to the clock. She said 9:00 pm. I must have looked sad, because she asked what I wanted. I replied, khao mok khai, and she gestured to the back of the restaurant where they were bagging up food and said they had it, and I could get it for takeaway. I happily ordered two to go and returned to the hotel with dinner in hand. Re had us booked into a room, so while I parked the bikes and unloaded the gear, Re walked to get some Changs, since nothing goes better with a Muslim meal than a nice, cold beer. When she returned, I had everything in the room and we collapsed on the bed to eat. Our butts are killing us. It hurts to sit on the bed. The other news of the day is that we broke the 20,000 mile mark of the trip, but didn't want to stop to take a picture in the dark.


379 miles in over 12 hours. Our previous high mileage day of the trip was 375 miles from Sterling, CO to Belleville, KS. Wow.

3/18 Ride to Hat Yai
 

Since the last two days have involved marathon rides and late arrivals, we've both been too tired to do much besides eat dinner and go to bed. So when the alarm went off this morning, we decided to strike while the iron was hot, you might say. After we showered, Re went to get breakfast at the nearest 7Eleven, while I worked on the bikes. Once again, Re's front tire was low, down approximately 10 lbs, so I aired it up and moved on to the chains. Yesterday, my chain was making a little bit of noise, and sure enough, it needed to be adjusted. Re's new chain now has over 1200 miles on it, and it did not need an adjustment today, so I just lubed it and called it good.

We finally rolled out at 9:30 am to start our ride to Hat Yai. Since today's ride was going to be another 300-plus miles, and our butts were still sore from the last two days, we decided to stop every 30 to 50 miles to walk around and stretch. Again, the ride was hot, the roads were pretty good, but the traffic was a bit more hectic. The road here is a four-lane, divided highway, and with the scenery of scrubby trees, we could have been on I95 anywhere between Virginia and Georgia for a good stretch of the day. Except for the truck that drove by with a rather large elephant in the bed.

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We did stop to take an official 20,000 mile photo about 300 miles too late. The further south we went, the scenery did begin to change and look more like southern Thailand. Things turned a darker shade of green, and we rode through lots of oil palm and pineapple plantations. We also saw tons of watermelons for sale and one area where the banana stands went on for miles.

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Mountains also started to appear in the distance. Since my bike seems to have gotten much better mileage over the last few days, I decided to do a full to empty run. The tank is nominally rated at 1.04 gallons, and I covered 122.5 miles on one tank. That works out to be nearly 118 miles per gallon, and Re was still going when I ran out. The conditions were good, though. The road was straight and flat, elevation was only about 110 ft above sea level, and there was no wind to speak of. We skipped lunch today, except for a soda and some peanuts, since neither of us felt very hungry.

About 30 minutes north of Hat Yai, the sun finally set, so we covered the final 15 miles in the dark. We stayed in Hat Yai on a couple of occasions on our last trip and knew where to go for a room. We pulled up on the sidewalk outside the Park Hotel and were even given a room we stayed in before. Both Re and I are very sore and very tired after our third long day of boring highway. We showered and then walked to the market, where we had dinner at our usual (and still there!) khao mok khai stand. The dish here can be had a little differently. Usually, the chicken is cooked in the rice, but here, you can get the rice with fried chicken. We also picked up some freshly fried dough sticks from the vendor next door to round out our meal, and dip in the soup that accompanies the KMK. On the way back to the room, we stopped for a Chang, before collapsing in bed.


335 miles in about 10 hours. Both bikes are running well, and the fuel mileage is amazing.

3/19 Ride to Malaysia
 

The 30 hours in the saddle and 980 miles that we have ridden over the last three days really caught up with us this morning. Neither of us wanted to get out of bed since we were really sore and tired. After hitting the snooze button a fair few times, we finally crawled out of bed and into the shower. This morning, we were both thankful for a hot, hot shower. While I started loading up the bikes, Re walked out to the 7Eleven and returned with breakfast. There wasn't a lot of conversation while we ate, since neither of us was looking forward to plopping our sore butts back in the saddles. But the ride must go on, so we reluctantly bid farewell to our comfy room and made our way back down to the bikes. After gingerly settling into our seats, we rolled onto the street at around 9:15 am. We dutifully followed the GPS directions south through the city. Lane-splitting is the rule in Thailand (as everywhere else in southeast Asia) and so at each stoplight, we joined the migration to the front of the line.

At one such light, Re lined up behind me in the crowd, and I heard her talking with another excited rider. Before the light turned green, she yelled to pull over once we got through the intersection for a photo op. After we pulled over, I met Pong, of HatYaiFaster.com.

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Pong is also a fellow ADVRider who also rides an 1100GS, which makes him only the second ADV-er we've met in southeast Asia. He wanted to know about our trip and our bikes, so we chatted for a little while, took some photos of each other, and Pong even made a short video of us. It was very nice to meet him, but we soon had to go. We said our goodbyes and continued our ride south to the border.

The ride to the Malaysian border was busy and basically, just one long urban area. The morning was getting hot, but around 10:45, we found ourselves at the Thai border. All our paperwork was stamped, and we were on our way in 15 minutes.

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Once we crossed into Malaysia, we followed the signs that had a picture of a motorcycle on them and went through the “ride-through” immigration booth. No visa is required for Americans, so we were given our 90-day stamps without even having to get off the bikes. After Immigration, we began to look for Customs, but the only thing ahead of us was open road. Whoops. About a half-mile down the road, there was a checkpoint where I asked the guards about Customs. They gestured back to the border complex we'd just come through, and indicated it was in building A. We made a u-turn and headed back to the complex, where it soon became apparent that the Customs building was on the far side of Immigration. Hmmm. We parked our bikes and spent the next ten minutes explaining to various border officials that we weren't crossing back into Thailand, had already been stamped into Malaysia, didn't need to go through Immigration, we just needed to find Customs. This was all complicated by the fact that we only speak about five words of Bahasa Malaysia, and none of them really applied in this situation. We finally found the building (which wasn't building A) and an agent who spoke excellent English and could point us to the office that would process our Carnets. We stepped into the blissfully air-conditioned office, and in less than ten minutes, were walking back to our bikes. The error was ours, in that we rode through the lane for ASEAN motorcycle riders. Even with this confusion, we still cleared the Malaysia side of the border in about 30 minutes. The whole process only took about 45 minutes and cost exactly 0 dollars. I love Malaysia (and Thailand, too).

One of the reasons I love Malaysia is their highway system. We were now on a limited access, modern, four-lane, divided highway, complete with wide, paved shoulders, excellent signage, and even rest areas (with fuel). Many of the highways are toll roads, but once again, since we were on motorbikes, they are free for us. We covered the 80 miles to Butterworth in about two hours, since it was easy to maintain a 40 mph average. The scenery here was still relatively flat, but everywhere was the dark green of oil palms and mixed jungle. I know that oil palm plantations are an environmental disaster, but they sure are pretty. We were heading for Butterworth because that's where you get the ferry to the island of Penang. As we pulled into Butterworth, our fuel gauges showed that we had less than 25 miles of range left, so I pulled into the nearest Petronas station. Unlike everywhere else we've been in southeast Asia, no smiling pump jockey appeared when I pulled up. Apparently, Malaysia is self-serve. No problem, I haven't lived in Oregon so long that I've forgotten how these things work. (For those of you in more enlightened states, Oregon, like New Jersey, believes that mere mortals are incapable of operating gas pumps, and consequently, only highly trained technicians can dispense fuel in these two states. Seriously.) But my confusion was over the fuel grades and wide difference in their price. The “95” was 1.9 ringgit per liter, while the “97” was 2.8 ringgit per liter. Hmmm. One reason for my confusion is that I recall from our time in Malaysia two years ago, that the government was going to remove the fuel subsidy for foreigners, and consequently, foreigners would pay a higher price. I waited for a minute or two in hopes that another bike rider would pull in and I could follow his example, but no such luck. Apparently, the manager inside the store saw me standing around outside and motioned me in. He spoke very good English, recommended the “95,” and took my 14 ringgits. I returned to the pump, filled our jerrycan with “95,” and we then continued toward the ferry. Another reason I love Malaysia is that this is the cheapest fuel on our trip so far. We just got 7.4 liters of petrol for 4.50 USD! In virtually every other country we've been to, 4 liters of fuel would cost around 6 USD.

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We followed the crazy, circular ramp over the water and around to the ferry, where we paid our two ringgits and joined the queue of other bikers waiting to get on the boat. The ferries here are huge, two level affairs, with passengers on the upper deck and cars, trucks, and motorbikes on the lower. After all the four-wheeled vehicles boarded, we joined with the 75 to 100 other motorbike riders and rode onto the ferry.

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The ferry ride only took about ten minutes, but it was a fun time, since each of our bikes drew a small crowd, and everyone wanted to know about our trip. The other cool part of the ride was that Re found herself parked next to another SYM underbone. Malaysia gets a variety of SYM models, but not the Symba. This makes Malaysia the only country we've visited that has SYM badged bikes. India had a few SYM models, but they were sold under the domestic Mahindra brand.

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Actually, there were some older SYM motorcycles in Cambodia that were used as moto remorques, but they were all old and shitty. Riding down the highway from the border to Butterworth, we saw several billboards advertising a variety of SYM underbones, scooters, and motorcycles.

After we disembarked from the ferry, we found ourselves on the streets we walked so many times on our previous trips to George Town. This was nice, because we knew exactly where we were going. We made our way up Lebuh Chulia to Love Lane, then left on Lebuh Muntri, to the Star Lodge. It was a bit like coming home, since we spent over six weeks here in the past. Robert, at reception, remembered us, and we were soon unloading our gear into our room. Since it was now nearly 4:00 pm, we decided to walk over to Komplex Komtar for a treat for our sore butts. In the mall they have what we refer to as the “executive chairs.” These are the massage chairs you see in various malls around the US and were all we could think about for the last couple hours of the ride. We walked the half mile through familiar streets and into the mall. We soon found a bank of executive chairs, sat down, and fed them a one ringgit (.33 cents) note for a three-minute massage. When our three minutes was up, we did it again. Feeling suitable pummeled and refreshed, we walked around a bit, checked out what was playing at the movie theater, and then made our way back onto the streets and up Lebuh Cintra for dinner at our favorite dim sum restaurant.

One of the very best things about George Town is the food. The island of Penang is on the Straits of Malacca and has been an important trading port for hundreds of years. It was a major port and stop off on the journeys between Asia and Europe and the Middle East. Consequently, there is a large Chinese population here, and also, a large Indian population that mostly arrived during the British colonial period. While this creates a fascinating multi-ethnic society, the real winner is dinner. The variety of food here is unmatched by any other place we've been. Everywhere you look, there are small restaurants and hawker stalls selling delicious food for cheap. Really cheap. We grabbed a table at the dim sum place. A pot of tea arrived, and then the same three ladies as two years ago wheeled up their stainless steel carts full of goodies.

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We chose two of the rice, chicken, sausage, and egg wrapped in tea leaves, one of the taro cakes, a curried potato “egg roll?” a couple of different prawn-filled dishes, and a vegetable filled omelet roll. We stuffed ourselves silly on the delicious food, and the total bill came to 7.66 USD. I love Malaysia. For comparison purposes, each one of these seven dishes would be between 3 and 5 USD in Portland.

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After dinner, we went back to the room, where Re scrubbed our Darien pants on the floor of the bathroom, while I caught up on the internets. Our Dariens are absolutely filthy after our time in Laos and Cambodia, and the difference that a good washing made was dramatic.

One reason I don't love Malaysia is the incredibly high tax on alcohol. Malaysia is a Muslim country, and so high sin taxes are the rule. For example, a 650 ml Chang beer in Thailand is 1.33 USD or so, whereas, in Malaysia, the same beer is at least 4 USD. But after our long rides over the last several days, we both wanted a beer, so we walked out to our favorite corner bar for a cold one. We jokingly refer to it as the Corner Bar, because it's on a street corner. There are more traditional bars aimed at the large number of tourists who visit here, but they are more expensive than the little local bars. The corner bar's clientele is almost exclusively Indian and Chinese, and rarely sees any farang. It's down a bit of a back alley, and there are a few beer coolers and a small bar behind a rollup door. You choose your beers from the cooler, pay at the bar, and then go sit in the plastic chairs next to the folding tables out in the road. It does attract an interesting crowd with beers that are the cheapest around.

130 miles in about 5 hours including 45 minutes at the border.

3/20 Day Off in George Town
 

We slept in late this morning, and Re let me stay in bed while she walked out to Yasmeen (another excellent Indian restaurant nearby) and returned with roti telur (egg roti), some curry, and coffee. Roti from Yasmeen is our usual breakfast in George Town, and it was as good as I remember. After breakfast, we cracked open the books, maps, and laptop to work on plans for the next several days. We made the stupidly long ride to Malaysia specifically to see the Formula 1 race this coming weekend outside of Kuala Lumpur. The race itself is actually at the track near the Kuala Lumpur airport, which is 30 plus miles from the city, so we wanted to find a hotel closer to the track than that. After looking over all our resources, we had a few ideas, but decided to go to lunch instead.

Another one of our favorite Indian restaurants (especially for lunch) in George Town, is Sri Ananda Bahwan, which is a short walk from the guesthouse. At lunch they serve delicious and inexpensive banana leaf thalis, and that's what we had today.

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They put a section of banana leaf on the table, a big scoop of rice in the middle, then three scoops of different vegetarian dishes, add a couple of crispy papadams, a dal, and a sambhar, mix it all together with your right hand, and throw in the general direction of your mouth. They do provide silverware for the timid, but if you're gonna eat banana leaf, you really have to do it with your hand. With our banana leaf we had limau ice to drink, which is a sweet and salty drink made with calamansi limes. For dessert, we each had a piece of our favorite Bombay sweet, soan papdi. The total bill came to a hair over 5 USD, and it was delicious.

Since the afternoon had gotten very warm, and there were a few sprinkles of rain, we decided to head back to the room to work on some ride reports. Later in the afternoon, we walked out to the movie theater at Prangin Mall to see “John Carter.” Another great thing about Malaysia, is that since English is widely spoken, they get many first run English language movies, and the theaters here are everything they are in the US- cold A/C, stadium seating, THX surround sound, but at a third of the price. Our tickets to see “John Carter” were 2.66 USD each. I know this movie has been pretty much, universally panned, but we both enjoyed it. After the movie, we hit the grocery store for a pineapple and some cat food. There are many street kitties in George Town, and we like to stop and give them a snack occasionally.

By the time we made it back to Lebuh Chulia, all the evening hawker stalls were open for business, so we stopped for some wonton mee at our favorite. The setup of the hawker stalls here is kind of funny, in that they line the roadside, but down a small alley, a drink vendor sets up tables and chairs each night. You order your food from the hawker stall, and then your drinks from the drink vendor, and sit at his tables, where your food is delivered. For drinks, we each had a glass of tangerine juice with sour plum (50 cents each) and soon our wonton mee was delivered.

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Wonton mee is a noodle dish that is served with sliced pork, pork-filled soft wontons, and fried wontons, deep-fried fatback, water spinach, and pickled peppers in a dark soy sauce. We each ordered the large bowl (1.33 USD) and it was delicious. Walking back toward the room, we picked up some apom (crispy coconut crepes) and a big bottle of diet Coke. Back at the room, Re decided that since our pants were now so clean, that she needed to give our jackets the same treatment.


0 miles.

3/21 Planning and Writing
 

It was much easier to get out of bed this morning after our nice, relaxing day yesterday. Re again, walked out to Yasmeen for breakfast, but she was gone for longer than usual. When she returned, she had roti pisang (banana roti) and coffee, not from Yasmeen, which was closed today, but from Jaya. After breakfast, we continued our search for hotels near the track and decided to stay in the city of Nilai. Nilai appeared to be less than ten miles by road from the track, and it is a good-sized city, apparently owing to having large universities there. There wasn't much information about Nilai online. Neither Travelfish, Travelwiki, TripAdvisor, Hostelworld, nor Hostelbookers had much information on accommodations. Agoda, a mainly Asian hotel booking website, listed a few hotels in Nilai in our price range. None of the reviews were great, but we settled on the Nilai Budget hotel, due to its low cost, good location, free wifi in the rooms, and attractive pictures on the website. We normally don't book multiple nights in an unknown hotel, but we decided to go ahead and reserve and pay for four nights, not knowing if other racegoers would also flock to Nilai. Then until lunch, we worked on ride reports and did a little reading.

At lunchtime, we walked down the alley through the block to the Sky Hotel and their delicious pork and rice. We have eaten here plenty of times before, so while I grabbed a table and ordered lime with sour plum juice to drink, Re ordered two servings of the mixed barbeque and roast pork and rice.

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It is served with some boiled water spinach and a bowl of broth. As usual, it was excellent. The pork was juicy, but crispy on the outside, and the broth tasted of well-cooked bones (no bouillon cubes used here). After lunch, we walked around a bit and picked up a few things at the pharmacy before heading back to the room to do some more writing and relaxing.

Later that evening, we had dinner at Restoran Kapitan, a fantastic Indian restaurant, where we have eaten many times. Clearly, we have eaten there many times, as our usual waiter from two years ago recognized us as soon as we sat down. He doesn't speak a tremendous amount of English, but he was either trying to say that I had lost weight, or that I was huge. I'm not sure which, but it was nice to be back in a place where people know your face.

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We ordered the excellent tandoori chicken and butter naan, with limau ice to drink. Fortunately, on our last trip, we had perfected the technique of eating a chicken quarter using only our right hands. It's trickier than you think, since you have to hold down the chicken with your pinky finger while you tear at it with your thumb and index finger. Sure, you could use the fork and spoon they provide, but you'd know, they'd know, you're a punk. In all seriousness, the food is great, everyone is very friendly, and they wouldn't judge you. For dessert, we ordered iced coffee and a roti tisu. The tisu roti is a very thin piece of dough that is cooked on a hot griddle, and before it sets, it is pulled or rolled into a tent-like shape and then drizzled with sweetened, condensed milk. It's a dramatic looking dessert, and apparently, a pain in the ass to make, since every time we ordered it, our waiter would get a little smile, and a few minutes later, you can hear him chiding and laughing at the roti cook.

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It had been cloudy earlier in the day, so the sunset this evening was dramatic. There is a one hour time change between Malaysia and pretty much every other country in the region, so the doesn't set until about 7:30 pm local time.

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Leaving from the restaurant, the sky was gorgeous and we walked through Little India and took a few photos of the night. Later, we returned to the corner bar for a nightcap.

3/22 Ride to Nilai
 

Nilai looked to be about 275 miles or so, so we wanted to get on the road fairly early. While Re walked to Yasmeen, which was thankfully, open, I got the bikes ready to ride. Re's front tire was down to about 15 psi, so we're going to have to change this tube soon. It may also be a good time to put on the new front tires that we bought in Namibia. This morning, we had roti canai (plain roti), curry, and coffee. Roti make a good, hot, cheap breakfast, since there is a variety of flavors you can get, and each morning, roti, curry, and coffee is usually about 6.5 ringgit (2.15 USD).

We started riding at 9:15 am, but instead of taking the ferry back to the mainland, we rode south to the bridge. The bridge that connects Penang with the mainland is about four miles in length, and it was a beautiful ride this morning. Once we hit the mainland, we turned south on the E1 and droned down the shoulder of the highway. Again, the road was excellent, since this is the same road we took from the border. While it's modern and fast, it is a little boring. Since it is a limited access highway, there aren't many cities visible from the road, but every 20 miles or so, there is a rest area that has bathrooms, petrol, and food and drinks.

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Once we neared Ipoh, low mountains began to appear, and the ride got a lot more scenic. We had basically been cruising at no more than 200 ft above sea level since southern Laos, and the last time we saw any mountains was really in northern Laos.

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The ride here was very pretty, with rocky outcrops covered with dark green jungle and huge oil palm plantations.

As our fuel lights began to tick down, I started looking for fuel at the rest areas. With about 40 miles of fuel left, the rest area we came upon did not have a petrol station. Good thing there will be another rest area soon. And there was, the sign had a symbol for fuel pumps, so with about 20 miles of fuel left, we pulled in, only to find the petrol station had been torn down and dug up. It was just a construction site. Bummer. Back on the highway, we started looking for an exit. The first exit we tried had a ghost town of large apartment buildings. The next exit had just miles of oil palms. We had to ride about a km down the road before we could turn back to the highway. Just after making a u-turn, we saw a very sad sight on the should of the road. I got a glimpse of a small, spotted cat that had been hit but seemed remarkably intact. I spun around to see what it was, and it was a beautiful small wildcat, approximately twice the size of a house cat. It was dead but was truly a beautiful animal. When we looked it up later, we think it might have been a leopard cat. Regardless, it was a shame. Now we were down to less than 10 miles of fuel remaining, so we got off at the next exit, knowing that we could not get back on without finding fuel. At least as this exit there were signs of life, and we found ourselves riding through an area of humongous apartment buildings, then a warehouse area, then finally, a petrol station. We were now just outside the greater KL area, so instead of backtracking to the E1, I followed the recommended route on the GPS into the edge of KL.

Kuala Lumpur is a massive, modern city of over 1.5 million people, and consequently, we spent the next couple of hours fighting our way through downtown KL and out the other side. We never had to veer onto surface streets, but the elevated highways twist and turn and split off at random intervals. The best thing about this part of the ride was the tiny motorcycle only roads that followed the major highways at ground level, often ducking through small tunnels underneath the actual highway itself. Some of the tunnels were only two meters high, so I had the urge to duck every time I entered one. The drawback to these little roads is that of course, they're not listed in the GPS, so we had to do some seat of the pants navigation. But, we made it.

We finally reached Nilai at around 6:30 pm, and miraculously, found the Nilai Budget Hotel, where we had booked in for four nights, sight unseen. Oh dear. The hotel was in a strip of auto repair businesses and was located above a muffler shop. Yay. While I watched the bikes, Re went in to see what was going on. She returned a few minutes later with kind of a frozen smile on her face. I asked how it was, and she said, “Well, it's not as bad as Shea's Motor Lodge” (Shea's Motor Lodge, in the mountains of North Carolina, is the “worst hotel” we have ever stayed in. It's a funny story, ask me about it sometime.). We decided that we would try it for one night and see how it would be. The people were very friendly, but the room was not very good. Unfortunately, I deleted all the photos from the camera, but it was bad. The highlights include: no sink in the bathroom, the room was the width of the bed, the walls were plywood painted pink, but the deal breaker was no wifi. I was planning to go to the track tomorrow for Friday practice, while Re was going to work on blog posts in the room. We were not going to be without wifi for four days, not when we were paying more through Agoda than the rate card on the wall. Grrr. Re went out and spoke with management about this and the fact that the photos on Agoda are not of this hotel. They explained that it was a mixup and that they are actually part of a three hotel group in Nilai, and the photos and description are actually of one of the other hotels. Re did an excellent job of explaining our plight and pleading our case. A couple of phone calls later, and our reservation was transferred to the supposedly much nicer and free wifi-ier, New Wave Hotel. Since this hotel was not in my GPS, we navigated from the simplified map on the back of their business card, and after a few wrong turns, we found the New Wave Hotel.

This was actually a much nicer hotel. They agreed to honor the rate from the Nilai Budget, and so we checked in. The room was clean and new, the A/C was cold, there was a sink in the bathroom, and the wifi was reasonably fast. Yay. By now, it was nearly 8:00 pm, and we hadn't had lunch or dinner yet, so we hopped back on our bikes and rode up to the McDonald's I had spotted when we were trying to find the hotel. McD's in Malaysia is truly a bargain. During the dinner special hours, a Big Mac extra value meal is 3 USD, and the double cheeseburger meal is 2.33 USD. That's a cheap stomachache by anyone's standards. We had some ice cream sundaes for dessert and then rode back to the room.


285 miles in about 9 hours. We lost time today looking for fuel and riding through downtown KL. The bikes are running good, but Re's front tube has lost air again.

3/23 Formula 1 Practice and Writing
 

We got up early this morning since I wanted to get to the track before 10:00 am, but breakfast comes first. When we were riding last night, Re had spotted an Indian restaurant a couple blocks down the road. We walked down to Al Nazim, where we tried to order some roti telur. It seemed that they weren't making roti at that time, so instead, we had idli (a spongy, steamed Indian bread) with a couple of curries and coconut chutney. Filling. I then, left for the track, while Re stayed in the room to write.

The ride to the track turned out to be only about eight miles down some rural roads and through a couple of small towns. I found the designated motorcycle parking that was actually right next to the main entrance to the grandstand and parked my bike. From there, I went to the ticket counter to buy our tickets for tomorrow and Sunday. The great thing about the Formula 1 race at Sepang is that no ticket is required for Friday. This means that you can sit virtually anywhere at the track today. The grandstand tickets are beyond our budget, but two years ago when we attended this race, the tickets for covered hillstand C2 were only 20 USD. This year, the price has risen to 40 USD per ticket, but that's probably still cheaper than the parking pass for the upcoming Formula 1 race in the USA. After buying our tickets, I walked up into the main grandstand area and encountered security. They were strictly enforcing the no outside food and drink, including the 1.5 liter bottle of water I had in my bag. Remembering how expensive water was to purchase two years ago, I sat in the shade and drank the entire 1.5 liters in about ten minutes. Then me and the funny feeling in my tummy made it through security successfully.

It was a great day at the track and fun to see all the new uglified cars this year.

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I have always been a huge Kimi Raikkonen fan, and I am really excited to see him back on the track, and doubly excited to see him in the classic Lotus black and gold. I stayed until the end of the second F1 practice and then decided to call it a day. I made the short ride back to the hotel and returned about 5:00 pm. My 1.5 liters of water had long since evaporated, so I was thirsty and hungry when I got back. While I cooled off for a few minutes, Re walked down to a store nearby and returned with an ice cold diet Pepsi.

Our original dinner plan was to eat at a local chicken/duck and rice restaurant, but I had a new plan. While I was at the track and sitting in pit lane, a woman sat down in front of me and opened the lid on her Pizza Hut box. All I could smell was cheese, glorious cheese. On the tiny business card map, there was a Pizza Hut symbol, so we walked out to find it. Pizza Hut in Malaysia is not a good value. It's nearly as expensive as it is in the USA, but sometimes, you just need cheese. We ordered a large pepperoni pan pizza and some sodas and garlic bread. The bill came to 13 bucks, but it tasted really good. On the walk back to the room, Re mentioned that the little store where she got the soda also had beers. We stopped there to pick up a couple to go. In response to the very high taxes, there are some peculiar beers here. There are many 500 ml canned beers from Europe in the 9 to 10% range, with some up to 14%. The amount of tax doesn't seem to vary based on alcohol content, so you can essentially get two or three beers in one. Burp.

20 miles in about an hour

3/24 F1 Qualy!
 

Our plan for today involves spending the majority of it at the track. The no water through the gate was a problem for which I had a solution. As you may have figured out by now, I am entirely too cheap to want to pay 5 ringgits (1.66 USD) for a 500 ml bottle of water every time either of us wants to take a sip. While at the track yesterday, I remembered our MSR Dromedary water bags, which we have not been using since we were in Nepal. They are covered with a matte black fabric that I thought might blend in well with the bottom of our daypacks. So last night Re got out one of our “water babies” and the water filtration system and put about 3 liters in the bag. This morning we jammed it in the bottom of her daypack, leaving the black fabric side visible. We then put a number of small things on top of it and pronounced it good. Re also stashed a bag of peanuts under the water baby with her trademark, “**** The Police” sneer. Since we were packed up and ready to go, we walked down to Al Nazim to have roti canai for breakfast. The people here are very friendly and some of the curries are quite excellent. Breakfast finished, we grabbed our daypacks from the room and set off for the track.

Today we could not sit in the posh seats, so instead, we made our way to hillstand C2. We were able to park right next to the gate, and after locking our helmets to the bikes, we made our way towards security. Sure enough, the water baby worked like a charm. We found a spot under the freestanding roof, unrolled one of our tarps, and sat down for the day's events. Throughout the day, we watched the Formula 1 third practice, a GP2 race, a couple of Malaysian Super Series races (including one class that had multiple Ferraris and Lamborghinis competing) before the main event of the day: F1 qualifying. Qualifying went largely as expected, with Kimi slotting neatly into fifth. Unfortunately, the team discovered a problem with his gearbox overnight and had to fit a new one. This is in contravention of the rules that require the gearboxes to last for five races, so as a consequence, he was handed a five grid position penalty. Bummer. I still have high hopes for tomorrow, as Kimi has never been shy about passing.

We spent our time between the on-track action talking about what we are doing after Thailand. The frustrating thing for us is that our feelings change like the weather. One week, we're sure we have a plan of action, and the next week, that plan just doesn't sound right. This is getting to be a problem, since in just a few weeks, we'll be heading back to Thailand, and it would be nice to know what we're doing after that. Our two basic options are to either return to the US and some semblance of our previous lives until we are financially able to get off the merry go round permanently, or muddle our way through, living and working overseas, trading financial security for the possibility of adventure. It's a tough call. At its root, it's a "known vs. the unknown" question, but it's unfortunately complicated by familial concerns (such as, our parents ain't getting any younger).

After the short ride back from the track, we went to dinner at the chicken/duck restaurant nearby. Since this was a Muslim restaurant, their wonton mee contained no pork, but was available with (unsurprisingly) either duck or chicken. I opted for the double-size duck, while Re went for the double-size chicken. The food was very good, but the broth lacked complexity, and the noodles were kind of a clump. The duck and chicken, on the other hand, were both delicious. Since we were feeling restless after sitting around all day, we decided to walk the 2 km to the Tesco supermarket. We wanted to pick up some fruit and I had seen an ATM on the way to pick up some more cash. After the long hike up there, we found that the Tesco had a food court in it, and in the food court was a Big Apple Donuts. The donuts at Big Apple are really good, with fresh cappuccino cream fillings and all sorts of other delicious flavors.

After we ate our donuts, Re went into the Tesco to look for fruit and batteries for the GPS, and I waited outside and watched the crowd go by. Parenting styles around the world are certainly different, and I will say that virtually everywhere we've been, children are cherished. But they're also punished in ways that would raise eyebrows in the US. While I was waiting for Re, I saw two women pushing a shopping cart out of the store, and in and amongst the bags in the cart, were two small boys, maybe about three years old. As the cart went past one of those little rides you see outside grocery stores or Kmarts in the US, the one young boy pointed at it, and I honestly didn't hear him make a sound. What he got in exchange for pointing was a crisp smack across the mouth. Mom then looked up and made eye contact with me and must have seen my dropped jaw, because she immediately grabbed the kid out of the cart, put him on the ride, and put some money in the slot. He looked a little confused, but eventually, enjoyed the ride. I guess that was my good deed for the day?! After that little spectacle, we walked back to the room to find that the internet no work. Sigh.


25 miles in about an hour.

3/25 Race Day!
 

The internet was still not working this morning. Apparently, a phone line in the area had been cut. The bad news about this was that I was unable to check the track schedule for today. I knew the race started late and that there wasn't much going on before it, so that gave us plenty of time this morning to change some tubes and tires. But first, roti at Al Nazim. I sat down at our usual table while Re went to order. She was met by a rather ebullient young woman, who we had not seen before. She seemed very excited that we were here and talked us into a different kind of coffee. She said it was healthy, and I swore that she said it had mushrooms in it, but what the heck. Sure enough, she brought over a package, and there was an illustration of a mushroom on it. Of course, if you believe the entire illustration, my coffee would also contain a tiger's head.

The food arrived, and it was, as usual, excellent. The coffee did have a bit of an aftertaste, but it was pleasant enough. As we finished our food, the young woman appeared again to ask our opinion of the coffee and to find out why we were in town. We explained a little bit about our trip, at which time she inquired if we had any kids. When we responded that we did not, she assured us that maybe we would some day. Not having children in Asia is usually seen as a tragedy. Re mentioned that we'd been married nearly 23 years, and that it hadn't happened yet. The woman leaned in close to Re, with bright eyes, and asked quietly, “was yours a love marriage?” Re assured her, it was, and the woman broke into the biggest smile we've seen in a while. In this context, I assume that love marriage means a marriage that is not arranged by the parents. In certain cultures, these marriages are kind of scandalous. After the young woman left, Re got up to pay as I waited near the front of the restaurant. A minute later, Re beckoned me to join her at the register, where the young woman took our photo with the package of coffee. I still don't know what it was all about, but some days are just like this.

I didn't feel any major health benefits from my coffee this morning as we walked back to the room, maybe they'll come later. We broke out the tools and the tarp and set to work on Re's front wheel. As usual, we attracted a small crowd while we worked. We removed the OEM front tire that has now been on Re's bike for over 21,000 miles, and the original tube as well. There was a fair bit of rust around the base of the valve stem, but the tube otherwise appeared fine. Regardless, it's time for a new tube and front tire. The tires that we purchased in Namibia were very stiff and not pliable, so Re found a patch of sun in which to lay them, in hopes that it would make it easier to put on the rim. When we dipped into the spares kit, I found that the higher quality Dunlop tube that we purchased in India was unfortunately of the 2.75/3.00 variety, which would be fine for the rear tires that we're currently running, but the new fronts are 2.50 in width. We do have a spare 2.50 tube, but it is a Nandi brand tube, which is the same tube that failed on me in northern India, when the valve stem ripped out. Hmm. We didn't see any motorcycle shops open at the time, so we decided to go with the Nandi tube and hope for the best. The heat did help the tire become a little more pliable, but it was still difficult to install on the rim.

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While I was examining the tire for a directional arrow or balance mark, I did notice that it said it was , “Specially made for hot wearther.” Confidence inspiring. I did manage to get the second bead on without pinching the tube, so 270 strokes of the tire pump later, we were ready to install it. While the rim was off, I inspected the wheel bearings as best I could. I did not detect any lateral play, and the bearings turn smoothly. There was no evidence of any damage to any of the seals, so hopefully they are not the problem. Before reattaching the speedometer cable, we dribbled a few drops of engine oil along the length of the core, in hopes that it would quiet some of the noise Re has been hearing lately.

Our original plan was to change my front tire as well, but since we don't have a suitable tube, it'll have to wait until we get one. Instead, we decided to refill our batteries with water once again. My battery was completely dry, and I had been using my kick starter for the past couple of days, while Re's was nearly dry, but still producing enough juice for the magic button to work. A quick check of my notes shows that we last refilled the batteries a little over 2,000 miles ago, in Pakse, Laos. It has been hot, and we have been running hard, but that's surprising. Maintenance complete, we packed up the tools and went to clean up ourselves.

Since it was now around noon, Re cut up the watermelon we bought yesterday for a snack, and we watched a little TV. Apparently, while we were showering, the ginseng and tiger's head mushrooms that were in our coffee finally kicked in, as we were both feeling awfully frisky. Meeow. We managed to entertain ourselves until it was time to leave for the track at 2:00 pm.

The traffic around the track was much heavier today, and we had to make one complete circuit of the exterior roads to finally find the one parking lot where motorcycles were permitted. From there, we jumped on the shuttle and rode it around to hillstand C2, where we unrolled our rain jackets and sat down. Once again, we smuggled our water baby past security and a roll of Mentos (queue Judas Priest's “Breakin' the Law”).

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Almost on schedule, the rain started seven minutes before the race. The cars completed a handful of laps before the safety car came out, and then the race was red flagged. The stoppage was less than an hour, and then the racing got underway again.

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It was a fantastic race, and Re and I had shouted ourselves hoarse by the end. The bummer of the rain delay was that it meant it was dark by the time we got back to our bikes.

We battled our way through traffic and eventually back to Nilai. By now, it was well after 8:00 pm, and we were hungry. Unfortunately, since it was Sunday night, many things were closed. But not Al Nazim. We stopped in for some excellent chicken biryani before heading back to the room for the night. Thankfully, the internet was working again, and I was able to Skype with some of my family. Just to add another wrinkle to our trip planning, my oldest sister told us that she was planning a family reunion for July 7th, and that perhaps, even some of our relatives from England would be coming. Well now, there's a wrinkle, another wrinkle.


30 miles in about 2 hours. Re reports her new tire is fine, if a little bouncy. From the feel of the tire, I don't even think it needs a tube, it's so stiff.

3/26 Ride to...?
 

Today we are planning to ride to, well, we didn't know where we were riding, we just knew we were going somewhere else. Before breakfast, we loaded up the bikes, added a couple of psi to a couple of the tires, and checked the oil level in both bikes, but we still hadn't decided where we were going. Instead, we walked down to Al Nazim for breakfast. We decided to forgo the tiger's head mushroom and ginseng coffee this morning since we needed to get on the road instead of each other. Over another delicious breakfast, we discussed possible destinations.

Malacca had been our next destination, but on our last visit, we spent five days there and saw just about every sight there was to see. We like Malacca very much but just couldn't come up with a compelling reason to return. So, maybe Kuantan. Kuantan is a city on the east coast of Malaysia, roughly due east of Kuala Lumpur. There's not really anything to do in Kuantan, other than eat at an excellent Indian restaurant and watch local soccer teams play at the field next to Masjid Negeri, but it is the gateway to the east coast. From there, we could head up to Cherating and Kota Bharu. We had been to Kota Bharu before but never to Cherating, and it might be interesting. The problem with going to Kota Bharu is that it is the jumping off point for the Perhentian Islands, which we enjoyed so much before, but we cannot take our bikes, so there's no real point in going. Okay, so where did we want to go? On our last trip, we didn't make it to the Cameron Highlands, and it is less than a day's ride, so maybe that's where we will go. The Cameron Highlands are located east of Ipoh, in the north-central part of peninsular Malaysia and are known for their tea plantations, hiking, and cool temperatures. Sounds good after sweating our butts off for the past couple of months, so that's where we will go.

We hurried back to the room, fired up the laptop, and spent a few minutes perusing the usual websites for room recommendations. At around 10:00, we walked out to the bikes, punched our destination into the GPS, pulled onto the main road, and promptly stopped for fuel. It is still such a novelty to be only paying about 2.50 USD for a gallon of petrol, but I like it! Fueled up, we headed north to Kuala Lumpur. On our ride south, we skirted the western edge of KL, but the GPS now had us skirting the eastern edge of the city. The route today was still a bit confusing, but it was certainly easier than before. The morning was bright and sunny, but once we cleared the northern edge of the metropolitan area, we could see dark skies in the distance. Again, the roads were excellent and fast, and traffic was relatively light and polite. The skies continued to darken, and the clouds sure looked like thunder.

The turnoff for the Cameron Highlands was at a town called Tapah, but before we could make it there, the sky exploded. First the wind rose, and then the big, cold raindrops began to fall. I've ridden through enough rainstorms to know that this one was gonna be rough. We pulled over, covered our daypacks, pulled our rubber gloves over our riding gloves, zipped all our vents, and continued riding north. Over the next ten miles or so, the rain continued to intensify, and the wind became very gusty. We were now riding through two to three-inch deep puddles on the shoulder of the highway and decided to duck under the next overpass we came to. Malaysia is a very civilized country in that at nearly every overpass, there is a directional sign with a picture of a motorcycle and an umbrella that directs you to the special motorbike parking area under the overpass. Once you pull under the overpass, there is a small opening in the guardrail that is just wide enough for a motorcycle to slip through and into a small parking area where you can shelter from the rain. We have also seen specially constructed motorcycle rain shelters along stretches of the highway without overpasses. We decided to take shelter, not so much from the rain, but from the wind. We were getting tossed around, and that combined with the standing water made it seem prudent to wait for the rain and wind to lighten. While we waited, we looked out over the mountains and could see that the Cameron Highlands area was completely engulfed in clouds and mist. A check of the GPS showed that the road from Tapah to Tana Ratah contained approximately elebenty billion corners. Somehow, that road plus the weather just didn't add up for us. We talked about it and decided that since both of us really wanted to take a break for a few days, we would head back to our second home in George Town.

After 20 or 30 minutes, the rain and wind let up enough for us to ride safely again, so we hopped back on the bikes and rode into the rain. It rained on and off for the next hour or so as we made our way north through Ipoh, but we hardly noticed since the scenery was drop-dead gorgeous. Unfortunately, our camera was hidden away from the rain, so we didn't get any pictures, but the scenery was amazing. The light through the roiling clouds illuminated the dark green mountains around us, while the fog and mist snaked around the nearby peaks. Eventually, we rode back into the sun, and it was only then that we noticed how chilly it had gotten. By the time we reached the bridge to Penang, we were almost completely dry except for our boots. We paid the toll and rode onto the four-mile long bridge. Unlike when we crossed a few days ago, the wind was blowing hard today, and traffic was fairly heavy. It was a bit disconcerting for us but apparently not for the other riders around us, who zipped by casually, with only their right hands on the bars, while we nervously kept both hands firmly on the controls.

Once on the island, we found ourselves in the midst of rush hour since it was nearly 6:00 pm. We joined the other motorbikes in the designated motorcycle lane and made our way into George Town. Soon, we were back at the Star Lodge, where we got a room for the next five nights. We dumped our gear in the familiar surroundings and walked out to our favorite dim sum place, which was inexplicably, closed. Bummer, but not really. There is so much good food here that it's easy to find another favorite. Instead we tried a new place for wonton mee and then stopped at the grocery store to pick up fruit and kitten chow. On the way back to the room, we fed and played with three kittens we had seen on our outbound walk. It's good to be home.


270 miles in 8 hours. Bikes are running good. Re reports that the front tire is stiff, but it handled the standing water well.

3/27 – 4/1 Lazy Days in George Town
 

The next six days have no real motorcycle content, we're just taking it easy in George Town. Our goal is to relax, eat, see some movies, and hopefully, figure out where this trip is going from here. George Town is the place where the wheels came off our trip two years ago, and it looks like it will be where our wheels stop rolling for a while this time. We have definitively crossed Australia off our list, so we need to figure out whether Indonesia is still on our itinerary, and if not, how we are going to fill our time between now and returning to the US.

3/27

We were determined to do as little as possible today, so with that in mind, we had a takeaway breakfast of roti canai from Yasmeen, and then we spent the morning in the room doing this and that. For lunch, we had some delicious Hainanese chicken and rice at a good place on Lebuh Chulia. The funny story about this place, is that when we first arrived in George Town on our last trip, it was raining, so I stayed with our packs under the overhang of this restaurant while Re found us a room. Like many of the restaurants here, it is only open for lunch and was closed at the time. While I sat, a man whose eyes didn't look quite right came out the door and squatted down next to me without saying anything. He was peeling an orange and offered me half, which I accepted. He didn't speak much English, but he asked what I was doing there. I explained that Re was looking for a room, and I was staying out of the rain. I asked if that was okay, and he said it was and then asked where we'd come from. I told him we had just arrived from Hat Yai in Thailand, and his eyes lit up. He told me that he really enjoys living in Malaysia, but that he likes to visit Hat Yai whenever he can. I asked why he likes Hat Yai so much, and he said it was because two things were cheap in Thailand: “drinking and ****ing.” I had no idea how to respond to this, so I just nodded my head knowingly. With that, he stood up and walked back into the depths of the restaurant. A few weeks later, we went there for chicken and rice, and he smiled when he recognized me there. He didn't seem to remember me this time, but we'll always have that afternoon in the rain.

After lunch, we walked over to Prangin Mall to see “The Hunger Games” at the theater on the fifth floor. I had never heard of the movie or the books it's apparently based on, but we enjoyed it, especially for 2.33 USD each. Later that night, we went out for dim sum. Re posted some of her writing to our blog, and then we went to the corner bar for a nightcap.

3/28

Another breakfast from Yasmeen, and then we worked on ride reports pretty much, all day. We broke for lunch around 12:00 and went to Sri Ananda Bahwan for another delicious banana leaf thali. For dinner, we had wonton mee from our favorite hawker stall and then ice cream for dessert.

3/29

Instead of getting Yasmeen for takeaway, I actually dragged my butt out of the room and down to Yasmeen for breakfast at one of the sidewalk tables. Back at the room, we worked on a “to do” list for the rest of the week. Later, Re worked on some blogposts, while I researched teaching English in China and Taiwan. We decided to try someplace new for lunch that was recommended for their roast duck and rice.

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We found Jit Seng Duck Rice on the ground floor of the Star Hotel, and sat down for a slightly expensive, but amazingly delicious lunch of duck, pork, and rice. We were each brought a plate of rice and small bowls of hot sauce, and then a heaping plate of sliced cucumbers, crispy and succulent roast pork, and a huge amount of arguably the best duck I have ever had. I'd guesstimate that between the duck and pork, there was at least 12 ounces of meat. We stuffed ourselves on the deliciousness, and the bill came to a rather hefty 8 USD, including drinks. This would be amazingly cheap in the US, but considering that Hainanese chicken and rice is usually around 4 USD including drinks, this was a bit pricey, but worth every penny.

We then walked back to the room to continue with our writing and research. As the afternoon wore on, I got a very bad headache and had a problem with the vision in my left eye. I took some paracetamol, and it seemed to get better. Later, for dinner, we had a couple of different noodle and shrimp dishes from one of the hawker stalls on Lebuh Chulia and then some “pancakes” with a red bean filling and chrysanthemum and honey tea for dessert. Back in the room, I read while Re did some more writing, and then we walked out for a nightcap.

3/30

I woke up feeling really bad this morning. I had a vicious headache, waves of nausea, and my eyes didn't seem to be working right. When I turned my head, it felt like my vision wasn't keeping pace, kind of like if you've had too many beers, they weren't tracking correctly. I stayed in bed while Re went out to get roti, and I laid back down after breakfast too. I felt better around lunchtime, so we went out for Hainanese chicken and rice again. Back in the room, we finally put pen to paper and wrote down some possible scenarios for either teaching overseas or returning to the US.

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Mid-afternoon, my headache returned, so I laid down while Re walked to the old cemetery to do some sketching. When she returned, I was again feeling some better, so we worked a bit more on future plans. We were both feeling the call of the Big Mac, so we went to McDonald's for dinner and stopped to pick up some more fruit before returning to the room to read.

3/31

Third verse, same as the first. Roti from Yasmeen, and then, we actually made a few decisions. We've decided that we can't decide what we will be doing after this trip, but we have decided that we are not going to Indonesia, that we will try to make the family reunion in North Carolina on July 7th, that whenever we ship the bikes, it will be from KL, and that we will be returning to Thailand for some quality beach time soon. Late in the morning, we decided to do a little shopping and then had a nice lunch of curry mee at a hawker stall. Later in the afternoon, we made the very huge mistake of going back to the movie theater to see “Wrath of the Titans.” I cannot stress how badly this movie sucked. If there was a plot, I have no idea what it was. After the movie was over, Re said that it had less plot than a porno. There was no acting, and we both decided that we want our two hours back.

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After the movie, we went to Kapitan for chicken biryani and then walked to the esplanade for a dish of “special ABC.”

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ABC is a local dessert made of shaved ice, red beans, sweet corn, red and green jello of some sort, palm sugar syrup, and evaporated milk. What makes it “special,” is the addition of a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. It sounds weird, and it is. The first time I had it, I was skeptical, but it's actually pretty good.

4/1

I received a distressing email overnight that my nephew was in the hospital due to complications with, heretofore, undiagnosed Type 1 diabetes. He is only 16 years old, and the email said that he was on multiple IVs and not responding. I spoke with my parents on Skype this morning and found out that my nephew was better today and responding to treatment. Still, that's a tough diagnosis for a young person. Fortunately, he has lots of family around him and is a resilient young man.

After a couple of overcast days, the sun was finally out this morning, so after breakfast we walked to the grocery store and picked up fruit and bread and hopped on the bus to the beach. George Town has a very modern and efficient bus system that covers most of the island, but most importantly, it goes to Batu Ferringhi. The buses here are so fancy and modern that many of them are equipped with a wifi hotspot. The ride to Batu Ferringhi takes about an hour, but soon enough, we were on the sand and enjoying the sun. We read for a few hours and generally enjoyed the sand and water before riding back to town in the late afternoon to clean up before dinner. Dim sum again, but this time we tried several new delicious dishes. Leaving the restaurant, we could see dark clouds roiling in the evening sky, occasionally illuminated by lightning, so instead of heading to Little India for dessert, we hurried back to the hotel, expecting the heavens to open at any minute. They never did, at least where we were, so instead, we chatted with some fellow guests on the porch before returning again to the corner bar.

Thanks for putting up some more of your story. I guess I could have gone over to ADV and followed you, but since I started following your trip here it just didn't occur to me. I was just a lurker then, so could not post. Another couple trying to do a RTW 2-up went dark for a while and then it turned out they had wrecked the bike south of the US and although not hurt much themselves, were back in Canada for the time being, and of course Big Al Smith had a couple of wrecks on his ride so I began to wonder if something similar had happened to you guys or if you had called the whole thing off, as it seemed that at times (as with all couples) continuing on to the end of the ride was kind of touch and go. Sorry to hear about your nephew....that is really rotten news and I hope he pulls through.

hello guys, nice to see you back.

What GPS and what maps are you using in South East Asia ?

PS: I like your pant cleaning method, if you ever pass through Denmark, I have a pair that need cleaning ;-))

Nope, we have survived the trip relatively unscathed and are still together! Just celebrated our 23rd Anniversary a few months ago, apparently we're both stubborn. Thanks for the good wishes about my nephew, he seems to be doing OK for now but it certainly has changed many of his future plans. I'll continue posting the rest of the trip since someone is enjoying it!

We are using a Garmin 60CSx and it was a good choice. Cheap,handheld and waterproof and no need for a fancy mount. We used the free maps from OpenStreetMaps.nl. They weren't perfect but the price was right! Other than the major cities, SE Asia is very easy to navigate and could probably be done with paper maps alone, but the GPS made it easier.

If you liked the pants cleaning photo, watch for the upcoming posts from the Thai islands!

4/2 One More Day in Georgetown
 

We decided that we need to get on the road soon, so tomorrow we ride. The issue is where. After another breakfast of takeaway coffee and roti, we worked on ride reports until lunch. After another great lunch of roast pork and bbq pork and rice at the Sky Hotel, we walked over to Komplex Komtar for ice cream and fruit. Suitably fortified, we returned to the room, where I finished another couple of days of writing. After I was done, I handed the laptop to Re so she could catch up on some blogging. While she wrote, I researched Taiping and the Cameron Highlands, our next two destinations. When Re finished writing, we also started pricing flights back to the States. We don't have a definitive return date yet, but we were interested to see how much it would cost. For dinner, we went to the pure vegetarian branch of Sri Ananda Bahwan and had a really delicious dinner. That it was delicious was not surprising, but the price was. I usually expect vegetarian food to be a little less expensive than non-veg, but dinner cost just as much as it would have for tandoori chicken. After dinner, we wandered through a few of the shops in Little India so Re could search for her favorite Indian soap. The sky was looking threatening, and when the lightning started, we decided to pick up some beers and head back to the room for laundry.

4/3 Ride to Taiping
 

Having had our fill of roti, for now at least, Re got some coffee and sliced a pineapple for breakfast. While she was doing that, I started packing the room. In the week we've been here, we seem to have completely unpacked just about everything we own, so today's packing took a while. We finally pulled away from the Star Lodge at around 10:30 am and made our way south to the four-mile long bridge again. Between the calm weather and lack of rush hour traffic, our ride across the bridge was certainly easier than our previous crossing. We once again headed south on the E1 and eventually turned off for Taiping. It was an easy ride today, the weather was warm, but the ride was quick.

We pulled into Taiping and found our hotel from memory, since Taiping is not well covered by the maps in my GPS. We stayed at the Peking Hotel on our last visit to Taiping and again found it pleasant and cheap. We pulled our bikes into the portico out front while we unloaded them and carried our junk to our room. When we returned to the bikes a few minutes later, two postmen were admiring our bikes and talking to the hotel manager. The manager informed us that they would like to buy our bikes and wanted to know where they could get ones like them. We have had more positive reactions to our bikes in Malaysia than just about anywhere else. Many people have asked us where they can get one of their own. It's surprising that even though SYM sells many different models in Malaysia, they do not sell the Symba, or Wowow, here. After declining their offer, we walked out to Bismillah for lunch. We knew from a previous visit that Bismillah has tremendously good chicken biryani and even better coffee. We were happy to find that it was as good as we remembered, even if the restaurant is a little dingy.

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After lunch, we walked to the local botanical gardens, here known as the Lake Gardens. The gardens are on the edge of town and apparently used to be a tin mine many years ago. Sometime in the late 1800s, they were turned into public gardens by the colonial rulers of the time.

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There wasn't a whole lot blooming when we were there, but many of the trees are very old and spectacular. As we walked, the sky got progressively darker, and the wind picked up. We hadn't really planned on going walking after lunch, so we had foolishly left our rain jackets in the room. When the rain began to sprinkle, we were over a mile away from the hotel. Since these afternoon rains seem to come and go pretty quickly, we decided to seek shelter in one of the many small pavilions that are scattered around the gardens. The rain began gently at first, but eventually turned into a full-fledged downpour. The monsoons that effect the west coast of Malaysia start around this time of the year, and judging by the force of the rain, they must be starting now. We hid out from the weather for an hour or more but spent our time wisely, talking about our future plans. It's appearing more likely that at the end of this trip, we will return to the US and work until we have enough money to relocate overseas on a more permanent basis. The rain eventually stopped, or at least lightened enough that we could make our way back to the hotel.

Back in the hotel, we dried off and then later walked out for a banana leaf meal at Chetty Nad. We had a truly excellent meal here two years ago, but this time, the food wasn't nearly as memorable. In addition, we were also overcharged by about 3 ringgit for our meal. Disappointing. After dinner, we walked back to the Lake Garden district and to the nearby zoo. Our real reason for coming to Taiping this time is to go on the Taiping Zoo's Night Safari. For the Night Safari, the zoo reopens at 8:00 pm, and the habitats of the nocturnal animals are illuminated with light that is supposed to simulate a full moon. It was actually a lot of fun, since we had an opportunity to see many of the animals that are usually snoozing during the day out and about. The tigers were all out roaring, the lionesses were playing hide and seek, the owls were wide awake, and the general effect was kind of spooky. The bad news was, the rain returned when we were abut three-quarters of the way through. The good news was, we brought our rain jackets with us this time. The rain wasn't so heavy that it stopped us from finishing the tour, but we were a bit damp by the time we made it back to the hotel at 11:00 pm.


70 miles in 2.5 hours.

4/4 Ride to the Cameron Highlands
 

After packing up the bikes, we walked out to the morning market for a delicious breakfast of vegetarian curry mee (a noodle soup with a thick, yellow broth, a couple of kinds of tofu (and sometimes chicken) and bean sprouts) and coffee.Then we made the short ride back out of Taiping, and were once again riding on the shoulder of the E1. Since we'd already ridden this stretch of highway before, it didn't seem quite as new and exciting, but after a couple of hours, we turned east towards Tana Ratah. This, on the other hand, was a fun road. The road twisted and turned as we slowly made our way up the Titiwangsa range (I laugh every time I say Titiwangsa ). The scenery was mountainous and green, with occasional dramatic, bare limestone patches. Along the way, we saw a four ft long monitor lizard trying to cross the road, but he wisely darted back. A short time later, we saw a similar sized lizard that wasn't so fortunate.

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As we neared the summit, the hills were suddenly covered with vast tea plantations, miles of strawberry fields, and many greenhouses. Due to the temperate climate provided by the 5,000-plus ft altitude and the abundant rainfall (more on that later) the Cameron Highlands provide much of Malaysia's tea and produce. One of the downsides of the abundance of agriculture is the abundance of trucks. Traffic was a little busy once we neared Tana Ratah, and the roads were filled with dozens of old Land Rover pickups and other, larger trucks.

We arrived in Tana Ratah at around 1:00 pm and soon found a room at the Twin Pines Chalet (which really wasn't much of a chalet, but nice enough). Ronnie from Ipoh, had pm'd us to say that he would be in town today and we should let him know when we arrived. Once we got our bikes unpacked, we sent him a pm and a text, and a few minutes later, he appeared at the Twin Pines. Ronnie is a very cool guy. He not only has a blog about motorcycling in Malaysia, but he is also working on a guidebook to riding here.

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Coincidentally, Ronnie's parents were also visiting from their new home in North Carolina, so he brought them along as well. It truly is a small world: though Ronnie's family is from Ipoh, his sister and parents have relocated to Havelock, NC. This was funny to Re and me because our first two-up ride, way back in 1992, was to the Dairy Queen in Havelock. Funny! We all went out to lunch at a place Ronnie recommended, and it was nice to have him along, as he explained some of the finer points of Malaysian food. After a long lunch, they needed to return to Ipoh, so we said our goodbyes and agreed to meet up again soon, hopefully in Ipoh next time.

Re and I decided to walk around the center of town and check out some of the dinner options for later. We had just walked out of one Indian restaurant when we spied two farang on Royal Enfields(?) stopped at the edge of the road. They appeared to be ready to pull out, so Re yelled across the street for them to stop. We introduced ourselves to Toby and Will and admired their Australian plated Enfields. They had just begun their trip from Singapore to London and had just arrived in town. We shared what we knew about accommodations and agreed to meet up for dinner.

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After walking around for a while, we returned to the Twin Pines and found the Enfields parked out front. Will is riding a newer, Indian-made 500cc Enfield, while Toby is riding a 1960s 350cc. They bought the bikes in Australia and did a bunch of work to them in preparation for their trip. Their route is planned to be almost entirely overland (Burma being the exception) and is timed to make it over the highest passes through India and Pakistan, before heading into the 'Stans and beyond. It is certainly an ambitious trip, made more ambitious by their choice of mounts, so keep an eye on The Bullet Diaries to see if they make it. After chatting around the bikes, we all went out to dinner at a local Indian joint, where we introduced them to the joys of banana leaf meals. We sat around and talked over some beers for most of the evening before calling it a night.


110 miles in about 4 hours. We had a great time today!

4/5 Touring the Cameron Highlands
 

It rained overnight, but we awoke to a sunny morning, and after a shower, headed out to look for breakfast. On our way out, we ran into Will and Toby. We discussed our plans for the day before continuing on. As we ambled up the street, we spied our favorite breakfast of roti canai and curry. We stopped for this and coffee before heading back to the room. When we returned, we found Will and Toby hard at work on their bikes. Toby's bike needed a new oil seal around the transmission input shaft, and Will had discovered that the backing plate on his rear brake was warped, and consequently, allowed the brake shoes to twist. Fortunately, they have a comprehensive toolkit and a selection of spares. Toby seemed to be having no problem installing his oil seal, whereas, Will was not having as much luck straightening the backing plate. While he worked on the oil seal, Toby also discovered that the tensioner for his primary drive chain was very worn. Lucky for them, a local Enfield enthusiast (!) had come to meet them yesterday and apparently had a cache of bikes and parts. While we headed for Gunung Brinchang and the mossy forest, Will and Toby were going to check to see if he had either of the needed parts.

Gunung Brinchang is the highest peak in the area, at 6,666 ft, and it was quite a beautiful ride. Once we turned off the main road, the ride got a little more challenging, as the road was quite steep. The last three miles were so steep that we found ourselves in first gear for about two of the three miles, and in a couple of spots, we almost needed an even lower gear. The mossy forest was supposed to be about a mile before the top, but we didn't see it on the way up. At first, the top of the mountain seemed a little disappointing, since all you could see were trees and cell phone towers. Once off the bikes, we saw what looked like a fire lookout tower. When we reached the base of the tower, we could see that it was open to climb. We scaled the four flights of narrow, steep, metal steps to the top.

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The view from here was spectacular, out one side we could see the mountains covered in clouds, whereas on the other side were miles of tea plantations. We were soon joined on the tower by a German couple who were touring Malaysia in a rented car. They saw our bikes, and they (or really, he) wanted to know about our trip. We chatted with them for nearly an hour before climbing back down the tower, posing for a few pictures, and heading back down the hill. We looked for the mossy forest again, but didn't see any indication of where it should be. Our brakes got a thorough workout on the way down the hill but made it with flying colors.

Halfway down, there was a sign for the Boh Tea plantation and visitors' center. We pulled into the parking lot, parked under a tree, and walked through tea fields to the visitors' center.

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The tea plants were neat to see up close, since they look much like bonsai trees. While they are low and compact, their trunks are surprisingly thick, and most of them were covered in moss. In the visitors' center we watched a short film about tea production, toured the displays of machinery, and walked through the tea processing plant.

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The plantation has a beautiful tea room that is cantilevered out over the fields, so we stopped for a cuppa and some shortbread. While we were enjoying our snack, it began to rain gently. We decided to head back to the bikes and tried to beat the rain back to Tana Ratah. No such luck.

Shortly after we pulled out of the parking lot, it began raining in earnest. At the entrance to the plantation, we found a covered parking spot and pulled our bikes in to wait for the rain to stop. The sky grew increasingly dark and the thunder rolled through the hills. After 30 minutes or so, the rain lightened enough that we decided to make another attempt at getting home. We still had another three miles of twisty, narrow road through the plantation before we made it back to the main road, but unfortunately, it began to rain even harder just before the junction.

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As we pulled onto the main road, the sky really let loose, so we nipped across the intersection and pulled under the awning of a closed business near a bus stand.

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Soon, the rain became truly torrential, and the streets began to flood. After another 15 or 20 minutes waiting on the bikes, we decided to take a seat in the bus shelter since the water around the wheels was getting deeper. Eventually, the rain slackened, and we decided to make a run back to Tana Ratah. We didn't get too wet in the final eight miles, but we were a little chilly by the time we parked the bikes. Our plans to go hiking this afternoon were obviously canceled, so we hung out on the porch and made plans to try hiking tomorrow. After taking a shower, we decided to warm each other up. Later, we went out for dinner and stopped for beer and cookies, which we enjoyed while doing some writing in the room.


24 slow, wet miles.

4/6 Change of Plans
 

Yesterday's rainy ways started up again in the middle of the night. We both woke up several times overnight to the flash of lightning and boom of thunder. The rain drummed on the roof all night and into the morning, so clearly, our plan to get up early and hike in the hills needed to be changed. When the alarm went off, instead of hitting the snooze button, I simply turned it off and snuggled up with Re. Eventually, the rain seemed to lighten, so we finally rolled out of bed. After getting a shower, I pulled up the weather and radar on the laptop and saw that there was plenty of rain in the area and that the chance of rain for the next several days in Tana Ratah was 70% or greater. The major activity in the Cameron Highlands is hiking the many trails through the hills around Tana Ratah. Our fear was that they would be rivers of mud due to all the rain, so we needed a new plan. While we enjoyed another breakfast of roti canai, curry, and coffee, we discussed some alternate plans. We still have our Thai visas that we got in Phnom Penh and decided we would head north for some beach time and to be in Thailand for Songkran (the Thai New Year).

The rain had pretty much stopped by the time we returned to the Twin Pines. Will and Toby were just getting ready to leave for Penang, so we wished them luck and said maybe we'd see them there. While we loaded our bikes, another guest asked us about our trip and we spent about 45 minutes chatting with her and her son. This did delay our start, but miraculously, by the time we hit the road, the sky was nearly blue. We returned to the E1 on the same road we came in on, and it was an even better ride going back down the hill.

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What had been an occasionally slow ride up the hill turned into a fourth gear, 45 mph roller coaster ride back down the Titiwangsa (tee hee). Too soon we were back on the E1 riding north, back to Georgetown. We considered bypassing Georgetown and heading straight back to Hat Yai, Thailand, but considering the massive car bombs in Hat Yai and Yala town last week, we decided to stop in Georgetown instead. From Georgetown we can get through the troubled area and as far as Trang in one day, hopefully avoiding any possible unrest.

We crossed the bridge, made our way north into Georgetown, and pulled up in front of the Star Lodge, only to find that they had no A/C rooms. Bummer. Fortunately, the Star Lodge is affiliated with two other guesthouses, and the 75 Backpacker Lodge had a room available. The 75 is nowhere near as nice as the Star, but it was only for one night. Somewhere along the way between the Cameron Highlands and Georgetown, the funnel that hangs from my helmet lock broke. We use the funnel on a nearly daily basis to refuel the bikes, so we need to replace it ASAP. We walked to Mydin, which is Malaysia's version of Big Lots, and sure enough, found a new funnel for about 17 cents. We also picked up some detergent while we were there before stopping at a hawker stall for banana and Milo (like Nestle Quik) milkshakes. Good and good for you! Since dim sum is becoming our new favorite dinner, later that evening, we returned to our usual place for another fantastic meal. Since the dim sum place is halfway to the mall, we continued to McDonald's for an ice cream cone before calling it a night.

185 miles in 5 hours. Because we both find the name, Titiwangsa, so funny, we have decided to rename a certain sexual act in its honor. Henceforth, that activity will be known as, “Doin' The Titiwangsa.”

4/7 Utility Day in Georgetown
 

Breakfast in Georgetown only means one thing: roti canai from Yasmeen. After a good night sleep, Re walked to Yasmeen to find that her roti man had missed her terribly. He wanted to know where she had been and was so happy to see her that he kissed her on both cheeks before making our roti. After breakfast we walked to Little India to a well-stocked motorbike shop, where we picked up another 2.5 x 17 tube to add to the collection and a couple of new spark plugs for good measure. One tube and two NGK plugs for 6 USD, what a bargain! On the way back to the room, we stopped in at the Star Lodge and found that they had a room for us, so we carried our gear to our new room at the Star.

After changing rooms, Re decided she wanted to try a sponge she bought in Nilai that appeared to be a type of “magic eraser” sponge. While the metal cleans up pretty well on our bikes, the white plastic leg shields and side covers are stained, and no amount of scrubbing with a rag seems to make any difference. After wiping the plastic off with a wet rag, Re went over the white bits with the new sponge. The outcome was amazing: the sponge removed nearly all the stains and seemed to work on the chrome too. So now she is riding around on a bike with shiny white bits.

After a shower, it was time for lunch, so we headed for our favorite Hainanese chicken and rice place and another delicious lunch. Re has decided that she needs to find a recipe for Hainanese chicken since it is impossibly juicy but still has a crisp skin. After lunch we returned to Mydin to get the toothpaste we forgot yesterday and to look for more sunscreen before we head to the beach. We found toothpaste but no sunscreen at Mydin, so we continued on to Komplex Komtar, where we searched the pharmacies but left empty-handed. They did have sunscreen, but it was extremely expensive: a five ounce tube of SPF30 was between 9 and 10 USD. Ouch! After picking up a watermelon and a pineapple, we returned to the guesthouse to work on some travel plans and relax. Later that evening, we went out to the hawker stalls for wonton mee and fresh juice. After walking around Chinatown and having some tea, we headed back to the Star so I could Skype with my parents. We ended the evening with a nightcap at the corner bar.

4/8 One More Day in Georgetown
 

Since we had a spare day before we had to leave for Thailand, we decided to stay in G-town one more day to do some shopping and eating. You know the drill by now: roti from Yasmeen and their delicious coffee, too. A quick shower and then we walked up to the pharmacy to look for a wrist brace for Re. Since somewhere in India, she has had an on again, off again problem with her middle finger on her throttle hand. She has knuckle pain when she rides, and it cramps and locks in a circle when she's off the bike. She researched it on the internet a while ago, and found out it's referred to as “trigger finger,” and it's just a form of tendonitis. The recommended treatment is to wear a wrist brace upside down at night to keep the fingers straight and to take anti-inflammatories and put ice on it. Ice is hard to come by, so we've tried substituting cold beer bottles, but it's been acting up lately, so we're on the hunt for a wrist brace. Both pharmacies that we know of were closed today, perhaps because it's Sunday, so we once again walked over to Komtar and wandered through the drugstores there. Re did find a wrist brace and then went in search of a tank top. Both of us are getting awfully tired of the same three shirts so Re decided to buy something sexier and made out of cotton. She eventually found a couple of flattering ones and bought them.

After returning to the room to drop off our purchases, we went out in search of lunch. We walked to the Sky Hotel to get some delicious pork and rice. It turned out that everybody else had the very same idea today, since there were no tables and a very long line at the counter. We debated waiting around, but instead, walked across the street for more Hainanese chicken and rice. It was an exceptionally hot day, so we went back to the room, flipped open the laptop, and did some research as to which Thai islands we could take our motorbikes to. We lazed away the rest of the afternoon before finally walking out to dinner at around 6:00.

On our way to dinner, we spied two familiar Royal Enfields parked in front of a guesthouse on Lebuh Chulia. After two days in Batu Ferringhi, Will and Toby apparently came into Georgetown so they could hit the Thai embassy for their visas first thing in the morning. When we found them, they were chatting with a German couple who have just completed their one year motorcycle and scooter journey from Germany to Malaysia. We didn't get their names since they had to leave shortly after we arrived, but he rode a 650 Honda of some sort, and she rode a 300cc step-through scooter of some sort. Tomorrow morning, they take their bikes to the port to send them by ship back to Europe. It was too bad that we didn't get to talk to them more, because it sounds like they had quite an adventure as well. Will and Toby were also in good spirits, since some friends of theirs had brought a few items the forgot in Australia, and they met them in Batu Ferringhi. Both of them raved about the food in Georgetown and said the one thing they wanted to eat that they hadn't gotten yet was dim sum. Even though we just had dim sum two nights ago, it's never too soon for more. We said we'd show them the way, so they went to grab their jackets.

They returned with their jackets and two girls they just met in the lobby who also wanted to go for dim sum. One girl introduced herself as Celine, from France, and even though Will asked the other girl, who was from Belgium, to repeat her name three times, I don't think any of us ever understood what her name was. We all walked to the dim sum restaurant and found that it was packed. There was only one small table open, so we all crowded around it. Since Re and I were familiar with many of the dishes, we were elected to pick for everyone. Given our limited table space, we did it in three rounds, and all ate til we didn't want any more. The food was really good, and the company was even better, since both of the women had also been traveling for many months now. We finished off our meal with a round of egg tarts and one more pot of tea before paying the bill. Dim sum for six with dessert and five pots of tea came to a grand total of 50 ringgit (17 USD). I love Malaysia.

We had told Will and Toby about the corner bar before they invited the girls along to dinner, but we weren't really sure that they would want to go. We decided to leave it up to them, so I described it as best I could, including the rats occasionally scurrying along the sidewalks. I think they were lured by the promise of cheap beer and didn't really believe us about the rats, so they opted to come along. We found a table and some chairs and spent the rest of the night talking about travel and many other subjects. One of us finally noticed that it was 1:00 am, and since we are supposed to be riding 200 miles and crossing into Thailand tomorrow, Re and I decided to call it a night. It was a great evening. Hopefully tomorrow morning isn't too ugly.

4/9 Ride Back to Thailand
 

It was an early morning after a relatively short night, but fortunately, neither of us was any worse for the wear after last night's festivities. While I began packing up the room, Re again, headed out to pick up breakfast. At Yasmeen, Re had to break the bad news to her new boyfriend/roti chef , Mohammad, that she would be going to Thailand for several weeks. He was apparently a bit upset and wanted to know when she would be back. As she left, he kissed her on both cheeks and said he will cry until she returns. Some guys might be jealous, but I am not worried at all. You see, there's this love that can never be. For many, many years ago, Re found her one true love: pork. And since Mohammad is Muslim, I'm safe (for now). After breakfast, we continued packing the bikes for what we hoped would be an early start, but once again, this plan was derailed by a friendly person who was interested in our bikes and trip. This morning, it was an Australian gentleman who spied us loading up and wanted to know more. Consequently, we didn't end up boarding the ferry until about 10:00 am.

Once we exited the ferry, the ride to the Thai border was warm and fast. Before we crossed back into Thailand, we filled up our tanks and both jerrycans with inexpensive, Malaysian fuel. We are going to miss being able to buy 15 liters of fuel for 10 USD. Sigh. The border formalities were easy, quick, and free (since we already had our visas). The only problem was that our temporary import permit for the bikes is only valid for one month. I had read on HUBB that the TIP should be valid for as long as your visa, but after speaking with several Customs officials, that is apparently incorrect. I was told that if we need more time, I should be able to get it extended at another Customs post. I don't imagine we'll be in Thailand for more than 30 days, but you never know. Immediately after we crossed into Thailand, we stopped for lunch at the convenient (and more importantly, air-conditioned) McDonald's at the border. After lunch, we continued our ride to Trang, where we spent the night. The afternoon ride went by fairly quickly and easily, but it was interesting to note the differences between Malaysia and Thailand as we rode. Malaysia seems like a much more western country than Thailand. Whereas the roads in Malaysia are excellent and well signed, the roads in Thailand are a little more basic (but still very good). In Malaysia, most people seem to have adopted western-style clothing, while in Thailand, there's still plenty of western-style clothing, you still see a wide variety of traditional dress as well. Another thing you see a lot in Thailand is little motorbikes with sidecars. They are everywhere and are used for deliveries, taxis, and as mobile restaurants. Conversely, I can only recall seeing one of these combinations in Malaysia, and it displayed a handicapped sticker.

There are many other differences, but these were the few that struck me on the ride today. We arrived in Trang at around 6:00 pm and were fortunately, able to remember our way to the hotel where we stayed two years ago. My GPS doesn't cover Trang very well and was of limited help. One of the reasons we did not want to return to Trang is that there are few decent, inexpensive places to stay, and the one we stayed at last time was more than a little dingy. But, the price was right, so we returned to the Ko Teng Hotel once again. What a difference two years makes! The prices were still cheap, but they painted and did some other work to the rooms, and it was much nicer this time. As a bonus, they allowed us to pull our bikes into their cavernous lobby overnight. After unloading the bikes, we walked up to the night market, where we bought salads, fried chicken, sticky rice, grilled pork, and Thai iced teas. We sat on the steps of some government building and ate our yummy food. For dessert, we bought some sort of thick pancake filled with shredded coconut and coconut jam. It was hot off the griddle and delicious. On the way back to the room, we picked up some cheap Changs.

225 miles in about 8 hours. So far, we have spent 74 days in southeast Asia and have spent 3666 USD, for a daily average of 49.50 USD. This number seems high, but crossing into Laos cost 130 bucks, Cambodia was 45 USD, and our 60-day Thai visas were 80 USD. These expenses alone add 3 dollars a day to our average cost.

4/10 Ride to Koh Lanta
 

One drawback to our hotel is that they do not have rooms with one big bed. So this morning, after the alarm went off, Re came and snuggled up in my bed. One thing led to another... and so we got up later than planned. But actually, we didn't, since I forgot to change the time when we crossed back into Thailand. When the alarm went off at 7:00 am, it was really 6:00 am local time. We decided to take advantage of our free hour to actually go out and enjoy breakfast. We found the morning market, where we had some fried dough and really excellent and strong coffee. Back at the hotel, we packed up the bikes, showered, and rode out the front door, heading north for Koh Lanta.

While the roads weren't as good today, it was a pretty ride.

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The road wound its way through large tree covered hills with dramatic limestone faces. We also found ourselves cruising through pineapple orchards and watermelon fields. The roadsides were lined with fruit stalls, some places advertising three pineapples for 20 baht (66 cents). Unfortunately, we had no way to carry any of this delicious fruit, so we rode on. After a couple of hours, we arrived at the first ferry of the day, where we paid a grand total of 56 baht (under 2 USD) for both of us and both bikes for both ferries. What a bargain!

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After all the cars and trucks boarded the first ferry, we made our way up the ramp and onto the large, flat deck.

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This ride only took about 15 minutes. It was nice to catch glimpses of the ocean between the islands, and the water was beginning to turn a nice shade of green. Once we disembarked from this ferry, we made the 8-mile ride across Koh Lanta Noi to the next ferry, which would take us to Koh Lanta Yai. This short ride was fun, since it wound up and back down the spine of the island.

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The second ferry ride was similar to the first but much shorter, and the water got even greener.

Our bungalows were only about a 20-minute ride from the ferry dock so we pulled in around 12:30 pm. We were both hungry, so we ordered lunch and then unpacked our bikes while we waited. We were both a little underwhelmed by our bungalow and its proximity to the beach. While we could see the Andaman Sea from our porch, it was about 150 ft from the beach. I know lots of you are going, “waaaa,” right now, but we really thought we'd be closer to the water and that the beach would be wider. The other odd thing about the location was that only two of the ten bungalows were occupied. It is getting toward the end of the season on Koh Lanta, but we didn't expect it to be this deserted.

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We did have a nice lunch overlooking the water and later, walked on the beach and waded in the surf. One of the nice things about our bungalows is the collection of local cats. We met a couple of adult cats who were nice and friendly, but our favorite was a young kitten who was full of energy and apparently, had no fear.

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Because of this, we christened him, WFO.

A little later, we walked up to the main road to check out the dinner options and pick up some water at the 7Eleven. Since my last haircut was about a month ago, I was beginning to feel like a long-haired, hippie freak, so we took advantage of our open air bathroom, and Re gave me a haircut. After a quick shower, we hopped on the bikes and rode out in search of dinner. We picked up a couple of recommendations from Travelfish.org, but we didn't have any exact directions, so we planned to do a little bit of riding. As I bounced up the dirt path toward the main road, I heard a rattling from my chain case. I assumed that the bouncing had caused my chain case to shift, so when we got to the main road, I tried to adjust it by hand. No such luck. I ended up removing the chain case under a street light and found that two of the four bolts that hold the rear sprocket to the hub were loose AGAIN. FFS. I didn't feel like fixing this in the dark, so we rode slowly back toward the bungalows. On the way, we found a small noodle stand, where we had dinner. We stopped at the 7Eleven for some Changs and cookies before calling it a night.


105 miles in about 3.5 hours, including two ferry rides. I shed a small tear when we had to stop for petrol today, and 7.5 liters cost 11 USD.

4/11 Tsunamis and Sunburn
 

After another 7Eleven breakfast, we unrolled the tarp and got to work repairing my rear hub. We went through the now too familiar process of removing the rear wheel and rear hub. A quick inspection showed that two of the bolts had backed off by several threads, one was starting to loosen, leaving only one still snugly fastened. We once again, put it back together with Loctite and as much torque as I could put on it. I received an email from an experience mechanic who suggested that our problem now was probably due to the threading being overstretched, and that replacing the bolts and nuts is next step. If I had access to a drill and a couple of 1/16” high-carbon bits, I would safety wire the bolt heads. I actually brought several feet of safety wire with us and should have brought the matching drill bits. Until I can do one of those two things, I will just have to be sure to inspect the bolts every thousand miles or so. Both Re and I seem to be infected with a bit of forgetfulness, since I got the rear wheel completely installed without reinstalling the chain (doh!) and Re reattached the brake rod without the spring (double doh!). We should be able to do this in our sleep by now. After putting everything right (or so we thought), we packed up the tools and got cleaned up.

About 10:30, we jumped in the water for a quick swim and a little sun before grabbing some books and spending the rest of the morning reading in one of the berugas (a beruga is a raised platform with a roof, usually thatched, to protect you from the sun and rain). Since we're both still pretty pale, we wanted to stay out of the direct sun during peak hours. We were comfortable where we were and ordered lunch from the kitchen and ate in the beruga as well. In the middle of the afternoon, we went back to our bungalow to work on some ride reports. At around 4:15 pm, Re headed back to the beach, and I followed about fifteen minutes later. After a quick dip, we were walking along the beach picking up shells, when we slowly noticed that we were just about the only people on the beach. Huh. Re walked up the steps from the beach in time to see the managers of the bungalows and their daughter heading out the front gate with suitcases and their pet rabbit. Double huh. Obviously slow on the uptake, we returned to our shell collecting on the beach. About ten minutes later, we were joined on the beach by another woman, who had just waded into the water, when the owner of the bungalows one row back from the water motioned for all of us to come talk to him. Mr Hutyee does not speak a lot of English, but he was able to explain to us that there had been a big earthquake off of Indonesia, and that there was now a tsunami warning for Koh Lanta. I guess that's where everyone went. We asked him if it was dangerous and if we should leave for higher ground with everybody else, and he said we would know when it was time to leave. Unlike the people managing our bungalows, he was a local guy and seemed a bit smarter too. Re and I went to our bungalow, packed the essential stuff, and placed it by the front door. The rest of the stuff, we put up on the furniture or hung on hooks on the wall. The floor of our bungalow was about five feet off the ground, and that ground was probably another five feet above the beach level. Feeling as prepared as we wanted to be, we walked back down to our beruga and waited for something to happen.

After a while, Mr Hutyee joined us in our beruga, and with his limited English, told us the story of the 2004 tsunami. He witnessed it from this exact beach, and told us that the water receded between a quarter and a half mile before the wave appeared. He said people were actually out on the sand, picking up the fish that were left behind when the water receded so rapidly. Then about 20 to 30 minutes later, he could see a large, black wall out on the water, heading north and west towards Phuket and Phang-Nga. He said that on Koh Lanta, which was partially spared a direct hit, the wave crashed on the beach, and then the water rose to the level of the ground we were sitting on, and that area was covered with one to two feet of water. He told us that if we saw the water recede quickly, it would be a very good time to leave. Awesome! Fleeing the incoming water with the waves lapping at our little wheels would be an awesome story. So we sat and waited, and waited, and since it was low tide, the water did go out farther than we'd seen so far, but nothing ever happened. We sat and watched for about two hours, until the sun set, and then decided to go get some dinner.

When we went back to our bungalow, there was still no one to be seen anywhere, except for Mr Hutyee and his son. We took a quick shower and got dressed for dinner. In the shower we both discovered that we were a little sunburned. Apparently we didn't account for the angle of the setting sun and the fact that the beruga was no longer protecting us. When we rode out to get some dinner, we found that most of the restaurants on the main road, which has another hundred feet of elevation from the beach, were closed. One of the few places that was open was the Jumrat, which we'd looked at last night. They were packed, and we ended up waiting for nearly an hour for our food to arrive. But it was very good. We hit the 7Eleven for beer and cookies and made the short ride back to the bungalow. The managers had still not returned, and we were the only people here again. All in all, a strange day.

4/12 Ride Around Koh Lanta
 

While we were eating our 7Eleven breakfast on our porch, we saw that the managers had returned and were now standing in Reception and eyeing us. In a couple of the online reviews of the Nautilus Bungalows, one thing mentioned is the odd and not exactly friendly attitude of the hosts. They are a Swedish couple who have been managing the property for the last two years. On arrival, they seemed polite but reserved. I commented to Re how they were looking at us this morning, and then they started walking over to our bungalow. For all the world, they looked like they had done something bad, and their mom had sent them over to apologize. While they walked slowly toward us, they were looking at the ground and only occasionally glancing up at us. We said hello when they neared the porch and what followed was a rather odd conversation in which they more or less apologized for leaving without us yesterday. The husband seemed especially shocked when we told them we were right on the beach and saw them leave. The wife looked kind of appalled and gave him a hard stare, especially when we could describe what they were carrying when they left. Just so you understand, we were not upset at all about them leaving without us, but it was funny to see their reactions now. After this short exchange, they simply stood there, silently, looking between the ground and us, as if they were waiting to be yelled at or forgiven. Uncomfortable with the situation, we told them about what we saw and experienced while we waited and related Mr Hutyee's story to them also. They looked even more surprised that we hadn't evacuated when we heard about the tsunami warning and said as much. We explained that we aren't very bright. We told them of times we've gone to the beach in North Carolina during hurricanes and snuck into the water while the beaches were closed. They looked even more confused, and after spending some more time silently looking at the ground and each other, they left. Very strange.

Our biggest concern of the morning was that Turbo, the little kitten, was nowhere to be seen. (We decided that WFO was not such a good name, after all) Hopefully he's okay, but we missed seeing him at breakfast. The big plans for the day were to ride around the island and see some of the other beaches. We also wanted to check out one of the bars that was advertising a big Songkran (Thai New Year) party for tomorrow.

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We first headed south along the west coast of the island, all the way to the national park at the end. The first few miles of the ride were relatively level, but then the road became twisty and went dramatically up and down hill. Some of the uphill sections required second or even first gear, but it was a beautiful ride.

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We stopped and walked on several of the beaches to see if there was a place we liked better, but all the beaches seemed to have their pros and cons. Since the road didn't continue around to the east side of the island, we had to head back north, then turn east, and then south again. Before we headed east, we stopped to look at the Mong Bar to find out what was up for tomorrow. While we stopped to look, we noticed that while they did have beer and alcohol, the prominent items on the menu were a couple of different kinds of mushroom milkshakes and some “special” brownies. I don't know what they put in those milkshakes, but it must be good, since the milkshakes are 400 baht (13 USD). Maybe we'll need to find a different place to celebrate Songkran tomorrow...

Since it was after noon, we decided to stop for lunch at a small roadside restaurant, where we both had excellent Thai dishes and petted the first and only neutered male cat we've seen in southeast Asia. Apparently, there is a low cost spay and neuter clinic on the island. After lunch, I noticed my rear brake pedal didn't feel right. Normally, when you release the rear brake, the pedal snaps firmly back up. Mine now seemed to be returning slowly. Since we had the rear wheel off yesterday, I assumed this was simply down to a different adjustment on the rear brake free play. However, once we started climbing and descending hills again on the southeast side of the island, I began to notice that it felt like my rear brake was dragging. We stopped on the side of the road, got out the 14mm wrench, and I backed off on the brake free play adjuster a few times. With both bikes on the centerstand, I spun the rear wheels, and while Re's seemed to turn a little bit more freely, mine seemed okay. We continued south as far as we could go on the east side of the island, but then, I heard and felt my clutch slip a couple of times when we climbed some of the steep hills. We pulled over again, popped the bike on the center stand, and spun the rear wheel, only to find again that it wasn't turning very freely.

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We rolled the bike to a shady spot under a cashew tree, got out the tarp and tools, and pulled the rear wheel off. I couldn't find anything wrong with the way it was assembled, but once it was reinstalled, it spun freely. I still have no idea what was causing the drag, but after reassembly, the brake pedal felt normal and the bike also felt normal when accelerating and decelerating. The bad news is, I have now ridden the bike for 15 to 20 miles with this condition, and I hope I haven't damaged my clutch. A clutch pack was one of the spares that I tried to get before we left on this trip, but I was unable to get one. Hopefully, it won't be a problem.

We continued our ride north along the east side of the island until the road turned west again. On the way back to the bungalows, we picked up some fruit and some water. Back at the bungalows, we headed out into the water for a swim and spent some time, once again, trying to figure out what comes next after this trip. While we were floating and bobbing in the water, I turned my right knee very wrong and felt a tendon or something pop in it. It was very painful, and my knee immediately swelled up, so I limped out of the water and back to the bungalow for a shower. After watching the sunset, I walked gingerly up the hill for dinner at Jumrat again. Re was kind enough to act as my crutch when I had to step over barriers. After dinner, we stopped for beer and ice cream before limping back down the hill for the night.

41 miles in many hours.

4/13 Songkran and Conversating
 

After a snuggly morning (yet another NSFW link) and breakfast on the porch, we spent the whole morning talking about the future, the past, and paths not taken. Turbo the kitten is still missing. Hopefully, he is okay. After a while, we realized it was lunchtime, so we ordered lunch from the kitchen and ate it in the beruga on the beach. After some swimming and sunbathing, we hopped on the bikes in the mid-afternoon and rode out to find some Songkran festivities. There were a number of bars advertising that they had parties with deejays starting as early as 11:00 am, so we figured that by mid-afternoon, we should find something going on. But no. None of the three places we checked had anything going on. But we did get wet. One of the principal activities during Songkran is the waterfights. Sure, there's cleaning your house, bathing the monks at the local temple, respecting your elders, but most people know Songkran for the squirt guns and 55 gallon drums of ice water. There was some traditional reason for splashing water and smearing people's faces with powder, but it has evolved into an all day, water and powder throwing fest. In some parts of Thailand, it's a three to four day long waterfight, but on Koh Lanta it is just one day. As soon as we pulled out onto the main road, we came upon scooters whose passengers acted as tail gunners with outlandishly huge, super soaker-type squirt guns. These were fun to dodge and weave, and we only got a little wet. The real menace on the roads are the pickup trucks. These trucks ride around with several people in the bed crowded around a 55 gallon drum full of water and usually ice. The people in the bed use large bowls to scoop out the water on whoever they happen to pass. We managed to avoid most of these icy dousings, but Re did get splashed directly one time. One motorbike ahead of us that had two large farang on it decided to overtake one of these trucks on an uphill stretch of road, and it was not pretty. The rider and passenger each shared four to five large bowls full of what appeared to be very cold water as they slowly passed the truck. We, on the other hand, waited for a downhill section and were able to nip by, while the water throwers were still celebrating the previous dousing. Then we got wet in earnest, as the clouds decided to take part in the festivities. We pulled over to the side of the road and put on our rain jackets for the wet ride back to the bungalow. It seemed funny that the rain would put a damper on the water celebration, but most of the revelers seemed to disappear when the rain began.

Back at the bungalow, we were a little chilly, so we decided to walk up to the 7Eleven for some hot coffee. The shortcut by foot to the main road cuts through Mr Hutyee's (our friend from the tsunami watching party) bungalows. As we were passing by one of his bungalows, we spotted Turbo on the porch! Except that it wasn't Turbo, unless somebody had cut off his tail in the past day. Re then spied another small kitten that looked sort of like Turbo but wasn't him either, and then, snoozing on the porch, was the real deal.

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It was Turbo. While we were petting all three of them, Mr Hutyee appeared and asked where we were going. We told him we were heading up for coffee, and he insisted that we join him, his son, and his grandson for coffee. A short while later, some of the guests staying at the Hutyee Boat bungalows showed up, wet and cold from Songkran, and joined us all for coffee. It turns out that Turbo and his siblings were the kittens of one of Mr Hutyee's cats, but that recently, the daughter of our Swedish hosts had absconded with Turbo. A couple days ago, the residents of the bungalow where the other kittens lived, spotted Turbo on their way to the beach and brought him back home. As it should be, since he looked too young to leave his mother. We spent the rest of the afternoon and into the evening talking with the other Hutyee residents. In retrospect, we should have stayed at the Hutyee bungalows, since, while basic, they were only 350 baht (12 USD) per night, and only 100 meters from the water. The atmosphere was certainly more friendly and lively, and the hosts are a lot more personable, even with limited English. The downside to the location of the Hutyee Boat bungalows is that it is farther back in the jungle, and there were plenty of mosquitoes. Then more Thai food for dinner before heading back to the bungalow for the evening.

12 miles and a couple of gallons of water. My knee is feeling better, it just feels a little swollen.

4/14 Beach, Writing, and Rain
 

After another breakfast on the porch, we spent the morning working on ride reports in the shade. We both got too much sun a couple days ago, and our shoulders are still pink. We walked up to the main road to pick up fried chicken and sticky rice for lunch, and then went back to the bungalow, where Re worked on some blogging. We put on some sunscreen for a swim and some sun. Mid-afternoon, we returned to our porch to do some more writing and to wait for the sun to go down a bit. We hit the water around 5:00 pm, in time for the threatening afternoon sky to release a deluge. We've had some rain each afternoon, but nothing like this. It simply poured. We stayed in the water for a while, but eventually headed back to the room to get cleaned up for dinner. The bathroom on our bungalow is open air, and while the toilet itself is somewhat protected by the roof overhang, the shower and sink are open to the sky. For some reason, it's very odd to shower in a rainstorm (sexy, too). We returned to the Jumrat for dinner before picking up ice cream and beer for a nightcap. Tomorrow we ride!

4/15 Ride to Krabi
 

On her walk back form the 7Eleven this morning, Re saw a snake in her path that had a dark body with a distinct red head. She Googled this later and is fairly certain it was a Red-headed Krait, which is a highly venomous species. Good thing she didn't try to pick this one up or pet it as it slithered across her path! After eating, we loaded up the bikes and showered. Before we left, we walked over to the Hutyee Boat bungalows to bid farewell to Turbo and his siblings.

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We gave them a quick cuddle before thanking Mr. Hutyee for his hospitality and wishing them all well. Back at the Nautilus, we settled our bill and hit the road around 9:15.

The ride back to ferry and the ferry rides themselves were unremarkable except for the beauty of the water and the one slight slip of my clutch when going over the spine of Koh Lanta Noi. Back on the mainland, we rejoined Highway 4 for the short ride to Krabi Town. The land here is surprisingly hilly and green, the dramatic limestone faces make a nice backdrop to the good roads. We arrived at the turnoff to Krabi around 11:30 and decided to give it a look. The guidebooks don't say much about Krabi, other than it is a ferry port for boats to some of the Andaman islands, so we didn't expect much. We were prepared to continue on to Phuket if we didn't like what we saw, but we were pleasantly surprised and decided to spend the night.

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The town itself is set along the water and there are many limestone karst islands in the bay/river that runs along the main road. There was also a sign for a mangrove trail at the edge of town, which looked interesting as well. But the real attraction was the market set up along the main road and all the good looking food stalls! One drawback to Krabi Town is that accommodations seemed fairly expensive. There were some very posh places aimed at farang, all in the 20 to 25 USD range. I stayed with the bikes, while Re went in search of something more in our price range. She shortly returned with our choice for the evening.

After unloading the bikes, we walked out to the market we saw earlier for lunch, where we picked up some fried chicken and sticky rice and some little deep-fried sausages wrapped in dough.

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We ate them on the riverfront promenade before walking back to the sign for the mangrove walk. The sky was getting increasingly dark as we walked, and we didn't bring our rain jackets with us, but we were feeling optimistic. The mangrove walk itself was actually quite interesting, since we saw a variety of different colored, small crabs.

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Some of them were turquoise, some were bright red, some butter yellow, and others were multicolored. The canopy of the mangroves hid the rapidly darkening skies, and it was only when the thunder and lightning started that we realized we were now about a mile from our hotel, and the sky was very black.

We started walking quickly back toward town, but no luck. The rain started gently at first, but soon turned into a downpour. Not realizing quite how far we'd walked out, we tried to make it back in the rain, but eventually stopped because we were soaked and the rain was falling even harder. After hiding out for 30 minutes or so, the rain slacked off enough for us to try to get back to our room. For the last five or six blocks, we were able to run between awnings and made it back to the room. Since we were thoroughly soaked, we pulled off our clothes and jumped in the shower to warm up. We hung all our wet stuff under the A/C and took advantage of the wifi to post some of our writings. Later, I saw that my parents were on Skype, so I talked to them for a while before we headed out for dinner.

We'd hoped that our clothes would dry by dinnertime, but they didn't. We ended up pulling on our still damp clothes and headed back out to the market. The rain had stopped by now, and many, many more food stalls had popped up. I've never seen so many varieties of little clams and shellfish, all steamed and for sale in one place, but after a bad reaction to a cockle omelet I ate on our last trip, I skipped the bivalves. Instead, we bought an assortment of small, grilled squid on sticks, different noodle dishes, and some more of those deep-fried, dough-wrapped sausages. We picked up some soda waters and cookies to round out the meal. Later, we went back to the room and spent the rest of the evening catching up on emails, news, and snake identification.


65 miles in about 2 hours. My rear brake is acting normally, but I am a little concerned about my clutch. We are overdue for an oil change, so hopefully, that will fix it.

4/16 Ride to Phuket (It's Really Pronounced, Poo-get)
 

A peek out the window this morning revealed that the sky was still overcast and a bit threatening, so we decided to push on to Phuket Town today. After breakfast, we started loading the bikes, where I was again cornered by an interested passerby. Consequently, our 9:00 am departure was delayed until 9:30. When we pulled out, we were happy to see that the sky had begun to clear.

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Today's ride was very much like yesterday's, scenery wise, with jungle covered hills and the occasional exposed limestone face. The bad news is that my clutch is slipping more frequently. Come on, oil change. As we passed Phang-Nga, the sky grew rapidly darker, the humidity increased, and inevitably, it began to rain. The rain quickly gathered strength to become a pretty steady downpour. The rain continued on and off, all the way to the bridge to the island of Phuket. Once we crossed the bridge, the sky became a mixture of dark clouds and patches of blue. My clutch continued to slip either when I tried to exceed 42 mph or when climbing hills at more than three-quarters throttle. I elected to baby it as much as I could, since right now, I really don't have a Plan B.

Once we got into Phuket Town, we found our way to the Nanachart Mansion. We stayed at the Nanachart on our last visit here, and remembered it to be a cheap and clean option. We were glad to find that it still is and has secure, gated motorcycle parking as well. The rate is still 350 baht (12 USD), but one new feature is wifi in the room for an additional 50 baht (2 bucks). We walked down to the market for a late lunch of noodle soup with pork and then into the mall for a Blizzard at the Dairy Queen. There really isn't much to do in Phuket Town proper, so we spent the rest of the afternoon planning on which beaches to visit tomorrow and after discovering that there is indeed ferry access, decided on the island of Koh Phangan as our next destination.

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One other reason we returned to the Nanachart is because it's located less than a block from an excellent little restaurant we discovered on our last trip. We headed there for dinner tonight, and it was as good as we remembered. My favorite from the last visit was the “fired grums and crispy pork.” I liked the Engrish so much last time that I ordered it on a whim, and I was pleasantly surprised when I received a plate of fried morning glory leaves, and some really delicious crispy pork. The chef here is also a treat to watch, since everything is cooked in a wok over a single burner, with one hand he's flipping, mixing, and adding ingredients, and the other hand is on the valve of the gas cylinder, regulating the heat. Re had the fried tofu with minced pork, and we both thoroughly enjoyed our meals. Due to the rain earlier in the day, it was a very humid evening, so we cut our postprandial walk around the town short and headed back to the A/C comfort of our room.

115 miles in about 3 hours. I really hope an oil change will fix my clutch.

4/17 Touring Some of the Beaches on Phuket
 

I woke up with a bad “dehydration headache” today, and Re was feeling very achy. After breakfast, we put on our swimsuits under our clothes, grabbed sunscreen and towels, jumped on the bikes, and headed south. We attempted to follow the coast as closely as possible around the southern tip of the island and and back up around the west coast. We visited Phuket island once before and really didn't care for the popular beaches like Patong and Karon. Too many old, fat, European guys in too small Speedos spread out on lounge chairs next to their “Oh my god, Grandma, put your top on,” wives. Somehow, they've all gotten enough sun to turn their skin into something resembling the leather on a well broken in baseball glove (honestly, the topless women look like they have two Coach leather duffel bags laying on their stomachs). Not a pretty sight. Instead, today we were searching for some of the other less populated beaches.

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The ride wasn't much fun since the vast majority of where we rode was one long urban strip. The amount of development on this island is astounding. We stopped for lunch as Rawang Beach, where we found a woman selling fried chicken and sticky rice next to the 7Eleven. We picked up some soda waters next door and ate our picnic at the beach. Re does not appear to be feeling well. She seems a bit listless, and says she's feeling very achy, but she wanted to continue, so we hopped back on the Symbas and rode north.

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Poking around on the southwest coast, we did find a couple of nice beaches, which I marked in my GPS for us to return to over the next couple of days. All day, the sky was a mix of black and blue, and we finally ran into the black in Patong. Patong is the epicenter of what is wrong with Phuket. You can literally see the next McDonald's from the front door of the first McDonald's. We were here because a friend of ours from our last trip was supposed to be renting an apartment for a year at the north end of Patong Beach. Bernie is a creature of habit, and his habit has been to be at a certain spot in the water after lunch. We didn't get a reply to our email, so we decided to try to catch him by chance. Unfortunately, as we entered the south end of Patong, the thunder started to roll, and it began to sprinkle. As we slowly made our way to the north end, the beach was clearing. By the time we reached Bernie's little spot, there was nobody on the sand. At about this time, the sky opened up and began dumping buckets of rain on us. This was our cue to end our tour and head back to Phuket Town. As we rode up the hill out of Patong, the road was crisscrossed by two inch deep puddles of water, and when we started descending back down the hill toward Phuket Town, we passed through several areas of equally deep standing water.

Back in the room, we changed out of our wet clothes and took a quick shower. Re had spied an honest to goodness laundromat a block away, so she took our dirty clothes down for a wash. When she got back, she wasn't looking or feeling very well, so she laid down for a nap while the clothes washed. Later, we walked out for dinner at the market. We did finally stop and buy some sunscreen since we are down to less than one tube. At the market, we looked at several seafood restaurants and ran into the worst case of “farang pricing” that we've seen so far. At one place, we picked up a menu, flipped it open, saw that it was in Thai, and that all the prices were all between 80 and 120 baht. The waiter quickly snatched the menu out of our hands and replaced it with one in English. Funnily enough, all the prices in this menu were 200 baht or more... We laughed and politely declined. A little further on, Re spied a familiar pile of yellow rice and baked chicken that is khao mok khai. Expecting to get the farang price treatment again, Re asked “How much?” The lady smiled and said 50 baht, which is about right, so we sat down to have two delicious plates of our favorite southern Thai Muslim meal. After dinner, Re still felt achy and was now feeling less well in general, so we called it an early night and headed back to the room.


55 miles in about 6 hours

4/18 Sick Day
 

When the alarm went off, Re said she'd hardly slept because her body ached so much. Still, she insisted on going out to the 7Eleven to pick up breakfast. When she came back, she looked pale and collapsed on the bed. Apparently, she had passed out on the counter at the 7Eleven. She told me she remembered going to the counter, paying, and the next thing she knew, someone was rubbing her shoulder and she was face down on the counter. She said she felt warm, sweaty, clammy, and faint. I suspected she was running a fever, but she declined my offer to get the thermometer off the bike. Instead, she went back to bed and stayed there most of the day. I spent some time reading and then went down to the grocery store to pick up some lunch.

After lunch in the room, I walked out and found a motorcycle shop, where I bought some much needed oil. We spent the rest of the day reading and hanging out in the room. Later in the afternoon, I grabbed the thermometer off the bike, and we found out that Re did have a fever of about 102. We went through the symptom checker on WebMD, and it said the most likely causes of her trouble were either the flu (which we ruled out due to the lack of coughing, and congestion) or a viral infection, which appears to be a catch-all diagnosis. Fifth on the list was dengue fever, which we ruled out due to lack of rash and lack of sudden, high fever. While Re was feeling pretty bad, she hadn't really lost her appetite, so I walked out and picked up some fried chicken for dinner. We spent the rest of the night in the room. Hopefully Re feels better tomorrow, because she sure seems miserable today.

4/19 Banana Beach Bust
 

When we woke up this morning, Re seemed to be doing much better, or at least she said she was. I stuck the thermometer in her mouth, and it only read about one degree high. While she took it easy, I walked out in search of breakfast from a roti restaurant that I had read about. I don't think I found the one I was looking for, but I did spy a griddle full of roti at a restaurant full of locals. If it's good enough for Granddad... I ordered roti, coffee, and chicken curry for takeaway. Back in the room, we enjoyed our breakfast in bed. After taking a shower, Re said she felt good and wanted to go to the beach today.

We read about Banana Beach online, and it was supposed to be one of Phuket's hidden gems. I was able to find its location by comparing a map to the map in my GPS and marking the spot. We pulled on our jackets and helmets and hit the road. Phuket Town is on the east side of the island, and Banana Beach is on the west, so we had to navigate quite a bit of erratic traffic to make it there, but we eventually found ourselves at the tiny pull off, barely wide enough for our motorbikes. We scooted the Symbas as far off the road as possible, locked our helmets and jackets to the bikes, and climbed down the steep path to the beach. It was a beautiful, secluded beach, with only one problem: the trash. None of the pictures of the beach that we saw online showed the rafts of trash, bobbing in the surf and covering the beach. Maybe it was a change in current or the unfortunate result of somebody dumping trash nearby, but most of the beach was covered with garbage, and worse, the water in the bay was littered with trash. We walked up and down the beach trying to find a clear spot, but no luck. Since it was still early, we decided to head back up to the bikes and head south to one of the beaches we had marked in the GPS on our ride two days ago. I didn't want to go too far today since the area is very hilly, and my clutch is still not enjoying the ride.

We did make our way south, but about halfway there, Re signaled to pull over. She was not looking or feeling well, and regretfully, wanted to head back to the room. So we did. Again, the sky was a mixture of black and blue, and we almost made it back to the hotel before the skies opened. We rode the last mile or so in the pouring rain and then pulled the bikes into the gated area. Re was feeling okay enough to head out for lunch, so we walked down to the market area for soup with pork and wontons. We looked for some fruit, but none of it struck our fancy, so instead, we headed back to the room. When we checked Re's temperature again, it was only up about two degrees, but she was feeling very achy and uncomfortable. The aches have been keeping her awake at night, so she took a couple of paracetamol and napped the rest of the afternoon. She felt up to going out for dinner, so we walked to our favorite place up the street, where we shared a large order of the fired grums with crispy pork, and a large bowl of tom yum soup with prawns.


42 miles in two plus hours. I hope tomorrow's oil change does the trick.

4/20 Oil Change and Sick Day
 

Re's achiness has gotten much worse. She said she barely slept last night from the pain. She got up in the night to take more paracetamol, but it doesn't seem to be helping much. She still has a low grade fever, but no other real symptoms other than itchy elbows (?). After another 7Eleven breakfast, it was time to finally change the oil in our bikes. Re said she was feeling well enough to help, so we went downstairs and got to work. We changed the oil in both bikes and installed the new sparkplugs we bought in Georgetown. I also adjusted the clutch on my bike and hoped that this would cure (or at least help) my ills. Re was starting to fade, so we wrapped it up quickly and headed back up to the room. We worked on a little writing before lunch and then headed out to a different local restaurant that always seems to be full when we pass by. And we found out why.

Phuket was also a stop along the old trade route plied by ships between China and points westward, and so there was, and still is, a Chinese presence on the island. In addition to the architecture and culture, they also brought (more importantly to us) food. What this restaurant served was a version of the Hainanese chicken and rice and pork and rice that we enjoy so much in Malaysia. We ordered the combination plate that included chicken, roast pork, and crispy pork on rice, with their local versions of the dipping sauces. While different from what we've had before, they were a delicious variation on some of our favorite foods. While whatever Re has hasn't seemed to dampen her appetite much, it has dampened her spirits. She is certainly frustrated with feeling this badly, and reluctantly returned to the room since she wasn't feeling well enough to do anything else today. She is still popping paracetamol and has begun to get progressively itchier.

We spent the afternoon working on some more writing and reading and planning our escape to the islands in the Gulf. We were both getting a little stir-crazy by dinnertime, so we walked out for dinner around 7:00 pm. I offered to pick up dinner and bring it back to the room, but Re is really tired of the same four walls. Neither of us had a strong opinion about where to go for dinner, so we ended up at McDonald's. There are plenty of other food options in Phuket Town, but I think a taste of home (no matter how greasy) was attractive to us both, and the fact that the Dairy Queen was next door didn't hurt either. After another Blizzard, we went back to the room for the night.

4/21 Ride to Surat Thani
 

Re had another lousy night's sleep and developed a new symptom as well. Last night, she got up and barfed. She, however, assured me, that she was feeling fine and frisky and ready to go this morning. I was still skeptical, so decided to wait until she returned from the 7Eleven and ate breakfast before making a decision. After eating, she seemed to be doing better, and the thermometer said her temperature was back to normal. We decided to head for Surat Thani, which would be the next stop on the way to Koh Phangan. It took us a while to get going this morning, since we'd unpacked a fair bit during our five days in Phuket. We rolled out of the gate at around 9:30 am and headed north, back to the mainland. Of course, the rain started less than a mile after we started riding and stayed with us through most of the day. The rain this morning was relatively light, and didn't do much to slow us down. My clutch, on the other hand, did slow us down. Any time I tried to ride faster than 40 mph, the engine would spin up, but I wouldn't go any faster. Sigh.

I periodically checked with Re to make sure she was still doing okay, and while her thumbs up said yes, her face wasn't as convincing. Later in the morning, she said she was feeling queasy but that she wanted to continue. Sometime around 1:00 pm, I spied a roadside stand with chicken prominently displayed. We pulled in and bought some chicken and sticky rice that we sat and ate (or at least, I ate) during one of the breaks from the rain. Re ate some, but not very much. As the afternoon wore on, we cruised in and out of the rain and through some scenery that would have been more enjoyable if it wasn't so wet. My clutch continued to slip either at higher speeds or when climbing hills, cutting our overall speed significantly. Obviously, the oil change didn't cure the problem.

In the middle of the afternoon, we took advantage of another break in the rain to stop and refuel our bikes. Re said she was feeling sleepy and wanted to take a short break. I decided to make use of the time and tried adjusting my clutch once more. I still had the 14mm wrench in my daypack from my brake adjustment in Koh Lanta, so I didn't even have to get off the bike to adjust it. Extremely bad move. Sitting in the seat, I leaned my head over, put the wrench on the nut that locks the clutch adjuster, and gave it a turn. It seemed stubborn, so I pushed a little harder. And then I felt the unmistakeable feel of bolt threads collapsing. Somehow, from my vantage point in the seat, I was not loosening the bolt, I was tightening it. As I have said before, the fasteners on the Symbas ain't no grade 8.8. I got off the bike, attempted to loosen the lock nut this time, and to my dismay, the nut simply rotated in place. To make matters worse, there was now oil dribbling out from around the clutch adjustment bolt. The clutch adjustment bolt sticks out through the engine side cover and passes through an oil seal on the way. Between the lock nut and the engine side cover, is a washer. Apparently, if this washer is not held tightly to the side cover, the oil seal doesn't really seal. Now that the lock nut was stripped and loose, oil was dribbling out. Oh no.

We broke out the tools, and after much fiddling, were able to get the lock nut off the clutch adjustment bolt. I had hoped to have only stripped the nut, but unfortunately, the threads in both the nut and the bolt were crushed. There were a few good threads left on the bolt near the oil seal (they had been protected by the washer), and so we looked around on the bike for another nut that could maybe work on the bolt. We couldn't find another suitable nut, so I gingerly threaded the stripped nut back onto the bolt and hoped that it would catch on the remaining threads. It did, and so I tightened it as much as I dared. It seemed to be holding the adjuster, and so I reached up and thumbed the started button, only to watch oil come pouring past the nut. Huh (that's not actually what I said, over, and over, and over). We were in the middle of the countryside, with no real place to get parts or help, so we needed to fix this now. I explained what was going on to Re, and she said, why don't we just use some Gorilla Tape? I think she meant to use the sticky side against the engine case, which might hold the oil in momentarily, but not for long. But it was still a good idea, which I changed a little bit.

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We took a small piece of Gorilla Tape, folded it over, sticky side to sticky side, and then cut a tiny hole in the center. We slipped it over the clutch adjuster bolt, carefully pressed it against the oil seal and engine side cover, and then threaded the nut on top. Basically, the double layer of Gorilla Tape was taking the place of the washer. We adjusted the clutch and then carefully tightened the nut as much as we dared, crossed our fingers, and I reached up and thumbed the starter. Yay! No oil ran out this time. I have no idea how long this fix will hold, but since we still had 60 miles to go to Surat Thani and the rain was catching up with us, we hit the road.

For the first 20 or so miles, Re pulled alongside several times to make sure that no oil was leaking. Everything seemed to be holding fine, so we continued on. Just outside Surat Thani, the threatening sky finally unleashed its full force. The rain began as a downpour and turned into such a deluge that even the cage drivers were seeking shelter. We spotted an underpass, dove off the highway, and took shelter for about 30 minutes. From here, the GPS only showed us about eight miles from Surat Thani, and it was now about 5:00 pm. Given our situation, riding in the moderate rain seemed better than trying to find a hotel in Surat Thani in the dark. We left our shelter and continued down the road. We were looking for the Tapee Hotel, and we knew the name of the street it was on, but that road was not listed in my GPS. We ended riding around in the rain for about another 45 minutes until we finally spotted the road and then the hotel. The price listed on Travelfish was 440 baht per night, but the rate card on the counter said 550 baht (18 USD). Whatever. We were too wet, and it was too late for us to care about continuing the hotel search. We unpacked into a very nice room and hung up our thoroughly soaked gear to dry.

Re had been a real trooper all day. I know she wasn't feeling well, but she made it through the entire day without complaining, and was in fact, a big help. Re decided to take a shower to warm up, but not before stopping to dry heave in the toilet. Needless to say, she didn't feel much like dinner, so I went out for a quick market dinner before picking up some crackers, soda water, and a Thai version of Gatorade. Back in the room, Re ate her crackers and drank her electrolyte drink before calling it a night. The good news is, Re's aches seem to have subsided. Unfortunately, they've been replaced by nausea and itchy palms and soles.

175 miles in 8.5 hours, including a couple of hours worth of stops to make my clutch worse and hide from the rain. Between the rain, the self-inflicted bike damage, and Re's odd illness, it's been a crappy day.

4/22 Ride to Koh Phangan / Happy Anniversary
 

The ferry to Koh Phangan leaves from the town of Don Sak, approximately 35 miles east of Surat Thani. The ferries leave at 8:00 am, 10:00 am, and then there isn't another departure until 2:00 pm. Our plan today was to catch the 10:00 ferry, which meant we needed to leave by 8:30 to safely make it. Re was feeling better this morning, but the rash that began on her palms and soles now seemed to have spread everywhere. She insisted that she was good to go after eating some more crackers and drinking another electrolyte drink. However, we did not make it onto the road until 8:40, so it was now a race to catch the boat. The weather cooperated, but my clutch did not.

The road between Surat Thani and Don Sak passed through some gently rolling terrain, but each incline required that I slow to keep my clutch from slipping. After we'd covered about 20 miles, Re signaled for me to slow down so she could say something. She said she was feeling a little queasy and wanted to know how much farther to the ferry. I told her we had about 15 miles, and reminded her to flip up the front of her helmet if she had to barf (since I have actually seen the aftermath of somebody barfing inside a full-face helmet, with the shield down ). We followed the GPS directions to the Raja Ferry pier and made it with ten minutes to spare. I paid for the tickets (280 baht or just over 9 USD each) and then we rode down to the dock.

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Since we had a few minutes, Re decided to run into the bathroom and barf. On her way back, she picked up some water and potato chips for the trip.

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While she was gone, they tooted the horn to signal the imminent departure of the ferry, so I rode over to let them know that we were coming. As soon as we rode down the ramp onto the boat, they raised the ramp and got underway. Fortunately for Re, the ferry was huge, so the ride was smooth. Re was able to eat some food on board and generally felt better before we arrived at Koh Phangan.

The ferry docked at around noon, and we rode off into a scorching hot day. We didn't know where we were going to stay but had written down the names of some promising beaches to scout. The beaches we were interested in were on the northwestern coast, so we headed in that direction, through the center of the island. Once we reached the north shore, we turned left onto a smaller road that was extremely hilly. As we made our way south down the west coast, my hill climbing ability continued to diminish. Just before we got to Had Yao (Long Beach) I found myself in first gear, only at about a quarter throttle, and actually duck-walking my bike over the top of a hill. Afraid to go any further, we decided to stay in Had Yao. Re started scouting bungalows, and soon returned with great news. We had expected to pay somewhere between 400 and 600 baht (13 to 20 USD) for a fan bungalow on the beach. Instead, Re found us a beachfront bungalow, with A/C, a fridge, and a hot shower for only 600 baht. The beach here is beautiful, Re is feeling better, so maybe things are looking up.

We spent the afternoon relaxing and walking on the beach before turning our attention to dinner. In one of the little tourist guides in our bungalow, there was a review of a restaurant here in Had Yao called, Crave. The reviewer said they serve excellent burgers, and since the owner/chef is French Canadian, they also make some great poutine. Both of us have been craving a really good burger for a long time, so we decided to try it for dinner. Today actually is our 23rd wedding anniversary, which gave us all the more reason to skip a cheap Thai meal and splurge on something different. Crave lived up to the review, with great food and friendly owners. I had a thick, juicy, most excellent burger with real blue cheese, sauteed mushrooms, and onions, while Re had the “Monster Meatloaf,” which was a one-inch thick slab of meatloaf on a bun, with bbq sauce and homemade dill pickle rings. Their fries were excellent as well, and we really enjoyed our meal. On the way back to the room, we picked up beer and ice cream before heading back to the room for the inevitable.


75 miles in about 4.5 hours, but 25 miles of it was by boat. My clutch is in even worse shape than I feared, so we may not be doing too much riding on the island.

4/23 – 4/27 Koh Phangan Lazy Days (No Motorcycle Content)
 

4/23 Lazy Day #1

There was a massive storm overnight that killed the power, and it didn't return until about 7:00 am. Consequently, there was no A/C or even a fan. This made for a very hot and sweaty night (not the good kind). The good news is, Re is feeling much better in general, but is very itchy. She is taking antihistamines to try and control the itching, but we are beginning to suspect that this may indeed be dengue fever. The morning was beautifully clear after last night's toad strangler, so I set myself on the porch, while Re walked out to the 7Eleven (yes, they even have them in paradise). We spent the rest of the morning reading on the porch and generally being lazy. Around lunchtime, we made the quarter mile walk into town and had a lunch of curries at a small Thai place. Back at the bungalow, we did some more reading before putting on sunscreen to head out on the beach.

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The water here is fantastic- clear and warm, and the beach is powdery, white sand. After the sun set, we returned to the bungalow to shower and then head out to dinner.

One of the reasons our bungalow is such a good price is that it is the end of the season. One downside to this is that all the restaurants on the beach are basically empty. We chose the best sounding place and sat down at a table on the beach. We spent the next ten minutes trying to get the attention of a waiter or waitress, but to no avail. While we sat there, we both decided that the poutine at Crave sounded pretty good. So we gave up and walked to Crave via the main road. Unsurprisingly, the poutine was delicious. Re had hers with ground beef, and I chose pulled pork. While we waited for our food to arrive, we made use of their free wifi to research dengue fever. After reading about the illness and its distinct phases (including feeling better, then worse, and the rash, and the nausea) we feel fairly certain that that's what Re's had. The restaurant was fairly slow tonight, so we ended up sitting at the bar and chatting with the owners for a couple of hours.

4/24 Lazy Day #2

Re is still itchy but feeling fine otherwise. After another 7Eleven breakfast, we spent the morning reading and talking about future plans. We had lunch at the same place as yesterday, and afterward, Re did some writing while I read. After the peak sun hours, we applied sunscreen and went to the beach. Same as yesterday, we were out until sunset, then a shower, then off to dinner.

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We tried a different beach place tonight and had some delicious pastas. Despite the bug spray, we both got some sandfly bites, which are very itchy, as if Re needed more itchy. We swung by the 7Eleven for mosquito coils and some beer before returning to our porch, where we lit a mosquito coil and some candles and spent a pleasant evening listening to the water.


4/25 Lazy Day #3

After another breakfast on the porch, we decided to stay here a few more days. Our original plan was to change beaches every few days, but considering the state of my clutch, that plan is out. This is a great bungalow, on a beautiful beach for a good price, so why fight it? For the rest of the morning, we worked on some writing before heading out for lunch. In the afternoon, we did some more writing and then headed to the beach.

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The sunset tonight was particularly beautiful, and the tide was further out that we had seen before. We enjoyed our dinner at the beach place last night, so we returned again tonight. This time, we had massaman curry, panang curry, vegetable tempura, and somtam (spicy green papaya salad). We washed it all down with some Chang and it was all delicious.


4/26 Lazy Day #4

There was another massive storm overnight, with lightning that lit up the room, and wind that shook the shutters. At one point, the wind was so strong that it actually blew rain into the room around the edges of the window. Fortunately, the power stayed on all night this time. When we opened the door, we found that everything on our porch had been blown around. After picking up the debris, we had another breakfast on the porch, followed by reading, talking, and some writing. The afternoon was a carbon copy of yesterday, with reading, writing, and then to the beach.

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Then a shower, and a return to Crave for another terrific dinner. As repeat customers, we were introduced to a couple of off-menu options. We ordered a burger that had brie, crispy bacon, and mayo, and a pulled pork sandwich with bbq sauce, blue cheese, and homemade pickled jalapenos. Yum! After stuffing ourselves, we spent the rest of the evening standing at the bar, talking with the owners and a couple of particularly fun and interesting patrons.


4/27 One More Lazy Day

Fifth verse, same as the first. Breakfast on the porch, then reading and writing. The twist today was that Re opted for a beachside massage (with no happy ending - that's my job ). Then lunch, beach, shower, and dinner.

4/28 To Hat Yai
 

In danger of growing roots, we decided we needed to get on the road today. Since we had many miles to ride after returning to the mainland, and not knowing if my clutch would cooperate, we decided to take the 7:00 am return ferry. To that end, we rose at 5:00 and got to work. We did the majority of the packing last night, so we were easily on the road by 6:00. Before leaving, I adjusted my clutch and said a small prayer to the gods of friction and oil retention. It must have worked, since we were able to make it back up and down the hills to the ferry dock by 6:30. It was an extremely humid morning, so we were happy to get our bikes loaded onto the boat and pull off our gear. The ferry today was much larger and slower than the outbound boat. While the ferry to Koh Phangan cruised at about 13.5 mph, this one only made about 9.5 mph. Consequently, the return trip took almost three hours and 15 minutes.

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It was a pretty ride, but we were both sad to see Koh Phangan disappearing in our wake. It really is a beautiful island and a great place to spend some time. On the ride we met a Swiss couple who were riding their bicycles from Switzerland to New Zealand.

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We spent some time chatting with them before plugging in our earbuds, plopping ourselves on the deck, and watching the islands slowly slide by. It was a beautiful morning, with clear skies and a nice breeze.

Around 10:15 am, the ferry docked at Don Sak and we were, once again, riding toward Malaysia. Our plan for today is to ride to Hat Yai if my clutch cooperates, or if not, at least try to make it to Trang. The clear morning turned into a hot morning, then an even hotter afternoon. The good news was that the ride was mostly level, which made for decent speeds. The bad news was that on our second fuel stop of the day, I noticed oil leaking out from under my Gorilla Tape “oil seal.” Crap. As I carefully removed the nut from the clutch adjustment bolt, it nearly burned my fingers since it was so hot. When I pulled off the Gorilla Tape, the adhesive was squishing out from between the layers. Since we were still 15 miles from Trang and 75 miles from Hat Yai, I decided to try a new piece of tape and hope that it would work. The replacement tape seemed to be holding, and Re pulled alongside every five miles to check for leaks. With about 25 miles to go to Hat Yai, Re gave me the thumbs down signal. Double crap.

We pulled off on the side of the road and got out the tools and tape once more. Once again, the adhesive was squishing out from between the layers of tape, clearly the heat of the engine is causing the adhesive to liquify, and this means the nut is no longer held by the “springiness” of the tape layers. As we worked on the bike on the side of the road, a group of old Honda Cubs with interesting paint jobs and loud pipes blew by. A few minutes later, they all returned to see what we were doing. Old Honda Cubs must be hip in Thailand now, since these riders would be “hipsters” in the US. They all wore skinny jeans, had funky haircuts, pudding bowl or three-quarter helmets, and goggles. None of the seemed to speak English, but they did all stand around until my bike was running once more. I ended up using yet another piece of Gorilla Tape, but this time, I was barely able to get the nut to catch the few remaining threads on the clutch adjustment bolt. I tightened it as much as I dared, and nervously thumbed the starter button. Re and I were happy to see that it was holding oil, so we packed up the tools, waved goodbye to the “Cub Club,” and hit the road again. In an effort to minimize the vibration and heat, we rode the last 25 miles at a reduced speed. Re continued to check for oil leaks, but thankfully, we made it into Hat Yai, and to the Park Hotel, with no further dribbles.

After unloading our stuff into the room, we walked out to the night market to find our favorite khao mok kai vendor. As we approached the familiar corner, there was no KMK to be seen. What?! While Re went to look for another vendor, I bought fruit shakes and a nearby stand. The woman making the fruit shakes was Muslim and wore a headscarf and veil, so only her eyes showed. The farther south you go in Thailand, the more Muslim it becomes, and English seems to be less widely spoken. So I was pleasantly surprised when the fruit shake vendor turned out to speak English fairly well. She was able to explain to me that our usual KMK vendor was taking a ten-day vacation to go to Phattalung for his sister's wedding. Since she seemed so friendly and knowledgeable, I asked her if there was another KMK stall around. She was able to point us to another stall that was just a few blocks away. We quickly found it, ordered our dinner, and sat down to another delicious meal. On our way back to the room, we stopped again at the 7Eleven for a couple of Changs. Back in the room, I had a moment of ennui when it occurred to me that this would be my last Chang of the trip and maybe for many years.


285 miles in about 12 hours, but 25 miles took over 3 hours by boat. Hopefully my clutch makes it through tomorrow and can get us as far as Georgetown, where I am sure I will be able to sort out this problem.

4/29 Ride to Malaysia (Fingers Crossed)
 

After a breakfast of leftover donuts and coffee, we slowly got ready to go. Since today's ride isn't very long, we weren't too upset about finally getting on the road at 9:30. Before we left, I aired up a couple of tires, checked the oil levels, and very, very carefully, tightened the clutch adjuster nut a tiny bit. We pulled out into the morning traffic and once again, made our way south to Malaysia. Having just made this same ride a few weeks ago, there weren't any real surprises. As usual, the morning was warm, and while the sun was overhead, there were dark clouds in the distance. We had just enough fuel on board to make it about 20 miles inside Malaysia, and since the fuel is much cheaper than in Thailand, we didn't stop before the border.

Once again, the border was easy on both sides, and there were no fees either. It took a few more minutes on the Malaysia side than last time, but that was mainly due to the officer's excitement at hearing that we are considering retiring to Malaysia someday. He seemed genuinely happy that we would consider such a move. Once across the border, our fuel lights winked at us, so we stopped at the first available station. Twenty ringgit (6.66 USD) got us 2.75 gallons of government-subsidized fuel. As we pulled out of the station, we looked back toward the Thai border to see that the sky had turned to black. Glad we were, for once, headed in the right direction, we continued south as fast as my clutch would allow. Re has spent the morning pulling up alongside me every five miles to check for oil leaks. So far, so good. The sky did become overcast over us, and we did hit some patches of very light rain, but it also made for a much cooler ride. About 20 miles north of Butterworth, the clouds disappeared, and the sun came out in full force.

As we reached the outskirts of Butterworth, we could see the skyline of Georgetown in the distance (I don't know if I've explained this before, but Georgetown is the big city on the island of Penang, which is about four miles off the coast of Malaysia, directly opposite Butterworth). My clutch is slipping, so I have to accelerate gently away from lights and am limited to about 35 mph now, but at least it's still holding oil. Soon, we were on the ferry, and a few minutes later, we rode up the ramp and into Georgetown. We made the short drive to the Star Lodge, arriving at about 3:00 pm. We were happy to find out that they did indeed have a room available for us this time, and we quickly unloaded our gear into our new home for the next couple of weeks. Between not knowing how long my clutch will take to fix and knowing how much we love Georgetown, we decided to stay for two weeks. With this, Re was able to negotiate a 20 percent discount on the room rate, which means more money for food and beer!

Since we were very hot, Re decided to walk around the corner to find us some drinks while I made use of the wifi to try and track down clutch replacement possibilities. When Re returned a few minutes later, I was still searching the web in the lounge area. Re got into a conversation with Mr Lim, who has worked at the Star Lodge for many years. It turns out that today is his last day, and so he had begun celebrating early. He'd obviously had a couple of beers and spent the next hour showing Re some rather acrobatic exercise moves and giving her tips on proper diet. For a 60-year old man, he is in amazing shape, so Re took notes. My hopes were pinned on the fact that SYMs are imported to Malaysia, including three “110cc” models. In the US, the Symba is sold as a 110, even though it's actually only 101.4cc. I was hoping to find in the technical specs, that the Malaysia models were the same engine size, and consequently, may use the same clutch. Strangely, the different models were listed on the Malaysia SYM website as either having 108cc or 110cc motors. I searched the local SYM forums, but inconveniently, they're all written in Bahasa Malay, not English.

At this point, I gave up and sent an email to Cam in Taiwan. Cam Purvis is a Canadian (I'm pretty sure), living in Taiwan and has been supplying SYM riders in America (and elsewhere) with parts and accessories direct from the motherland. I knew if anybody could get me the clutch plates I needed in a hurry, it would be him. I fired off an email explaining my plight and asked for his help. Since it is Sunday, there really wasn't much else I could do besides wait for an email from Cam tomorrow. If Cam can't help, I will head to the SYM importer for Malaysia, which is conveniently located less than 20 miles away.

Having done what I could do for now, Re and I decided to go to dinner. We've both been dreaming of dim sum for a while now, so once again, we found ourselves walking down Lebuh Cintra to De Tai Tong restaurant. As usual, the food was excellent, the service was friendly, and we ate too much. After walking around town a bit, we made our way back to the Star Lodge. Re came down with a vicious headache, so I left her in the room with the lights off and posted some ride reports from the lounge. When I flipped open the laptop, I was surprised to see that Cam had already sent an email that he would check on parts availability for me in the morning, and if the parts were in stock, he would send them out by noon on Monday. Wow!


135 miles in about 5.5 hours with an international border crossing.

4/30 Happy to Be Back in G-Town
 

It was another happy reunion at breakfast today. When Re walked to Yasmeen for roti and coffee, Mohammad was overjoyed. After breakfast, I exchanged a couple of emails with Cam, of the good news/bad news variety. The good news was that he could get me an entire replacement clutch and side cover gasket mailed today. The sort of bad news, was that he couldn't get a clutch adjustment bolt until later in the week. I decided to have him go ahead and ship the clutch and gasket, and I would find a bolt locally. In between emails, we spent the morning working on a “to do” list of things we need to get done while we are in Georgetown.

One of the things we needed to do was restock some of our toiletries, so after a lunch of Hainanese chicken and rice, we walked to Mydin with our shopping list. Later, we walked to a local motorbike parts store, where I bought a new chain for my bike. The o-ring chain I put on my bike before we left the States has developed one nasty tight spot, so it's time for a new one. When the store owner told me that the price of a new RK 420, 96-link, non o-ring chain (o-ring chains are very uncommon here) would be less than 12 ringgit (4 USD), I bought two of them. It's always good to have a spare, and it's even better when they're four bucks. While we were there, we also priced replacement Yuasa batteries and rear tires. They did indeed have Yuasas in stock in the right size, and they are only 12 USD! Ours are still working okay, but they have been refilled with tap water several times, so it might be a good idea to buy an inexpensive replacement and promise to treat it right this time. Our rear tires are both holding up remarkably well, considering that we installed them in Ooty, India, almost 10,000 miles ago, and they still have about half the tread left. However, we can't get this type of Dunlop in the US, so we may buy a couple to take home with us, especially at 16 USD each.

Re was coming down with another bad headache, so we headed back to the room and the A/C. I left Re to take a nap and did some more posting online. I'm a little embarrassed to say, but in a city where we are spoiled for choices, we went to McDonald's for dinner. After dinner, Re talked with her parents on Skype for a while. After that, she needed to go to the corner bar for a cold one.

5/1 May Day/Labor Day
 

When Re returned with roti this morning, she also came back with the news that May Day/Labor Day is celebrated seriously in Malaysia. Many of the businesses are closed today, so some of the things we need to do today will have to wait until tomorrow. After breakfast, we decided to combine one task with getting some exercise, so we went out walking in search of a money changer. Before we left on our trip, I checked to make sure that all of our credit cards we valid until at least the end of this trip, but of course, the one card I didn't check was our ATM card. It expired yesterday. Modern banking is a wonderful thing – we've relied almost exclusively on our ATM cards to get cash. My father, who has been taking care of our “affairs” while we've been gone, received our replacement cards in the mail last month and mailed one of them to us in care of the Star Lodge, and it was waiting for us when we arrived here. We were concerned that there might be a problem, so we stocked up on Thai baht in Thailand before the cards expired. Consequently, we are walking around with a large quantity of money that needs to be exchanged. We've tried not to exchange too much foreign currency, since the rate is often bad, but we knew from our previous trip that the exchange rate on Thai baht was good in Georgetown, and the loss was less than a percent.

Since today was Labor Day, virtually all the money changers were closed. We did eventually find one open, and fortuitously, it offered the best exchange rate we'd seen in the last few days. It only took a few minutes to make the swap and then it was time for lunch. Since we were on the edge of Little India, we opted for the always excellent banana leaf meal at Sri Ananda Bahwan. After lunch, we headed over to Prangin Mall to see “The Avengers.” For some reason, Malaysia (and I guess other countries) got the movie before the USA did. Since it was a school holiday also, the theater was packed, and we ended up sitting in the third row, staring directly up at the screen. We both enjoyed the movie, but were a little surprised to find that they raise the ticket price on weekends and public holidays. We had to pay 20 ringgit (6.66 USD) for two tickets! (the theaters here could be mistaken for any theater in the US, with stadium seating, cold A/C, and THX sound systems) After the movie, we wandered back to the room for a while and then went back out to the hawker stalls for dinner.

5/2 Bike Maintenance
 

Cam shipped my new clutch via the Taiwanese postal system on Monday, since shipping via Taiwanese EMS was only 23 USD, compared to the DHL rate of 114 USD. The online tracking system showed that the package arrived in Kuala Lumpur (the capital of Malaysia) last night at around midnight and was awaiting Customs clearance. Hopefully, we'll have it in the next day or so. Since the clutch was on its way, we decided to do some other work on the bikes today. We walked out front to look for a shady spot to work, but didn't see any likely candidates. Robert, who manages the Star Lodge, pointed out that the medical clinic across the street is closed on Wednesday afternoons, and they have covered parking. We decided to wait until after lunch to get to work. We lazed away the rest of the morning until it was time for pork and rice at the Sky Hotel.

After lunch, we rolled the bikes across the street and under the awning in front of the clinic. While I got to work on changing my chain, Re started cleaning her bike. A month ago, she found the “Super Sunday Sponge” at a small store in Nilai when we were there for the F1 race. It appears to be some version of the “Magic Erasers” they sell in the US, so she thought she'd give it a try on our bikes. We have occasionally washed them with soap and a rag, and while this works on most of the bike, it doesn't touch the scuffs and stains on the white plastic leg shields. When we were in Georgetown several weeks ago, Re took the sponge to her white plastic parts, and the results were amazing. It removed virtually all the scuffs, and the bike looked almost new. Since then, she's added a few scuffs that she decided to take off today. While we were working, a young German guy stopped by to chat. He and a buddy bought Xinha 100cc motorcycles in Vietnam and were riding them around southeast Asia. That seems to be the smart move here, in that, while you can't ride into Vietnam on a foreign bike (there are a couple of exceptions), you can ride out, and sometimes, back in. Considering that they paid the princely price of 400 USD each for the bikes, spares, luggage, and gear, it wouldn't be too great a tragedy if they had to abandon them somewhere. Even though we were traveling on similar bikes, their experiences were very different, in that they had many mechanical problems with their bikes. The German guy told us that on the ride from the ferry from Langkawi to Georgetown, his chain came off the sprockets every mile or less, due to the fact that the teeth on both sprockets were so worn. Of course, in Georgetown, they were able to find new sprockets and a new chain. After I finished installing my chain, Re got to work cleaning my bike.

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You can see the dramatic difference in the before and after pictures. They look like new bikes!

While Re finished up, I walked down the street to have a look at the Xinhas. Re joined me a few minutes later, and while we were “admiring” these fine specimens, we were surprised to see the Swiss bicyclists we met on the ferry ride from Koh Phangan. They had just arrived around 2:00 pm today and were spending a couple of days in Georgetown. When I compared the fact that it took them 4.5 days to cover the same distance we covered in one and a half, I was reminded of the feeling of when we first got our bikes out of Customs in Cape Town, South Africa. After spending several days walking everywhere in Cape Town, we were very happy to get on our slow, little bikes, because slow wheels are better than no wheels, and motorized wheels are better than pedaled wheels. That said, I certainly am impressed by the distances some bicyclists can cover in a day. This couple told us they ride between sunup and 11:00 am, and then again from 3:00 pm until dark, and they typically cover 90 miles in that time. After catching up with them for a while, we went back to the room to shower and clean up before going out to dinner. After another fine meal at Kapitan, we spent the rest of the evening chatting at the “Corner Bar.”

5/3 Lazy Day
 

Like the title says, it was a lazy day. Neither of us felt like doing particularly much after breakfast, or really, after lunch. In the middle of the afternoon, we wandered over to the theater in the mall again, this time, to see “Battleship.” It was an okay movie, but I was glad it wasn't a holiday, because the tickets were only seven ringgit each. I would have hated to pay nine bucks to see it, but for 2.33 USD it was alright.

I think the problem that both Re and I have right now, is that the end of our trip is in sight, and we're both a little depressed about it. When we crossed from Thailand into Malaysia, we realized that this will be our last border crossing before heading back to the States, and since then, we've been reminiscing about all the places we've gone.

We tried a new Indian place for dinner, where we had an excellent banana leaf meal. This time, I got the chicken, and Re tried the mutton. After dinner we wandered around Little India, checking several stores in search of Re's favorite soap, Mysore Sandal soap. Before we went to bed, I checked the Taiwan Post website, and it appears that my parts are still sitting in Customs.

5/4 Rainy Beach Day
 

After we finished breakfast, we walked outside to check the sky and saw that it was a good mix of clouds and sun. Even though it was a little cloudier than we prefer, we decided to hop on the bus and head to the beach at Batu Ferringhi. I needed to get away from the computer for a little while, since I have been checking the tracking website just about every hour, and it still shows the same thing: namely, my parts are still in the hands of Customs. I am 90 percent sure that I will be able to fix my problem once I have the parts, but the other ten percent is just adding to my stress level.

After loading our bag with sunscreen, water, books, hats, and kramas (a large, Cambodian, multipurpose scarf) we walked over to the bus station and waited for the bus. The bus ride took about an hour and unfortunately, it began to rain during the final 15 minutes. When we got off the bus, it was still raining lightly, but it looked like it might blow over. Since it was nearly lunchtime, we decided to eat and see if the weather changed. Luckily for us, while we ate, the rain stopped and the sun appeared. We found a nice patch of sand and laid out our stuff.

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We enjoyed a nice hour and a half before the sky grew dark again, and we had to make a run for the bus stand. A huge storm was rolling in off the water, but we made it onto the bus before the rain started.

When we got back to the Star, Robert at reception said there was still no package for me. Sigh. But just a few minutes later, when Re and I were in the shower, I heard a knock on our door. It was Robert, with a small box from Taiwan. Awesome! It felt like Christmas when I opened the box and found a shiny, new clutch inside. It seems like overkill to install an entire new clutch, when all I really need is the fiber plates. I could probably also use new steels, since my clutch has been shuddering a little bit on engagement (which in my experience, means warped steels). Cam explained that SYM generally doesn't like to sell individual parts and would rather sell entire assemblies. It should mean less work for me, and I am excited about getting it installed. This was the pick-me-up I needed today, since my mood is much improved. Later in the evening, we headed out for dim sum again, followed by a walk around town, and a nightcap.

5/5 Botanical Gardens
 

After breakfast we walked outside to check the weather and saw that it was a beautifully sunny day. It would have been a much better day than yesterday to go to the beach, but it also seemed like an awfully hot day to be installing a clutch on the sidewalk in the direct sun. we checked the hours of the medical clinic across the street and saw that it would be closed all day on Sunday. We decided to put off the clutch installation by one day so we could make use of the clinic's awning again tomorrow.

Instead, we took the bus to the Botanical Gardens which are located near the foot of Penang Hill. The number ten bus travels through the main Hindu temple area on the way to the Botanical Gardens, and apparently, there was a festival today. When we boarded the bus, it was nearly full of Indian families, all dressed in their “Sunday finest.” As we made our way to the temple, the bus continued to fill up with more and more colorfully dressed people on their way to something fancy. There was a large celebration going on today, and it was a sight to see from the bus windows. Women dressed in colorful saris, people who had shaved their heads and covered them with gold powder, and even some people performing acts of penance by skewering their tongues and faces and running hooks through their flesh.

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We didn't get any photos this time, but here are a couple of photos from the Thaipusam festival when we were here in 2010.

The Botanical Gardens were much more peaceful and were very beautiful.

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They have a nice collection of waterlilies near the entrance, and many of them were in bloom today. We spent several hours wandering the grounds and admiring the different plant species.

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Re got excited when she saw the sign, but was disappointed when she only found pine trees.

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On the other hand, here she is with the plant that she's christened, the "Malaysian Rosy Palm.”

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The other cool tree they have several specimens of is the Cannonball Tree.

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It has huge, colorful flowers that smell nice and a seed that grows to the size of a cannonball.

In the middle of the afternoon we caught the bus back into town, where we had a late lunch of curry mee. After showering, Re looked through a guidebook of Penang food and found a few new dishes for us to try. We went out to a new restaurant, where we tried a couple of different noodle dishes, and then we had a dessert of fried dough and coffee.

5/6 Clutch Installation
 

After having a rather greasy breakfast of some leftover fried dough and coffee, we started getting our tools and tarps together. Once we had everything assembled, we rolled my bike across the street and under the clinic's awning. After draining the oil and removing the leg shield, I removed the oil screen cover and oil screen and then the eight bolts that secure the engine side cover.

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A few days ago, I bought a plastic storage bin to use to catch the oil and any small parts that might fall out. I put it under the edge of the motor and then gently tapped on the engine side cover with the wood handle of my hammer to break the seal.

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When I pulled off the cover, a fair bit of oil drained out, and a couple of parts fell into the tub. Once I had the side cover off, I removed the clutch lever and cam plate. After that, I removed the clutch outer cover and discovered that there was a gasket between the outer cover and the clutch assembly itself. Since I didn't have a replacement gasket, Re carefully used a thin knife blade to separate it from both pieces. Fortunately, we were able to keep it intact, because we will need to reuse it. With the outer cover removed, I could see our big problem of the day. The clutch unit itself is secured to the output shaft by a special “anti-loosen locknut.” The anti-loosen locknut requires a special tool which we don't have. Basically, the tool is a socket with four prongs that project from it that engage the notches in the locknut.

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The locknut sits down in a well in the center of the clutch unit, so getting to it with any other tool is difficult. I unsuccessfully tried to loosen it using a hammer and screwdriver but couldn't get a good enough angle. I knew from viewing a Youtube video on replacing the clutch on a Honda Passport, that the Hondas use a similar nut. So while I worked on removing the gasket from the engine case and case cover, Re walked over to one of the repair shops we'd seen while out walking to see if they had the needed tool. I figured if we couldn't borrow the tool, maybe we could push the bike the five blocks or so to the shop and have them remove the nut.

While she was gone, Robert from reception asked what the problem was. I explained that we needed a special tool to remove the clutch. Fortuitously, Robert's friend, Jacob, happened to be visiting this morning. He came over to look at the problem and said that he had the tool at his house. About this time, Re returned with news that the shop was closed. Jacob said that since it was Sunday, every shop would be closed. I guess I am used to the schedule of motorcycle shops in the US, which are usually open on Sunday and closed on Monday. Jacob said if we could wait for about an hour, he would ride home and get the tools. While he was gone, we finished cleaning up the gasket surfaces and wiped up the oil from inside the cases. Jacob returned with the special wrench and an assortment of other tools and gasket sealants.

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With his help, we were able to remove the locknut and get the new clutch unit installed. Since we still needed to get a replacement clutch adjustment bolt, this was as much reassembly as we could do now. We reinstalled the side cover temporarily and cleaned up our workspace. We rolled the bike back across the street and then got cleaned up.

Since it was now about 2:00 pm, we decided it was time for lunch. We took our adjuster bolt with us and walked over to our favorite chicken and rice place. After lunch, we headed up another street that had several motorcycle repair shops on it, but they were all closed. Since it didn't look like we'd get a replacement bolt today, we hit the grocery store for a watermelon. Back in the room, we had some fruit and then a shower. We spent the rest of the afternoon reading, and Re also did some sketching.

Later in the evening, we went out to Kapitan for dinner. On the way back to the room, we spied a GS with Texas plates parked on the main street. The couple who are riding it are Indian and are in the middle of their RTW trip (rideoverland.com). We spent an hour or so talking with Nick about their ride so far and the new problem of getting from Malaysia to Indonesia. Up until two weeks ago, there was an onion boat that would take motorcycles from Penang to Medan, on the island of Sumatra, inexpensively and easily. This was the route that most overlanders would use, but apparently, the Indonesian government recently decided to shut it down. Now bikes must be crated and go by a freight line. This has caught a lot of people out and is a big topic of conversation here on HUBB. Nick's plan was to head through Singapore and ship the bike from there, so we told him what we know about the difficulties and expense of that plan. Since they were touring India around the same time that we were, it was fun to compare notes with him. After saying goodbye and good luck, Re and I headed out to the Corner Bar for a nightcap.

5/7 Quest for a Clutch Adjuster Bolt
 

After breakfast, we walked out in search of a new clutch adjuster bolt. There were a couple of bike repair shops on Lebuh Cintra, so that's where we headed. One of the mechanics at the first shop spoke enough English to understand what we needed, but told us we'd need to go to a used parts store. He gave us the name and address of a parts store and sent us off in the general direction. Stupidly, we had forgotten to bring a map with us this morning, so instead, we relied on directions from strangers. People kept pointing us in one general direction, but after an hour of not finding the street, we walked in to another motorcycle repair shop. We asked for directions to the parts store and were told it was at least a couple of kilometers away. Oh. The shop owner asked what we needed, so I showed him the bolt, and he said that if we wanted to come back around 1:30, he would have one for us. He explained that he could get it from a parts store more easily than we could do it ourselves. I asked how much it would cost, and he smiled and said he wouldn't know until he had it. Not knowing what else to do, and really hoping we wouldn't be overcharged, we left the bolt with him and said we'd be back in about three hours.

Re and I walked around and had lunch to kill time. While we were wandering around, Re did buy a box of hair color so she can remain a “natural” blonde. About 1:30, we returned to the motorcycle shop, and sure enough, they had a bolt for me.

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It wasn't an exact match, but all of the critical measurements were the same. I winced in anticipation when I asked how much it cost, and I almost laughed when the guy said it was 5 ringgit (1.66 USD). Another thing I love about Malaysia is that we have rarely run into any kind of farang pricing. I wanted to spend more money with the man since he treated me so fairly, so I bought a liter of oil there as well, even though it was priced about two ringgit higher that at our usual shop.

We got back to the room around 3:00 pm, but decided to wait until after 5:00 to install the bolt since the clinic's awning would be free at that time. Shortly after 5:00, we pushed the bike across the street and got to work. We installed the new adjuster bolt in the side cover, and it was a perfect fit. I then used some gasket shellac that Jacob thoughtfully brought by, on both surfaces, and then carefully installed the gasket. After I installed the last couple parts, on the inside of the side cover, Re carefully helped me slide it over the kick start shaft and dowel pins. With the cover in place, it was just a matter of installing all the bolts, the oil screen and cover, and the kick start lever. After that, we reinstalled the exhaust and leg shields. We refilled the engine with oil, adjusted the clutch, and then, nervously, thumbed the starter button. It started up fine – the clutch seemed to engage and disengage normally, and best of all, there were no oil leaks. I wanted to take it for a quick test ride, so while Re picked up the tools, I ran inside to grab my helmet. I jumped on the bike and began rolling it backwards and noticed that it wasn't rolling very easily. I looked back to see that I had a flat rear tire. So we got the tools back out and grabbed one of the spare tubes and got to work. Twenty minutes later, we had it all put back together and then I went for my test ride. Since it was getting late, I only went around a few blocks, but the bike was shifting normally, and even hitting it hard in second gear didn't produce any slippage. By the time I got back, Re had everything picked up, so we went inside for a shower.

Later, we tried a different place for dinner, called Line Clear. Their specialty is nasi kandar, where you get rice and select from a wide variety of toppings. The toppings include fried chicken, curried beef, chicken, squid, prawns, and you can even get a whole, deep-fried fish head. The food was excellent and cheap too. Dinner for both of us was about five bucks. After dinner, we walked into Little India to do some shopping and get some of our favorite coconut candy.


1 mile. Clutch seems great.

5/8 Beach Day
 

After more roti for breakfast, we jumped on the bus and headed to the beach at Batu Ferringhi.

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We spent several hours at the beach, enjoying the sun and the water, and deciding on a date to return to the US. We need to be in North Carolina by July 7, so we decided to fly to LAX sometime between the 5th and the 10th of June. We've been putting off making this decision since it marks the end of the trip, but we need to book our freight and get our airline tickets, so it had to be done. We're both kind of excited about seeing people at home, but we're also kind of bummed about the end of the trip. Late in the afternoon, we took the bus back to town, took a shower, then headed out for dim sum. After dinner, we went to see “Cabin in the Woods” at the theater.

5/9 Lazy Day and Tire Change
 

We tried something new for breakfast today. It's a Chinese dish that we don't know the name of, made of cubes of rice cake that is fried in a wok with bean sprouts, scallions, fresh ginger, and chili paste. Two foam trays of it cost 4 ringgit (1.33 USD) and it was tasty. Re had a doctor's appointment this morning, so while she went to that, I did some reading and started looking at shipping options from Malaysia. After she returned, we went out for a lunch of chicken and rice.

Since it is Wednesday afternoon, the clinic's awning is free, so we took the opportunity to finally change my front tire.

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I am still running the original front tire that came on the bike, but after 23,400 miles, it's looking a little thin. We installed the front tire that we bought in Namibia and a new tube. Not only did the original tire last more that 23,000 miles, but the tube I took out was also the original tube. I removed this tube in Ooty and replaced it with an Indian tube that failed after 1,400 miles. At that point, I reinstalled the original tube (since it was our spare). I'd say I got my money's worth! While we had the tools out, we also adjusted Re's chain and clutch.

With the bike work done, it was time for a haircut. In danger of turning into some kind of long-haired hippy freak, I had Re give me a quick trim. After getting cleaned up, we walked up to our usual motorcycle parts shop and bought two new rear Dunlops. We shouldn't need to use them before the end the of trip, but the Dunlops here seem to be very similar to the ones we bought in India, and they have been great tires. And it doesn't hurt that they were only 16 bucks each. The rest of the day was basically dinner, a little shopping, then a stop at the Corner.

5/10 Ride to Kek Lok Si Temple
 

After breakfast we jumped on the bikes for a combined test drive/temple visit. I was happy to see no drops of oil on the sidewalk beneath my bike when we walked out this morning, I guess the gasket installation was successful. We made our way south and east toward Air Itam, and it was good to be riding again. The ride was mostly urban, with a lot of stop and go traffic. But my clutch seemed to be working great. The only thing of concern is that the exhaust note seems to have changed. It sounds like there might be a slight exhaust leak, so I will need to check the exhaust header nuts.

We followed the road past Kek Lok Si Temple and up to the dam at Air Itam. The road was steep and twisty, and I figured it would be a good test of the new clutch repair. Some of the grades called for second gear, but no matter how hard I twisted the throttle, the clutch held firm. Great! When we reached the parking lot at the dam, we were greeted by a friendly woman who lives between the temple and the dam. She told us a lot about the area, the temple, and the roads around the lake, and she even made Re a cool, little origami creation out of a 1 ringgit note. At her suggestion, we decided to head back down to the temple to tour it first, followed by a ride around the lake afterward.

We rode back to the Kek Lok Si Temple and pulled into the upper area.

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We parked next to the 120 ft high, bronze statue of Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy.

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After walking around the upper level, we took the cable car down to the lower level, where we toured Ban Po Thar, the 10,000 Buddhas Pagoda, and the other temples around it.

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This is supposed to be the largest Buddhist Temple in Malaysia, and it certainly is big and impressive. However, it is surprisingly commercial, with tremendous amounts of sacred and secular stuff for sale (we had to laugh at the “Anger Birds” flipflops for sale in the gift shop. I wonder what the Buddha would have to say about counterfeit merchandise?). We hadn't noticed that the sky had begun to darken to the west until we heard the thunder. Well, crap.

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We took the cable car back to the upper level, and after stopping to take our pictures with our Chinese zodiac animals, we hopped on the bikes and headed out. The weather had canceled our plans to ride around the lake, so we instead, rode back into town.

We had a late lunch of phenomenal roast duck at Jit Seng once again, and then headed back to the room to work on some writing. Later, we returned to Line Clear for a dinner of nasi kandar. This time, we tried the daging, which is chunks of beef cooked in some dark, delicious gravy, and it was excellent as well. We then headed to the mall to watch “The Avengers” again.


15 miles in about an hour. Bikes are great!

5/11 Lazy Day and Bike Shipping
 

After breakfast, we both worked on some writing and reading until lunch. Over a lunch of curry mee,we decided that it's about time to start looking into shipping options to get our bikes back home. A search of HUBB and ADV only turned up one report of shipping by air from Malaysia. It was a recent report here on HUBB by a couple who shipped their V-Strom from Kuala Lumpur to Amsterdam on Malaysia Airlines. They did not use an agent and instead, dealt with MASkargo, Malaysia Airlines cargo division, directly. It was apparently an easy and relatively inexpensive procedure. Instead of disassembling and crating the bikes, they were simply strapped to a pallet and wrapped in plastic. Our research has shown that Malaysia Airlines flies from Kuala Lumpur to Los Angeles, so it was our hope that we and the bikes could fly together. Re emailed MASkargo with the details of what we wanted to do and soon got an email back, saying that he could not help her and to contact the MASkargo Logistics division instead. We spent the rest of the afternoon researching tomorrow's hike up Penang Hill before heading out to Kapitan for dinner again.

Thank you!
 

Thank you for this bunch of new installments. Outstanding trip and a scource of inspiration!

Hope you guys find it easy settling in after this beautiful journey.

I remember Colin talking about the perfect small engine travel bike something in the 150 ccm range. Care to share your thoughts?

I will definitely get back to this question when I get a chance to write up my ideas. For now i can leave you with a teaser picture of the type of bike that started me thinking about it!

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5/12 Climb Penang Hill
 

We decided that today would be the day we would climb Penang Hill, so after some more delicious roti canai for breakfast, we packed a daypack with water, sunscreen, and rain jackets, then walked to the bus station. Penang Hill is located inland and is approximately 2500 ft in elevation at the top. In the past, it was used as a retreat for the wealthy and/or infirm to escape the heat. Back in the day, people either had to walk up or were carried in sedan chairs. Nowadays, there is a funicular railway that makes the trip quick and easy, but much less colonial. At the summit there are gardens, a restaurant and heritage hotel, as well as a colorfully decorated Hindu temple and a mosque.

Our plan was to take a bus to the Botanical Gardens, walk up Penang Hill, take the funicular back down the hill, and take a different bus back into town. The bus to the Botanical Gardens only runs every 30 minutes, and we had apparently just missed it, since we had to wait for quite a while for the next one. We finally arrived at the Botanical Gardens at about 11:30, where we walked through the Moon Gate and started climbing. The first part of the hike was a steep, jungle track through the woods. Since hiking Penang Hill is a popular local activity, much of this first section was made up of crudely built, concrete steps in the steepest sections. Part way up the first section, we overtook an older, western gentleman, who introduced himself as Herbie. While we were taking a breather, we chatted for a few minutes with Herbie and found out that he and his wife were now living on Penang in the new Straits Quay development. We told Herbie a little about our trip, and it turns out, he's been many of the places we have been, especially Africa. We came to find out that Herbie worked for the World Bank before he retired. We walked with Herbie for a while longer, until we reached “Number 5.” There are rest stops along some of the paths where you can sit, often have tea or water and biscuits and they are simply known by a number. At this stop, we met his wife, Marina and another hiker from Sri Lanka, named Rizli (sp?). We sat and chatted with them for around 45 minutes before continuing on to the next section.

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This section was also a jungle track, that was more strenuous than the last. It had no steps, but the path went up and over rocks and along the edges of ravines.

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The jungle here was also more dense, and the air was warm, humid, and still. After another 45 minutes of hiking, we made it to “Number 84.” Here, we had a choice of continuing on the jungle track or turning onto the “jeep road.” There is a paved road that goes up Penang Hill, but it is only open to people who either live or work on the Hill. We decided to follow the “jeep road” since the jungle track had gotten fairly muddy. At this point in time, we were halfway up, but still had 1.5 miles to go to reach the summit. After stopping for a drink and a bathroom break, we set off on the pavement.

The road was amazingly steep and some stretches were marked as having a 30 degree grade. Others weren't marked, but they were even steeper. On some stretches, it was hard to keep forward momentum going. We did contemplate turning around and walking back down several times, and at some of our ever more frequent rest stops, we wished for a taxi to appear. By the time we finally saw the top of the hill, we were both at our limit and could hardly control our gasps for air, and our clothes were completely sweat-soaked. We were a little embarrassed when we joined the crowd of weekend holiday makers who had taken the funicular up the hill, and consequently, didn't look or smell like drowned rats.

Since is was now around 3:00 pm and we hadn't had any lunch, we decided to stop in at one of the food stands and find something to eat. We ordered our food and collapsed on a wooden bench while we waited. Soon, we had our food and felt some better. We were both too tired to walk around at the top, which was too bad, because we both remembered it as a nice place to visit from our last trip. We made our way to the train station, where we got quite a shock. We knew they replaced the old train we rode last time, with a fancy, new Swiss-made one, but what we didn't know, was that with the new funicular train came a fancy, new ticket price. Last time, the one-way ticket was 4 ringgit, but now, it is 17 ringgit (5.66 USD) per person. Too tired to walk back down, we bought our gold-plated tickets and rode back down. At the bottom, we hopped on the bus back into town, stopping for some coffee on the way back to the room. In the room, we stripped out of our still soaked clothes, showered, then collapsed on the bed until dinnertime. We had a late meal of dim sum and ice cream, then returned to the Star Lodge to watch Formula 1 qualifying before heading back out for a cold beer.

5/13 Mother's Day
 

After yesterday's long hike, we felt like taking it easy today, so after breakfast, Re worked on some writing while I did some reading. We had banana leaf at Sri Ananda for lunch, then more writing and reading. On the way to dinner, we did some shopping and then made it back in time to see the Formula 1 race. It was a great race, and the season sure is shaping up to be one for the record books. After the race, I called my mom on Skype to wish her a happy Mother's Day, but unfortunately had a really bad connection, so we didn't get to talk much.

5/14 and 5/15
 

5/14 Shipping Plans and Writing

After roti in the room, we spent the morning doing some reading and writing. Back to the Sky Hotel for a lunch of pork and rice, and then, more writing. After lunch, Re again attempted to contact the person we needed to speak with at MASkargo, but he was unfortunately not in. We spent the rest of the afternoon reading before heading back to Line Clear for dinner. The only English-language movie in town that we hadn't seen yet was “Safe,” so we to see it. Later that evening, Re Skyped her mom before we called it a night.


5/15 Again With the Shipping

Since we're having a hard time getting anyone to respond to our shipping inquiries in any kind of a timely manner, Re did a little more research on possible shipping routes. She discovered that Eva Air, a Taiwanese carrier, actually has a cargo freighter that flies from Penang to Taipei several times a week. So after breakfast, Re rode to the Eva Air office here in town. The woman there insisted that she would need to deal with a freight forwarder. Fortunately, Worldlink Cargo's office was located right across the hall. Re was able to speak with Ms Goh that morning and got the process started. When Re got back to the room, she exchanged a few emails with Ms Goh, who will now begin to work on a quote for us.

After a lunch of chicken rice, we spent the rest of the afternoon researching the possibility of living and working in Singapore. After several hours, we decided that while jobs are available and foreigners are more than welcome in Singapore, the cost of living is simply too high. Another dead end, so on to plan...Q? After dinner at the hawker stalls, we walked around and talked about how we were getting discouraged with the difficulty in finding shipping.

5/16 Airport Visit/Ride Around the Island/”Hey, Isn't That...”
 

After breakfast, we fired up the bikes and rode down to the airport. We wanted to check with the Penang branch of MASkargo since the Kuala Lumpur office has not been very helpful. When we got there, we were told once again, that we would need to deal with a freight forwarder, but that he was on vacation. At another dead end, we decided to just go riding. Since we were already most of the way down the east coast of the island, we decided to continue around the island. Whereas, the east coast of the island is built up with homes and businesses, the southern and western coasts are much more sparsely populated, and there are long stretches of twisty roads through the jungle. It wasn't a very long ride, but it was a lot of fun to actually get out and do some riding. The roads were good. They twisted up and down through the jungle before spitting us back out on the beach road at the northwestern corner of the island. From there, we headed back into the traffic as we made our way back to Georgetown.

We stopped for lunch at Kapitan before returning to the room. We were happy to see that we'd received an email from Ms Goh. We emailed her pictures of our previous crates so she could see how we've shipped the bikes before. Later that evening, we returned to Line Clear for more nasi kandar. After walking around to find some dessert, we were heading back to the room, when I thought I spied a familiar looking couple across Chulia Street. Re and I doubled back to catch up with them, and sure enough, it was Fabian and Tanja, the bicyclists we originally met in Hampi, India, and later in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It really is a small world. They were just as surprised to see us as we were to see them.

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We went out for coffee and spent a couple of hours catching up.

5/17 – 5/22
 

5/17 Not Much to Report

Like the title says, another wasted day trying to arrange shipping. I did change my tail light bulb and removed and reinstalled my exhaust header nuts.


5/18 Pancakes and Bad News

Re takes care of the majority of cooking duties when we're at home, but one thing I do is make pancakes. Every Sunday morning. In many places in the world, tourist restaurants sell “pancakes,” but they're more like crepes. Lately I have been jonesing for an American-style pancake, so this morning, we got up and rode to McDonald's for the closest thing we've had so far. They weren't great, but they were good. Later that morning, Re was able to get in touch with Faruq, the agent recommended by the local MASkargo office. We arranged to meet him at 4:00 pm at the airport. The rest of the day basically involved killing time until we could meet with Faruq. We had lunch at Sri Ananda, and afterwards, walked up to sit by the water for a while.

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On our way back, we came across an abandoned Minsk in somewhat sad condition.

At around 3:30, we left for the airport and finally met Faruq at about 4:30. He took us into the MASkargo offices, where the three of us received the bad news together. It turns out that what the MASkargo agent in Kuala thLumpur had tried to explain to Re a week ago now, was that MASkargo cannot ship our bikes to the US. Since the attempted bombing of the UPS plane in the Middlle East a few years ago (the one where they had explosives in the toner cartridges, the US has put a complete ban on the transport of cargo deemed to be “personal effects” on passenger planes. The upshot of this is that we either need to ship the bikes to a country other than the US, or they have to go on cargo freighter aircraft. MASkargo doesn't have dedicated cargo freighters to the US, and the only place they fly is to Los Angeles. Well, ****ity **** ****. After we left the MASkargo offices, Faruq said he would check with Cathay Pacific and Korean Air and get back to us in a couple of days. When we returned to the room, we found out that Ms Goh had a quote for us to ship on Eva Air. The good news is, we have a quote. The bad news is, it's more than we had hoped to spend.


5/19 The Beach

We went to the beach, ate some food, did some reading, and drank some beer.


5/20 Lazy Day and Moto GP

Did a little writing, did a little reading, ate some food, and I watched four-plus hours of Moto GP. We're both getting a little more than a little frustrated with the shipping process. Georgetown is a much better place to be stuck than Dar Es Salaam, but the feelings of powerlessness and frustration are the same.


5/21 Another Day of Waiting

No word from Faruq today. Re checked into a few other shipping dead ends. We did see “Dark Shadows” at the theater and thought it was okay, but not the most cohesive story ever.


5/22 Still Working on Shipping

Did some reading, exchanged some money. Re called and emailed on shipping. We are both starting to get a bit stressed.

5/23 Ride Around Air Hitam
 

After cereal and yogurt for breakfast, Re made a few more calls to our less than helpful potential shipping agents. Not all of them have been less than helpful. In fact, we did receive our first quote on May 18 and another quote today, but they are all still more than we'd hoped to pay. We pissed away the rest of the morning until it was time for lunch. Frustrated with sitting around, we fired up the bikes and rode back to Air Hitam to ride around the lake.

The ride up to the dam itself was the same as it was back on the 10th, but after that, we turned onto the one-lane motorbike road/footpath that circles the lake for a while. It was a shaded, narrow, twisty road that wound along the edge of the lake and eventually dead-ended at a gate. Just before the gate, there was a left turn that went up a hill. It was wet and leaf covered and very steep. Re said she wanted to give it a try, so we did.

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The next couple of miles were all taken in first and second gear due to the extreme angle of the road. We continued climbing up and up, and eventually came to a fork in the road. The right fork led into an open valley, and the left fork continued up the hill. We knew that one of these roads was supposed to go through to the back side of the island but there was no indication which one to take.

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We opted for the right and followed it out into the sunlight. We rode along the edge of the valley for another couple miles through farms and through a few people's front yards. The road came to a dead end at someone's house, so we turned around and headed back. Once we reached the fork in the road, we continued uphill for another half mile or so. The road here didn't appear to be used very often, since it was covered in wet leaves with no visible tire tracks. This section was steep enough that we were stuck in first gear, and we had a couple of instances where our rear tires spun on the leaves. We expected the road to begin descending soon, but it seemed to keep climbing. Due to the wet leaves and pavement, I was beginning to get a little nervous about our descent, so we decided to turn around.

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We slowly made our way back down to the lake. On the way, I spotted a snake in the road, and we turned around to take a look.

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Unfortunately, it was an ex-snake. It had no obvious injuries, but it was dead. This was the same kind of snake that Re saw on Koh Lanta, which we had identified as a red-headed krait.

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When we got back to the parking area by the dam, we also spotted this snake at the old guard booth. A local told us it was a green tree viper, and another person said it was a coconut viper. Either way, it was a beautiful snake.

We rode back into town and spent a while chatting with Anh, the gentleman who owns the Star Lodge and two other guesthouses along Muntri Street. He was giving Re lessons in Mandarin, so we could at least say “please” and “thank you” at the coffee shops and hawker stalls.


25 miles in about 3 hours.

5/24 To the Beach
 

After roti for breakfast, Re called the last shipper we were still waiting for a quote from, and he assured her that he would get back to us by the end of the work day. Screw it, we're going to the beach. We loaded the bikes and rode up to Batu Ferringhi. The sun was out today, and the water was beautiful. We did some reading, talking, and swimming, before heading back into town in the mid-afternoon. After a late lunch, we returned to the room to get cleaned up. We received a text message from the last shipper, and their quote on Cathay Pacific was several hundred dollars more than the lowest we'd received so far. Sigh. Later, we went out to see “Men In Black 3” and then had a late dinner at the hawker stalls. We stopped out at the Corner Bar, where we made our decision on shipping.


20 miles in about an hour.

5/25 Shipping and Durian
 

After breakfast, we rode to the offices of Worldlink Cargo to see Ms Goh. We finalized our shipping arrangements and left our Carnet documents with her so the paperwork could be started. Our bikes will fly on Eva Air, a Taiwanese carrier, from Georgetown to Taipei, and then on to Los Angeles. All in, it should cost around 2200 USD, which is still less than it cost to fly our bikes from Toronto to Cape Town, but more than we'd hoped.

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In the parking lot, I spied this interesting shotgun exhaust on a Honda Cub and briefly thought about getting out the tools to see if it would fit our bikes. We hurried back to the room to purchase our tickets to LAX. Re's been watching the airfares, and right now, there is a relatively inexpensive flight from Georgetown to LAX, via Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo, on Malaysia Airlines. Fortunately, the fare was still available, so we bought our tickets for June 11. They are 670 USD each, which is the best fare we found by several hundred dollars. After we received the confirmation email, we both started to feel a little depressed that we are, in fact, going home. We knew this day was coming, but now it's here, and we don't like it.

After a kind of subdued lunch, we returned to the Star to find that Anh had a surprise for us. He had kindly brought us a package of good quality, fresh durian. For those of you who've never been to southeast Asia, durian is a well loved fruit in the region. Most westerners find the taste and smell highly objectionable. We first ran into it in Vietnam two years ago, when we walked into a store and thought their refrigeration system had failed and everything in it had turned. After seeing and smelling it through the rest of the region, we decided to give it a try in Indonesia, in the form of durian ice cream. There it was served as a parfait of durian flavored ice cream layered with a durian puree. Re described it as tasting like rotten onion ring farts and maple syrup. Not a good combination. Since we've been back in southeast Asia, we've become more accustomed to the smell but had yet to try it again. In conversations with Anh, he stated that the durian grown on Penang is famously better than anywhere else. He also explained that there are many different varieties, some sweet, some bitter, and that we must try it.

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The package he brought had a combination of the two kinds, and Re made the mistake of choosing the bitter one first. The look on her face was priceless, and she very politely tried to finish it. After sniffing all the pieces, I chose one of the sweet ones, and it wasn't too bad. I ended up eating three pieces of the sweet, but none of the bitter. Re gamely tried a bit of the sweet, but just couldn't eat anymore. While the actual eating of the durian wasn't so bad for me, but the burps that I experienced the rest of the afternoon were ghastly. At one point I looked up to see that Re had been brushing her teeth and her tongue for at least five minutes, and we eventually ate an entire bag of sour gummy rings in an attempt to cleanse our palates. Unfortunately, the taste stayed with us until after dinner. It was a good distraction from the earlier events of the day.

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(the Corner Bar on a less popular night. I always take Re to the nicest places...)

Later, at the Corner Bar, we met Alex and Ashley, a couple who are backpacking through Malaysia and Thailand. Alex is from England, and Ashley is from West Virginia. They met a few years ago in Kathmandu and have been meeting up ever since. They had just spent a couple of months in the Philippines and were on their way to Koh Phangan for a month. We didn't end up leaving until around 2:00 am and made plans to meet for lunch before we said goodnight.

5/26 Roast Duck and Bowling
 

Our plan was to get on the road as soon as we finalized our shipping, but that was before we met Alex and Ashley. So after a late and kind of short morning, we met up with them for a lunch of duck and pork and rice at Jit Seng.

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After a delicious lunch, the four of us went to Penang Bowl, where we spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying good company and bad bowling. I bowled the best game I think I ever have and won the first game. Re then won the second, and Ashley won the third. A good and silly time was had by all, but I think we're all going to be a little achy tomorrow. Later in the evening we met up again for dinner, and after I ran back to the Star Lodge to watch F1 qualifying, we met back at the Corner Bar until after 2:00 am again. I guess we won't be riding tomorrow either.

5/27 Where Does All This Shit Go Again?
 

After the late night last night and too many beers, it was a late, ugly morning. We finally had our usual morning roti at 11:30 am. After a shower and some paracetamol, we got to work on plans for tomorrow. We decided we'd try to be on the road for between five and seven days, making a loop east, perhaps stopping at Gunung Stong National Park, before heading south toward Taman Negara (the national park), on to Bukit Fraser, north to the Cameron Highlands again, and finally stopping in Ipoh to see Ronnie. To do this, we had to repack everything that we've taken out in the past month. We haven't bought anything new, so it should all fit back in the bags it came out of, but for some reason, today it seemed more difficult than it should have. We finally got everything packed in time to catch a late lunch of chicken and rice. Later in the afternoon, we did a little writing and some laundry before heading out to an early-ish dinner so I could be back in time to watch Formula 1.

5/28 We Should Have Stayed In Bed
 

After breakfast, we loaded up the bikes and hit the road by 9:30 am and told the folks in reception that we'd see them in a week.

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We took the ferry back to the mainland and then headed slightly north before turning east. The road today was very good but also very busy. Obviously, we haven't been doing much riding lately, and it showed. Both Re and I felt a little nervous with the closeness of some of the traffic. It was a pretty but uneventful ride across the state of Kedah and into Perak.

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We skirted the northern end of the Titiwangsa Range, so the scenery was pretty, but there wasn't much elevation change.

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Around 1:00 pm, we arrived at Lake Temengor, where we stopped for lunch and to look around. The sky in the east had begun to grow dark, so we decided it would be best to get back on the road.

A short while later, we crossed into the state of Kelentan, where the road became twisty and more enjoyable. In some of the tighter corners, it felt like the back end of my bike was moving around a bit, but I really didn't pay any attention and put the feeling down to not having ridden in a while. Dumb dumb dumb! After a while turned south toward Jeli. As we pulled away from a stoplight in Jeli, I shifted from first into second and had no drive at all. The engine was turning but my rear wheel was not. Since I was halfway through the intersection, I shifted into first, twisted the throttle, and got the same lack of response. I tried second again but got nothing. My first thought was that I had either done something wrong installing the clutch or was having a transmission problem. About this point, Re pulled up and said she had seen chunks of my cush drive coming out the back of my bike. Well now, that can't be right. I duck-walked the bike through the intersection and a little farther up the road. I looked back to see that, sure enough, there were chunks of cush drive rubber in the intersection. I looked at the rear end under my bike and could see that the rear wheel had pulled off the splines that are attached to the rear sprocket and drive the rear wheel. What didn't occur to me at this point was that I shouldn't be able to see inside my rear wheel with the axle securely fastened and a non-bent swingarm. While I ran back and gathered the rubber pieces, Re rode a bit ahead to scout for a suitable work area. She found a nearby parking lot, so I pushed my bike there and got to work. Once I sat down and looked at the rear end again, the reality sank in that something was really wrong. As is pretty standard, the axle goes in one side of the swingarm, through a spacer, through the wheel, through the other side of the swingarm, and then into a nut, which holds it all together. Somehow, I now had an extra half inch or so of space where there shouldn't be any. This can only mean one thing. Sure enough, I looked at the other side of the bike and there was NO AXLE NUT! Maybe that was why it felt like the rear end was moving around a bit in the twisties. Re volunteered to go back and look for the axle nut while I was in a mild state of shock and left before I could stop her. I think that the nut had been gone for a long time. Quite apparently, I am going to have to fire our mechanic, since that asshole didn't tighten the axle nut after that moron changed the chain... A minute later I went to call Re back and noticed that around the corner was a motorcycle shop. It just couldn't be any handier!

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With Re's help, I removed the rear wheel and started to inspect the damage. While I did this and got out our spare cush drive rubbers (thank you Alliance Powersports) Re walked around the corner to the motorcycle shop with the axle and returned with a replacement nut. By the time she returned, I had removed what was left of the old cush drive rubbers, but I couldn't get the new ones installed. I carried the wheel back around the corner where the nice folks at the shop showed me how to install them. When I returned to the bike, we started to reassemble the rear end and that's when I noticed two other things: 1) the nut and washer from the right side chain adjuster were gone, and 2) the swingarm was indeed bent. The right side of the swingarm appears to have bent near the pivot and is now about a half inch too wide at the axle. Our swingarms appear to be made of molded, flat sheets of steel that have been welded together at the edge. I inspected the swingarm and didn't see any obvious cracking or wrinkles in the metal, so I levered it back into place while Re tightened the nut. One more trip back to the motorcycle shop got us a replacement nut and washer for the chain adjuster, and then everything was back together. I took the bike for a quick ride around a couple of blocks to make sure it was okay and then we decided to get back on the road since the sky was getting very dark. I wish I knew the name of the bike shop in Jeli since we couldn't have done it without them. The only money they would take was one ringgit (0.33 USD) for the axle nut.

We headed south toward Dabong and it began to rain. There was supposed to be some kind of government resthouse in Dabong, but we couldn't find it in the rain. There also didn't appear to be a petrol station, and we needed some. Betweem the rain and the bike problems, I didn't feel like messing around anymore today, so I made the executive decision to head further south to the town of Gua Musang. It was supposed to be a bigger town so hopefully, accommodation will be easier to find. Back on the road, it didn't appear that we would have enough fuel to make it, so we stopped in another small town along the way and bought some bottles of gasoline at the local mini mart. The extra liter each gave us enough fuel to make it, so we motored the last 25 miles into town. And what a 25 miles it was.

Shortly after refueling, the rain went from steady to torrential. As we came over a rise, it was like somebody turned out the lights. Even though it was only around 6:00 pm, it suddenly became night. Between the rain and the wind, we decided to make a dash for the awning of an abandoned gas station. We pulled underneath to hide from the rain and waited about 30 minutes for it to slack off. Not wanting to be riding in the rain in the dark, we decided to continue on once the wind died down. Pulling into Gua Musang around 7:00 pm, we saw some crummy looking hotels on the main street. We kept looking and Re spotted a sign for the Titiwangsa Hotel. You know I had to go check it out. It was a bit of an odd arrangement, above a healthfood store in a newer strip mall that was mostly unoccupied, but the room was nice, the price was okay, and hey, it's called the Titiwangsa (it's hard to believe I am not 12 years old sometimes...). The rain had let up by now, so we unloaded our stuff in the room and hung everything up to dry, turned on the fan and A/C, and went out for dinner. Just to make the day complete, I discovered a sore tooth while eating dinner. Great.


235 miles in 9.5 hours of riding, including 1 hour of roadside repair and 30 minutes hiding from the rain.

5/29 Ride to Bukit Fraser
 

Since it poured rain overnight, we decided to skip the national park and instead go to Bukit Fraser (Fraser's Hill), another of the old hill stations in the Titiwangsas. Fortunately, it wasn't raining this morning, but the mist in the air was so heavy that visibility was down to less than half a mile. Wanting to give the fog a chance to burn off, we had a leisurely breakfast of roti and tea. The tea was so good that we ordered a second cup while we waited. After breakfast, I checked over my roadside repair and everything seems to be fine. While riding yesterday, I started worrying about all the things that could be wrong and narrowed my list to a cracked swingarm or ruined bearings. I can't see any cracks this morning and I don't hear any graunchy noises or feel any drag when I turn the wheel by hand. The good news is, I have a complete set of wheel bearings if we need it, the bad news is that I don't have a spare swingarm.

We finished packing the bikes by 10:00 am, and we headed south into the state of Pahang and had a beautiful ride. The mountains to the east were beautiful, and the ride was mostly fast and enjoyable. We did run into several construction zones and some intermittent light rain. At about noon, we stopped for lunch before continuing south to Raub. After fueling up we started the climb up Bukit Fraser. The road here was truly awesome.

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The climb up the hill was filled with millions of corners and mostly good pavement, but the best news was that there was no traffic and the rain had stopped.

Once we reached the top we found a quiet and picturesque town. Fraser's Hill was an old English hill station, so most of the architecture is sort of British countryside stone houses set amongst lush greenery. Even though this week is a school holiday, there were very few people to be seen. Our immediate problem was that we didn't have a place to stay, and we didn't even have any recommendations. Re looked on line, but most of them were expensive (80 to 90 ringgit per night), so we thought we'd just look around once we got there. While we were looking at a large tourist map on a signboard, we were approached by several groups of people who took our picture. After posing for a couple of pictures, we met Philip, who had just arrived with his family to stay for a couple of days. It turns out that Philip is a State Representative from Selangor. The state of Selangor maintains a bungalow on Bukit Fraser for public servants to use. Philip asked us where we were staying and immediately invited us to stay with him and his family. Not wanting to intrude in their family vacation, we considered declining, but he was so friendly and welcoming that we agreed. We followed him further up the hill to the bungalow and what a nice place it was.

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The caretaker said it was originally built in 1938, and it was grand. The ceilings must have been at least 14 feet high, and the rooms were all huge. We were given our own room, where we unpacked, took a quick shower, and came out to meet the family. In addition to Philip, there was his wife, his four children, a niece, and his mother.

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We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around looking at the beautiful gardens and hillsides and talking with Philip. Later in the evening, we hopped on the Symbas and followed the family back into town for dinner. We went to a nice Chinese place, where Philip ordered for the whole table. We had lots of yummy food and good conversation. The mist had rolled back in earnest and visibility fell to 200 feet or less. After dinner was over, Re and I went for a short ride around town before finding our way back to the bungalow in the dark and fog. We spent the rest of the evening talking with Philip about life in Malaysia.


150 miles in about 5 hours.

I am really looking forward to reading your summary. Your setup was really sophisticated from the get-go so it will be interesting to see what you would change on your next trip (if ever). You guys have a lot of travel experience and it shows!

You got me hooked with the pic of the little DS. :thumbup1: Don´t leave us hanging too long!

When I wrote my original plea for more ride reports I hadn't been to ADV but have checked it out since and it does seem that you get more comments over there. Not sure why that is, as you have plenty of "looks" over here. I sense more interest in big special bikes like MacGregor's, but it's the other stories that interest me: the guy running around Europe on his zixxer, the couple who rode a 250 Ninja from Texas way down into Argentina, the "old bloke on a bike" who's riding a 100 yr old FN from India to Belgium, and plenty more like them. My point is that you're not really alone over here on the HUBB although it may seem at times as though everyone is going a bit overboard gear-wise. I'm interested in why people ride, where they go, and their experiences a whole lot more than I am in what bike they're on or whether they have headset radios, etc. That said, I've really learned a lot from reading your trip reports here and hope you continue them. And at some point I'll have to get up with Re's blog too. In a recent post on ADV you mentioned how much writing you've done on this trip....and you ain't jist whistlin' Dixie, neither! Thanks for taking the time and putting out all the effort this must have taken. I notice that even on days when one or both of you were sick you often managed to do some writing. My helmet's off to you....

Thanks guys for posting, much appreciated.Have been following all along ,look forward to the next trip and enjoyed your style of writing.Am sure many others feel the same so keep it up. regards Alann from South Africa:thumbup1:

RTW on small bikes
 

Interesting post which shows it's possible on small bikes. Did you have some Durian and Satay when in Malaysia?

I grew up in the jungles of Borneo and know the Cameron Highlands area well.

We have tried durian a few times and can't say that we like it! The sweet kind is better than the bitter kind but they are both pretty awful (to us at least!) Satay is delicious, of course, and definitely more accessible to our tastes. If you haven't noticed, we travel mostly to eat!

Sorry for another long absence, returning home has been much more of a shock than I ever expected. I have found that it is hard to even think about our trip on many days, I miss being on the road that much. We just need to win the lottery!

55/30 Ride to Cameron Highlands/Ten Months on the Road
 

Not knowing what was going on today, Re and I decided to get an early start (for us) and were up by 7:00 am. We'd had a good sleep – between the relatively cool air and continuous rain overnight... It was not raining when we woke up, but the house was surrounded by a dense fog. Visibility was no more than 25 feet. Our original plan was to tour Bukit Fraser today and go on some of the hikes, but considering the amount of rain overnight, hiking seemed out of the question. We made the decision instead, to head back to the Cameron Highlands in hopes of drier weather and trails.

After showering, we packed our bag and generally kept quiet until we heard other people moving about. A little while later, we stepped out and were invited to have breakfast with the family. After a yummy breakfast I looked outside to see that the mist had receded and decided to load the bikes. As I finished getting everything strapped down, it started to rain. Since Philip's plans involved hiking as well, they decided to wait to see if the rain stopped.

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We joined them on the porch for pictures and an amazing spectacle of moths.

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The outside light had apparently been left on last night, and it consequently attracted the most amazing assortment of moths we've ever seen.

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Some were nearly three inches long, some looked like leaves, others were spectacular colors, and there were, literally, hundreds of them.

Around 10:00 am, the rain nearly stopped, so we said our goodbyes and hit the road. With the stoppage of the rain, the mist returned. It was pointless to try and do any sightseeing on Bukit Fraser this morning since visibility was so low.

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Instead, we made the ride down the hill, through the fog and into the eventual clearing. The ride down was nearly as much fun as the ride up (except for the wet pavement). I would love to return with a supermotard someday and just ride up and down the hill a few times. Near the bottom, the sky cleared and turned sunny as we rode toward the E1 (the North-South highway). We rode the E1 north to Tapah, where we exited for the ride to Tanah Rata. This too was a roller coaster of a road but with slightly worse pavement. At the Tapah exit, my GPS said it was 19 miles as the crow flies to Tanah Rata, but that by road it was 36 miles – it's a twisty road.

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Another highlight of this part of the ride was a large reservoir that was flanked by mountains. We stopped for a short break and a couple of pictures. After strafing a thousand apexes, we finally pulled into Tanah Rata and rode directly to the Twin Pines, where we'd stayed before.

We had a late lunch of coffee and fried dough and then went back to the room to check email. We got two bits of news; one that Ronnie had come down with the flu, and the other, that Ian (The BigFella) had arrived in Georgetown. It seems relatively dry here, so maybe we'll do some hiking here tomorrow and head north the next day. After spending some quality together time, we went out for a late dinner with a couple different kinds of nasi goreng (fried rice) and tomyam soup. The food was delicious, but you know you have a toothache when it hurts to chew rice. After dinner we grabbed some beers and returned to the room to celebrate ten months on the road today.

140 miles in about 4.5 hours. Bikes are running well, no obvious permanent damage from the missing axle nut.

5/31 Back to G-town
 

By 2:00 am, we knew we weren't going hiking today. Shortly after we went to bed, the sky exploded in thunder, lightning, and torrential rain. It flat poured overnight, and the deluge continued for hours. We woke up to huge puddles of standing water and an overcast sky. We walked out for breakfast and considered our options. Everywhere we looked it was muddy, so hiking didn't sound like a reasonable option. Between my sore tooth, Ronnie's flu, and Ian's arrival in Georgetown, we decided to scrap our plans and head back to Georgetown today. My tooth has gotten so sensitive that whether iced or hot, coffee hurts to drink. Now I know that something has got to be done. We decided to get on the road as soon as possible to hopefully avoid any of the afternoon rains that seem to be popping up.

After breakfast we jumped in the shower and I then got to work on the bikes. The air pressures have been holding fairly well. For some reason, I have started checking fasteners every day again, and while the oil level is good, Re's smells like it could use a change. We heaved the bikes off the center stands at 9:30 and thumbed the starter buttons. Re's Symba roared to life, mine made that funny starter solenoid sound. Dead battery. Fortunately, I could resort to the kickstarter. I guess it's time for those new batteries we've been putting off buying. Once we were underway, it was an easy but busy ride from Tanah Rata to Kampung Raja. After that, the tourist and agricultural traffic seemed to disappear, and the ride back to the E1 was perfect. We were greeted by bright sunshine, cool temperatures, crystal clear air, stunning mountains all around, and a neverending succession of fourth gear sweepers. This morning's ride reminded me why I love riding. It truly was an amazing ride, and I wished I could bottle it to save for later. Re pulled up alongside part way down with a huge smile and let out a big whoop.

Too soon, that part of the ride was over, and we were back on the E1, slowly making our way northward at 45 mph. Again, the ride through Ipoh was beautiful, but just north of there, the rain started again. While never heavy, the rain continued on and off for the next couple of hours, all the way to Georgetown. By the time we made it back to the bridge to Penang, the rain had mostly stopped, but it was very windy riding across. When we were near Ipoh, Re had called the Star Lodge to make sure they'd have a room for us. When we arrived, we were able to quickly unload all of our gear back into G5, our new, usual room. They were surprised to see us again so soon, and honestly, we were too. We ran out for a quick bite to eat and then came back to the room to clean up.

We texted The BigFella later on and met him at his hotel around the corner around 7:30 pm. Ian introduced us to his KTM 950SE, and I have to admit to some serious bike envy. After that, we introduced him to our bikes on the way down to the Corner Bar. After a couple of rounds and some story swapping, we adjourned to Kapitan for tandoori chicken and naan before returning to the Corner Bar for a few more. We had a great time, laughing and talking until late in the night, so much so, that I almost forgot about my tooth.

170 miles in about 5.5 hours. The bikes are running great, but it was a strange sensation to be riding that “fast” for that long. I think I even saw 50 mph at one point!

6/1 Lazy Day and Dentist
 

After roti for breakfast, Re looked online for a recommendation for a dentist here in town. She knows my love of visits to the dentist and took it upon herself to get me there. She found a recommendation for the Adventist Hospital Dental clinic and was able to get me in after lunch. For the rest of the morning, we did some shopping, including buying oil for an oil change. After a lunch of pork and rice, we went to the hospital, where the dentist looked at my tooth and said I should take antibiotics for several days and come back on Monday to see what the real damage is. I left with a prescription which I was able to fill at the hospital, and we took the bus back to the guesthouse.

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We got a text from Ian around 4:30 and met up with him shortly thereafter. We took some pictures of the bikes together. Afterward, we headed back to the Corner Bar (the real name is Antarabangsa Enterprise, but that doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easily) for a few pre-dinner beers. Later, we walked over to De Tai Tong for dim sum, and then back to the Corner Bar for the evening. The highlight of the night was the “18-year old” Chinese man, Lim, who sat with us for a while. He was quite a character and had us all in stitches. He was actually born in 1930 in Penang and had lots of good stories. He finished the evening by telling Re some rather salacious stories, complete with hand gestures! Look for a special report from her soon.

6/2-6/5 Preparing for the End
 

6/2 It Broke Again

After breakfast, Re and I worked on some writing and posted some pics this morning. Today is the King's birthday, so many things are closed. After lunch, we removed the top cases from our bikes, since we won't need them on there until we get back to the US. While we were on our ride a few days ago, I gave Re a hand putting her bike on the center stand and thought I felt a wiggle from the rear rack. Sure enough, the welds from Cambodia had cracked in several places. Yay. Another thing to put on the “to do” list. The rest of the afternoon was pretty lazy, mostly spent talking with people around the guesthouse.


6/3 Writing and Racing

Re continued yesterday morning's theme by writing and posting to the blog. After lunch, we went to the bookstore, where Re bought some Chinese brushes and ink, and we bought a copy of the movie, “Totoro.” Since it was Sunday and the awning across the street was free, we took the opportunity to change the oil in both bikes. There seemed to be a lot of clutch material stuck in the oil screen, hopefully it is left over from my old clutch and not from the new one! I also gave the swingarm area of my bike a once-over and didn't find any permanent damage. Then it was time fore Moto GP. I spent the next 4.5 hours watching all the races live, before heading out for dinner.


6/4 The Dentist

I didn't particularly want to get up this morning, since I had to return to the dentist at 11.00 am. The tooth that's been giving me a problem already has a crown, which means the next step is a root canal. The good news is, the antibiotics seem to have done an excellent job of clearing up the sensitivity. This morning I made a point of chewing on that side of my mouth, and it was virtually pain free. While I waited around and fretted until it was time to go, Re got out a rag and soap and washed both our Pelicans and Ortliebs in preparation for our flight next week. Too soon, it was time to go back to the dentist. He spent about 15 minutes poking around, spraying water and air, and having me bite on chunks of cotton. His advice was to leave it alone for now and worry about it when I get back to the States since the pain is essentially gone, and he's concerned about finishing the process before we leave. In one way, I was relieved to not need a root canal today, but on the other hand, I hope this doesn't come back to haunt me in the next month or so.

After lunch we walked down to our local motorcycle shop and bought new batteries. I checked my battery the other day after my bike wouldn't start, and sure enough, it was low on water again. Considering that we have refilled our batteries with tap water at least three times so far, we thought it would be better to return with fresh batteries that we promise to treat right this time. We also got them now since they were a good price. A genuine Yuasa YB5L-B battery is just under 13 USD here. Back in the room, I started filling them with acid in preparation for installing them tomorrow.


6/5 Rack Repair/Leg Shields

We seem to have hit a rainy period in Malaysia, since it rained heavily overnight, and we in fact, woke to flooded sidewalks this morning. Re braved the rain to get us breakfast, and then we worked on a bunch of emails until the rain stopped. I removed Re's rack (heh heh) and went off in search of a welder, while she pulled off the leg shields from her bike in preparation for a lettering job. I had to walk around for a while to find a welder to fix the rack, but eventually found someone to do the job. It was a little more expensive here, costing 5 USD, as opposed to the dollar or two elsewhere. After I got the rack reinstalled, I found Re in the middle of her lettering job, which is looking pretty good.

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Here are a couple pics of the finished product.

After the leg shields were reinstalled, we headed out for lunch and to see, “Snow White and the Huntsman.” It was raining again, so watching a movie sounded like a better idea than installing batteries. After the movie was over, we collected the tools and other things we will need to ship in the crate with our bikes, since tomorrow is crating day. Dim sum and a couple of beers finished up the day. We are both definitely bummed that the end is near.

6/6 Crating the Bikes One Last Time
 

We were glad to see that it wasn't raining this morning, so after breakfast we got to work installing the new batteries in our bikes. For some reason, everything fought us today. I don't think the bikes want to go home either. We had to get our bikes to the crating company by 11:00 am, so we hit the road at 10:15 for the ride across the bridge and into Butterworth. Once again, the airline insisted that we drain all fuel from the bikes, so we've been riding around, virtually empty for the past several days. Before we got to the bridge, we split a liter of fuel between the two bikes to ensure we could make it. It began to rain lightly just as we reached the bridge, and it continued for the final five miles of the trip. We located the crating company easily enough, and soon had rolled the bikes into their warehouse.

Apparently, there had been some miscommunication between the forwarder and the crating company, since the craters were under the impression that we were simply going to drop off the bikes. We explained that no, we would remove the front wheels and handlebars ourselves and get the bikes ready to go. We had explained all of this to the freight forwarder and also specified the size of the crate we needed based on our last three shipping experiences. The crater apparently didn't receive this message, since he assured us that there was no reason to disassemble anything, they would just crate everything up as it was. I then explained that if we did that, the freight charges would increase between 600 and 1000 USD. After that, he understood why we were trying to minimize the size and left us to work. Over the next hour, Re and I disconnected the batteries, removed the front wheels and fenders, unbolted the handlebars, and drained the gas from the carburetors. The foreman kept walking around our bikes skeptically, measuring with a tape measure, while looking at the measurements we had given him, and shaking his head. Once the bikes were disassembled, we popped them off the centerstand and let them sit on the rear wheel and the bottom of the fork legs. It was then that he realized that yes, they would fit in the crate we specified and smiled. Unlike other times we've shipped the bikes, they had not begun building the crate, but they got to work once they agreed with our measurements. The big boss came out and said it would be several hours until the crate was finished. He said to just show him how we wanted the bikes tied down and to leave anything else we wanted to put in the crate with them.

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We waved goodbye to our Symbas and gladly accepted the offered ride to the ferry terminal. We had planned to walk the 1.5 miles to the bus station, but considering the rain, the ride was appreciated. Riding on the ferry back to Georgetown, we were both pretty bummed. We were pedestrians again, and crating the bikes means that we are really going home in a couple of days.

Back on the island, we stopped for lunch and then walked back to our room to clean up and exchange some calls and emails with the freight forwarder. Later in the afternoon, we received a text from the crating company that included a photo of our bikes already in the crate. The one bit of good news we got today is that this company uses an engineered wood, so our shipment doesn't need to be fumigated before heading to the US. This saves us 250 ringgit (80 USD). We spent the rest of the afternoon looking for hotels in the LAX area before heading out for dinner.


12 miles in about 30 minutes. It's strange to look out the front of the Star Lodge and not see our Symbas.

We covered 8,170 miles each in southeast Asia and used 150 gallons of gasoline, for an average of 109 miles per gallon. Re-jetting my bike made a dramatic difference and except for Cambodia, the fuel quality seems much better here.

6/7 Writing and Planning
 

After breakfast, we spent most of the morning replying to emails and finding a hotel near the LAX airport. Lunch was a bit sad, since we are now counting down our final days and having to decide which restaurants we must visit again before we leave. Today we went for another banana leaf meal at Sri Ananda, and it was yummy as usual. On the way back to the room, we hit the ATM for another stack of cash, since we will need to pay for our shipping on Saturday.

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The forwarder doesn't accept credit cards, so we need to come up with 6,715 ringgit (2150 USD) in cash by then. I also picked up a new Phillips screwdriver, since my other one was damaged.

We spent the rest of the afternoon working on ride reports and uploading more photos. Later in the evening, we went out for wonton mee (four ringgit/1.33 USD per plate) at the hawkers' stalls on Chulia Street. This was accompanied by a couple of fresh fruit juices each. Re's new favorite drink is nutmeg juice, while I tried the honeydew juice. Delicious, and only 1.5 ringgit (50 cents). We are going to sorely miss cheap food. After dinner, we walked to the mall for one last movie. “Prometheus” just opened today, and it's a movie we've been looking forward to seeing. The fact that it was 10 ringgit each (3.33 USD) made it all the better. We are really going to miss Malaysia.

6/8 Visit to the Chew Jetty
 

Mr Chew is one of the men who work in reception at the Star Lodge. We've gotten to know him fairly well during our stay here, spending many afternoons chatting with him about his life in Malaysia and the six years he spent living in the Washington, DC area. Chew was born on the Chew Clan Jetty, which extends into the water between Penang and mainland Malaysia. The Clan Jetties are where many Chinese immigrants lived and worked after they arrived in Penang. The most common jobs for the immigrants were either as fishermen or stevedores who worked loading and unloading the cargo ships at the port. Chew was actually born and spent his first seven years in a home on the Chew Jetty and offered to give us a tour this morning.

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After breakfast, we met Chew and his wife, Christina, who then drove us to the jetty and showed us around. While most of the fishing and stevedore jobs have long since disappeared, many people still live in the houses on the jetty while working on land.

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Chew showed us around the jetty, spoke of his life there as a child, and introduced us to some of his relatives. We spent an hour or so wandering around seeing the sights and then later went for a driving tour of some of the non-touristy Chinese sections of the city.

Around lunchtime, Chew took us to the Chinese Recreation Club, where he has been a member since 1972.

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The CRC is a grand, old country club located in the middle of Georgetown, which is only open to people of Chinese descent. While there is no golf course, there are tennis courts, basketball courts, soccer fields, badminton courts, a gym, and an outdoor olympic size pool. It is also home to an amazingly excellent restaurant where we had lunch. Chew and Christina are well known here, and we were treated to a great meal and service.

After lunch, they dropped us back at the Star Lodge where Re worked on some blogging for the rest of the afternoon. We finished the night with a late dinner at Kapitan and a stop at the Corner Bar. Since we only have a couple of days left, we are having to decide very carefully where we are going to have to eat.

6/9 Departure Preparations
 

After breakfast, we walked up to see Ms Goh, our shipping agent, and we paid our money and collected our Carnet documents. After returning to the room we spent the rest of the day getting ready to go. Re gave me a haircut, fixed her broken Rok-strap by stitching it with dental floss, and washed her filthy daypack. While she did this, I downloaded new GPS maps from OpenStreetMap for the US portion of our trip. We also started working on repacking everything for the impending flight, and then went out to do some last minute shopping. Both of our moods are pretty low today, so it was a subdued afternoon.

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Later in the evening, we went out for our last dim sum supper and then spent some time with Puus.

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Puus is our favorite little cat, whom we've been feeding while in Georgetown. When we met her a couple of months ago, she was just a kitten, but has now grown into a nice, young woman. She is a street cat who lives in front of a travel agency on Chulia Street and was the only survivor of the original litter of four. She is surely another thing we will miss about Georgetown. In an attempt to get ready for the 15 hour time difference between Malaysia and the west coast of the US, we decided to go to bed early tonight and get up early tomorrow.

6/10 Final Day
 

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After our last roti breakfast for a while, Re began to repack our bags again, this time, in earnest. While she did that, I worked on our route from LA up to Oregon and where to stop and stay along the way. Around lunchtime, Re walked down to Jit Seng duck rice and picked up a huge lunch of duck, pork, and rice, which she brought back to the Star Lodge to share with Robert and Chew, our daytime hosts at the Star.

Mid-afternoon, we walked out to see Puus and to give Krishna, the very friendly owner of the travel agency that she lives in front of, a large bag of dry cat food. Krishna is another of the really friendly locals we've come to know, and he is a good friend to Puus too. After that, we walked around town thinking about all the things we're going to miss.

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We went back to Line Clear for an early dinner and then went to bed at 7:30 pm.

Please don´t excuse yourself, for crying out loud!!

Thank you very much for sharing your outstanding adventure with us. :thumbup1::thumbup1::thumbup1:

I have been thinking quite a bit about you guys during your absence ... ending a journey definately needs more strength than starting it. Especially if you did everything right and especially if you did your trip with your spouse.

There are several ways to deal with post-trip depression:
the nicest is bier , but it could get too much.
A lot of sun, physical activity and :mchappy: difficult sections might also help.

Good luck in settling in and take care!

Penang and Your Clutch
 

Sorry I missed you guys. I was in Penang April 20 through June 20 and frequent the Mona Lisa in Lebuh Chulia. I am still reading your story and have skipped forward to your Malaysia experience. I will go back and read the rest but I just wanted to offer a bit of advice about your clutch troubles. (BTW I am 71 years young with 53 years of motorcycling in 7 countries so far. Bikes have ranged from 50 - 1000 ccs. Currently I have a Kwaka ER-5 500cc in New Zealand, a Kwaka 125 D-tracker in Thailand and a Yamahammer FZ150i in Malaysia. Saves border hassles!).
Anyway, I read somewhere early in your account that you were using Castrol GTX oil. I believe GTX has a friction modifier that is not suitable for wet clutches. It can cause them to slip and/or jerk intermittently under load. (Personal experience here). I recommend you only use an unmodified oil such as Castrol GP instead.
Just a bit of nonsence from an old fart from the land of Burt Munro and the Worlds Fastest Indian.
Cheers
Ah Boon :smartass:

I have been following this on ADVrider. Sounds like a great trip...

I spent three years living in Mexico, and it was tought to come back to Canada and readjust to life back here. I hope the reverse culture shock doesn't get you too down.