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.



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 s. 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 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.



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 s finished up the day. We are both definitely bummed that the end is near.

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.



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.

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.



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.

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.



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.



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.



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.

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.



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



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.

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.



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