My mediocre Malaysian mood wasn’t greatly enhanced by waking up to yet another flat tyre. By now I’d ordered replacement tyres online and had them sent to my warmshowers host in Singapore -the only remaining question was whether my existing ones would hold on and make it that far. But my mood was improved by the quiet road that I was able to cycle on once the puncture was fixed. It was a lovely peaceful one with no traffic, that stayed close to the sea in a way reminiscent of some of the quiet little roads on the east coast of Thailand. The only problem with Malaysia was that this was the exception, not the rule. Almost the whole way down the coast there had been no such alternatives to the busy and boring main road. Sure it had a shoulder, but it also had enough motorcycles going the wrong way down it to keep me on my toes. And as for the view? If you’re a fan of palm oil plantations, this would definitely be the country for you.

My nice detour ended all too quickly and it was to be back to the main road after the town of Mersing. I struggled to find a café with wifi here and when I did it took a whole hour for my computer to locate the connection. There was definitely something seriously wrong with this laptop now. Actually it seemed like all of my things were falling apart by this stage, as I limped gradually onwards toward the safe haven of Singapore. But at least my prolonged stay in the café stabbing repeatedly at the wifi button gave me a chance to meet Alex, a South African designer. He told me that he was here to help build a house for ‘the sultan’ and he showed me some pictures of the house on his phone that blew me away. I guess when you’re a sultan you can afford to do whatever you want when you have a house built, and this sultan was definitely doing that. It was a veritable palace made with crazy modern art style arches and curves that looked like they were sculpted out of plasticine and painted bright colours. There were caves and grottos and sculptures and swimming pools and all kinds of craziness. Alex told me that a team of 250 people had been working on this for three years and they still weren’t near to being done. “Every so often the sultan turns up, and if he doesn’t like something, we just start it again.”

I left the coast after Mersing and headed south towards the border town of Johur Bahru (usually known simply as J.B.) The only thing of note that happened to me on the way, unless you want to hear about more punctures, was when I was stopped and took a break in one of those convenient shaded concrete structures. I was sitting at a junction between my main road and a side road, and evidently there was a driving school down this road because lots of learner driver cars were periodically entering and exiting the main road. Then I watched in open-mouthed horror as a young teenage driver turned off to the side road with the old instructor next to him sound asleep. His head was tilted back against the head-rest, eyes clamped shut, dribble rolling down his chin, as his young apprentice completed the turn. On the passenger door beneath this unconscious driving instructor was a sign reading: “MAX SAFE Driving Instruction.” Quite.

Heart

2

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply

The main road into J.B. became too clogged with traffic to safely cycle on but I was able to plot a route through the city on smaller roads which worked really quite well. Also working quite well was the border process, where I was allowed to go through onto the causeway linking Malaysia with Singapore in the motorcycle lane, which meant I could cross the border without ever getting off the bicycle. The only problem with this was that there were a lot of motorcycles, none of which felt the need to turn off their engines as they waited in the queue next to the ‘switch off your engines while waiting’ signs, so the whole area quickly filled with fumes. Oh, and the motorcycle lane across the causeway was quite narrow, and curved up to the left, so I had a lot of motorcycles zooming around a blind corner as I made my way up. But never mind, enough complaining, I did make my way up, and Malaysia was over.

Heart

2

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply

I fear I may have come across as overly negative about Malaysia, so I’d better put the record straight and say that I think it’s a great country. The people, almost without exception, were lovely and friendly, greeting me always with smiles, and I very much enjoyed the fact that most of them could speak English. The food was excellent, and very cheap. So it’s not a very bad place at all, it’s just not a very good place to cycle. Because it has so few small roads the main road ends up being the only option, and down the east coast it’s just not interesting at all. Having said that, I’d probably have got a lot more out of it had I allowed myself to take my time a bit more, but getting to Singapore had become my priority.

And now here I was, crossing the causeway to Singapore. The end of the road. Now it was time to answer the key question, perhaps the most difficult moment of the whole of phase one of the journey, the crux on which everything rested. Would I, could I, find a boat to take me to Australia?

23/03/15 – 70km

24/03/15 – 81km

25/03/15 – 54km (31km in Malaysia)