DAY TWO (Muar to Port Dickson 140km)
I slept at 2230 last night and set the alarm for 0545. Well.... in the end I only woke at 0650. Looks like yesterday's effort plus accumulatedfatigue over the previous few days got to me. Anyways, today was supposed to be a rest day, as the intended mileage was going to be significantly less than yesterday, so I was quite laxed about leaving on time. I was pleasently greeted with the day's copy of 'The Star', and I foolishly brought it down stairs in the hope I would be happily reading it over Macdonalds breakfast. Well, I ended up back in my room as everywhere was closed.
A pretty emotionlass affair leaving the hotel. Only hungry perhaps.
So I left at 0820 without breakfast and headed for Malacca right away. Well, I strayed off my road <5> and was some unknown road, but it was so wide and the roads so smooth that I could not resist.
Wide empty road infront and behind
The large digits on top show the current speed, the arrow to the right of the digits show whether I'm above or below averge speed. The numbers below show the mileage.
I wonder why they call it Bandaraya Malacca but that's what I saw and followed. I reached Malalacca at 1010 and was eager for some good food, but I didn't seem to see anything particularly platable that was open. Malacca I think is more well known for it's historical buidings, but I didn't have the time to go seek them out. It was a biggertown, bigger than Batu Pahat or Muar. Alright,honestly I got a little lost inside there, because I had taken the different route and ended up on the outskirts of the town instead of going straight smack through it. So i had to use some discretion by looking at the sun and heading west in order to get into the heart of malacca. In the end I just settled for a simple Roti Cenai, which is the equivalent of Roti Prata actually. It was about 44km so far.
A Chicken rice restaurant that looked posh, but was not open. The words Formosa can be seen, referring to the British port name in the past.
Wow.... MTU is here...
This clock was chiming when I passed. This builing looks like a very Colonial era design
Simple coffee shop for my Roti Cenai breakfast. Argh, you can see my hand in the reflection.
Then my next stop was supposed to be Sungai Udong, but all along I had only seen Alor Gajah on the road signs. Alor Gajah was supposed to be my second last destination before Port Dickson according to what I had copied online. The weirder thing was that when I was attempting to find out my location in Malacca on the map, I saw that Alor Gajah was in fact, north of malacca, which would put it out of the way of things... And what happened to my road <5>. hmmm.... Well, decided to continue along anyway, and figured that I would either see new signs to <5> or see a new route to PD at Alor Gajah. True enough, some distance later I saw <5> Sungei Udong, and I was back on track...
Majority of houses along the road have looked something like this.
On more major stretches of road there are shop houses like these. Pretty standard throughout.
Along the way the road was broad, long and very smooth. There were many errant motorcyclists coming towards me head on and without helmet. The condition of the majority of motorbikes and scooters is bad; all rusty and ill maintained. Some of these bikes, carried like 1 adult and 2 kids, and on 2 ocassions I saw kids as young as 13 or 14 piloting one these things. It's made me realise how in general the standard of living in Singapore is really quite much higher, and people are more well off to be able to own well maintained family cars. For these people perhaps they only have a family scooter, and probably more than 10 yrs old.
The road eventually led to this forest passing which was a refreshing change from the bare open areas. It was significantly cooler inside here.
Masjid Tanah was larger than expected. More of a town than a village.
I passed through the town of Masjid Tanah at 1135, 71km next, and I was tempted to stop for a meal but it was only an hour since I left Malacca breakfast, so I only stopped for a quick refuel. The road from here onwards started to go up and down, filled with small slopes. It was irritating because me gear shifting was abosolutely disgusting, with some gears unengageable, and autoshifting up and down as I spun up the slopes. Some slope were steep, and it made me curse a little when I had my chain jumping all over the place when I powered up. I could NOT use my smallest gear because the chain would fall onto the INSIDE of the cassette, leaving me spinning the air on an upslope. Disgusting. Yeah, so my knees suffered because of the the high gearing. This new wheelset simply is not compatible with my old rear derailleur.
A herd of moo moos. It was weird when they collectively eyed me as I approached...
The villages I passed were like built on the sides of these slopes. A few Singaporean registered cars passed me. And for the first time in Malaysia I saw cattle... It explained the smell and the lumps of stuff on the road too...
The next 2 stops passed through were Linggi at 1230, 95km and Pasir Panjang at 1315, 111km. Both of which I took breaks refueling. It was then that I realised that I had been drinking flavoured can drinks all the time.... I think I drank about 7 or 8 cans of drink today! Not good... Something bad is going to happen.
Well, I continued to make my way towards Port Dickson. The skies had been excellent so far with no signs of rain at all. And Port Dickson was only like 20km away... After some distance I suddenly saw the sign to my intended hotel, Guoman Hotel. It was only 1410 and I was there already? Things weren't quite right as I was only at about 120km. If I stayed, the journey tomorrow would be even longer and that might destroy me. I was already expecting about 210km of unkown terrain. Furthermore, it was in the middle of nowhere. So I pressed on slightly, and started seeing resort after resort... Villa after villa. This was bad, as I was certain things were getting too touristy. True enough, enquiries at 2 of these resorts returned a minimum RM220 price. I was in trouble.
And even worse was that I suddenly started developing a very bad cough, that prevented me from inhaling fully. My aerobic capacities were halved!!! I think it's due to the 4bar kitkat + pineapple juice I drank at Pasir Panjang... I had no choice but to press on, and along the way hope to spot normal decent rate hotels. I saw a few closed down ones. Well, finallyI decided that I would hit the next town instead, as that would reduce tomorrow's mileage and give me my cheap lodging. Only thing holding me back was my cough....
These villas even house small Yachts....
Your Port Dickson beach... Give me ECP or Sentosa anytime.
Well, luckily enough I stopped for lunch at a Chinese coffee shop, in the hope that some warm food would relieve my condition. And so happens that I found my hotel shortly round the corner too. So it worked out in the end, and now I'm just hoping my cough resides. I've bought cough syrup from the next door, hidden shopping center, but it was prettysad when I realised I wouldn't be able to buy any of my usual munchies because of my cough. Oh wells.
I ate Sin1 Zhou1 Mi2 Fen3 here. People here were actively conversing in Mandarin AND English.
Hotel Surai, a decent place, although I've to climb 3 stories and the sink plug doesn't work.
My bike, resting and that's what the extra bed has been for. For my stuffs.
Clothes hanging to dry. I watched an episode of flintstones...
I saw this in the toy store inthe shopping complex! It's the same model bike that I'm using now!! Just a different paint scheme and components but the frame's the same! But I figured I already have the real thing, it's kinda space-occupying, and no way was I going to drag another 300grams for 4 days!!!
Anyway I got kicked out of the computer shop cos it closed at 7pm. It was RM1.50. Now I'm adding the remaining pictures etc at an RM3.50 internet cafe. The computer's here are good though, with friendly keyboards and nice monitors and chairs etc etc.... Significantly faster everything too, so I think it's quite worth it. Save me time. And oh yah, my cough has already improved tremendously. Maybe it was due to the dust in the day. Finally done. need to get prep for tomorrow. This time I bought my own breakfast =)
Labels: December 2007
posted by enpingy @ 5:39 pm
3 comments
