Encounter: 13 Dec 2007

DAY FOUR (Tanjong Malim to Kuala Kangsar 175km)

Well, today's my rest day before the possibly longest day tomorrow. After yesterday's experience, I realised that I really had to sleep less and wake up earlier in order to give myself a comfortable buffer to complete the distances each day, especially on a long day.

Well, it seems that ever since I left KL, things here are slightly less cosmopolitan, and i don't see many more shopping complexes as before. This also means that i have still been unsuccessful in acquiring a new XD card reader. So I guess I'll only be updating the missing pictures some time later... And yeah, there were lots of typos in my blog entries. Partly cos I already have the tendency to make typos, partly cos the keyboards are sometimes kinda dysfunctional. Oh yah, but this town here does have a KFC out of nowhere though (hmmm, a little heaty though, should I?)

Ok, I specially woke up at 5:30am today (although my clock actually started ringing at 0500 -_-'') and ate breakfast at tthe 24hr coffee shop just outside my hotel. It was 2 roti kosong and 1 milo.... for a grand total of RM2.20. hur hur. Oh yah, my hotel cost me RM50, and yesterday's internet with pretty decent computers cost me RM1.25 an hour. Having said that, my expenditure is still quite high because I tend to eat quite some on the go. (each drink I buy is RM1.5-RM3 depending). Enough about the food and back to the actual travelling.

Breakfast!

Leaving my hotel before the sun was up...

It was very misty in the morning but I had my lights on.

I set off on the wrong foot as the moment I put the bike out of the hotel door, it became apparent that actually I had 2 punctures instead of just one yesterday.... My front tyre was soft like some sponge. Anyway, lazy me just pumped it up and headed off. There were moments before in the past when i just ignored such slow leak punctures and just pumped them up once in a while and it was fine. But anyways, eventually the leak rate was too high for comfort and I gave in and did my tube change at some petrol kiosk. Some friendly locals were concerned, seeing a lone, weirdly dressed guy dismantling form of transport. Wel, I just smiled and a ssured them I knew what I was doing. The puncture was caused by small trioangular grain of glass, only slightly bigger than a grain of sand. Apparently one bit had made its way through the tyre over time. Indeed, there have been a couple of times I was forced to cycle over shattered glass. That's the way it is when you are but a slow moving minority on the road I guess. In fact, there could possibly more half-lodged glass and metal splinter fragments in the numerous tiny cuts I noticed on my wheel, just waiting to penetrate further. Unfortunately, removal or even locating them would probably be too difficult since they are by now half way in. I was now left with 1 spare tube of the 3 I brought along. But I had a patch kit capable of patching 3 holes, with about 70% succes rate for small punctures.

No need those shades in the morning.

This came in real handy for pumping up the empty tire to the required pressure.

Guess where on the scale my bike tire pressure stands? And I just noticed the brand of this air pump is quite familiar -_-''

There were these relatively low-lying clouds. I suppose that's where the morning mist went..

I welcomed some good morning sun =)

Long empty flat roads were easy to traverse.

Besidea palm oil, Malaysia does rubber too.

The journey today was rather uneventful (a good thing) and relatively flat. There was little to no navigation needed as i just needed to go straight along the track and not filter out any side lanes. after many small towns which looked similar to those i have been passing through, I finally reached around 12:30. Where was my Ipoh hor fun? Well, sad to say I did not get to eat the typical kind of hor fun you see in Singpapore. Perhaps there really isn't such a thing, and Ipoh hor fun is but a marketing gimmick back home.... hmmm Anyways, Ipoh turned out to be quite a small place for a state capital. In fact, I think it may have even been smaller than Batu Pahat. I had difficulties even finding places to eat as all I saw were small shop houses selling clothes and motorcycles parts etc.. and the buidings were not mordern with banks and urban restauirants etc. The Indian presence there seemed rather strong though, as i quite a few shops will names written in tamil.

Streets of Ipoh...

There was cattle in Ipoh -_-''

The outside of a wet market I passed.

Settled my lunch here.

In retrospect I've felt that in Malaysia the 3 major races of Malay Chinese and Indians seem quite well integrated as compared to what we see at home. So far, the Chinese presence has been quite strong in places I've passed through, and you se Chinese and Malays serving each other in shops alike anybody else. In Tanjong Malim, I had my dinner at this Chinese restaurant which had Indians helping out as waiters and cooks too, and they were obviously perfectly comfortable with each other too. Likewise in the internet cafe, the Chinese and Malays managed the shops together.

Just before I left Ipoh for Kuala Kangsar, I chanced about my first reasonable looking bicycle shop (it had lot of mountain bikes and shimano stuff in show cases). Earlier on I had only been seeing drab looking bicycles shop selling bmx size bikes. Yup, so i did a quick stop to pick up 2 tubes, just nice replacing the 2 i blew. Nothing was going to stop me this time, i thought.

My chanced-upon decent bike shop in Ipoh!

It was a straight forwards route through more small towns and nothing much happened along the way except a conversation a old chinese man working at thr shell kiosk. He was just advising me to use the small road to Kuala Kangsar as the view would be great. Well, he was right I guess, as there were large mountains on my left, but I was kinda busy keeping track of the road ahead...

Small towns usually had a little town center like this.

More flat open empty roads with excellent weather made cycling a breeze.

Chemical plant in the middle of nowhere! How typical...

Some pointy-topped mountain/knoll.

No more real interesting conversations today except maybe the shop attendants at Tanjong Malim 24hr coffee shop were pretty interested in my digital camera, asking me how much it costs, where it's made, where i bought it from, whats the capacity. Think they were reasonably impressed it costs RM1000. I would think so since as above mentioned, my breakfast only earned them RM2.20 max.... Anyways, forgot to mention but in most coffee shops here I think you eat first before paying, similar to eating at a small restaurant bah.

All right, I had better go settle my dinner, water supply, night snack and breakfast and turn in early this time. Tomorrow I'm headed further northwest to Buttersworth and ultimately to Alor Setar. 210km on paper. Roads look only slightly less numerous than yesterday but I should know better by now...