Beautiful Georgetown

Thursday 27/11

In the morning we didn't wake up too early as we were going to have a nice day checking out the city. And Georgetown really was what the title says - beautiful. The beauty in it was the street art. We hopped our bikes and after we had gotten to an information centre for some maps, we were off to explore the wonderful streets.

First things first though. We bought our tickets to got to Langkawi island. The place were we got them was close to the port. And while Pedro was off to buy tickets where he could pay by card, I stayed to chat a bit with a local guy who was, to my surprise, very educated about history. He knew about USSR, and was up to date about the Ukrainian situation. As I had not been reading news so much, it was great to get some recent news. Soon Pedro returned and had the tickets already with him. Then we took the map to see the first place to stop for pictures.

Ernest Zacharevic is a Lithuanian artist, he created these 3D street arts in Georgetown. I must admit, these look even better in real life than in pictures.

This one with the bicycle appeared to be the most famous one. It had the most tourists and tuk-tuks stopping by. There were also some locals selling souvenirs there. We also fell for the souvenirs. I got some lovely magnets to bring back home.

The city has also other sorts of arts here and there.

For the end of the day we left our bikes at the  hotel and took a bus across the island. There we stopped in a neat looking place for dinner. While we were waiting for our food the waiter let us into a music room they had just there where Pedro played a bit of guitar and some drums. Turned out to be a peaceful evening.

We Got on a Bus Again

Wednesday 26/11

As we had gone to bed very late the night before, it was not easy to get up early. But we had decided to start the ride to centre early, so we would not have problems later on. We knew that with bicycles it was not easy to get around in the city.
Pedro lead the way again, as his navigation skills had proven to be fabulous since the beginning of the trip. I was surprised how easily he found the way through the highways. Needless to say, I was delighted that I did not have to get on a highway again. It had been much too scary on the night we arrived to Kuala Lumpur.

We tried to ride towards the Petrona towers, but there was a think mist in the air, and we could not see the towers, it was as if they had sunk to the ground over the night. We stopped near the towers to take the last pictures, first we stopped on the other side, where there was a parkish area. We sat down to enjoy the view, and then an officer came to tell us that we are not allowed to park the bicycles there. It seemed ridiculous as we were the only people there (it was quite early), and we were not disturbing anyone or damaging anything. As the officer left we remained in the place and took pictures. We then went to the front of the building, and again officers were eyeing us as if we had a visible bomb on us. It was so silly of them! When we stopped for pictures, two (not just one, but two(!)) officers approached us to tell us that we should keep bikes on the side. It all seemed as a joke, I really did laugh out loud. But we got the pictures taken and then we headed towards the KL Sentral where our bus was going to depart from.
We stopped in some shops to buy snacks for the trip. We arrived at the bus stop early, and then we waited. The bus was right on time. The driver, his helper and Pedro placed the bikes and our panniers in the buses baggage area. The bus was very comfortable. It had two seat row on one side and one seat row on the other side. There were not many people on the bus. Each seat had a screen in front of them where the passengers could watch movies, listen to music or play some games. Seemed extremely fancy. Then the helper guy went around to give each passenger a pillow. Later on he gave everyone a snack. We did not expect this at all! Later on I found out that we could have taken a regular bus route, not a fancy one, for half the price. But who knows, maybe the other companies would not take our bicycles, so either way, it was good.

We disembarked from the bus and headed towards the town centre where we would get in a hotel and see the city. However, along the way I had encountered a problem - another flat tire. The back tire was very used by now, I had suggested to Pedro that we should change it before the tire itself gets a hole, but we never did that. We stopped there were I had discovered the flat tire under a highway where there was a decent place for us to rest the bikes. Pedro again pulled out his repair kit and was awesome to fix the inner tube.As he was fixing the tube, cars and scooters were passing by and giving us strange looks. At one point there were some police officers, it looked like they were trying to regulate the traffic. The tire was fixed we were ready to keep going.

Once we arrived to Georgetown centre we got to our hotel. We showered and settled in, then decided to go out and find where the port is to go to Langkawi, as we figured that would be a good option to do later on. We found out that there are three ferries per day going across. The ride is about three hours, and they had two in the morning, one at 8:15 and one at 8:30, and one in the afternoon at 14:00. As it was late, we headed to the hotel to decide about the plan for the next few days.

We ended up deciding to stay in Georgetown for the next day, and take the first ferry the following morning. It ended up being a great idea!

Kuala Lumpur

Tuesday 25/11

We set to to wake up at 8 in the morning to we would not get to the Batu Cave when it was extremely hot. But with getting ready and stopping near the metro station for breakfast we ended up taking a lot of time. We had to get to the city with metro Ampang Line, switch at station Bandaraya to Line Port Klang stop Bank Negra and ride it all the way to Batu Caves. 

Metro chip.

The ride was an hour long. What we found interesting was that they had special coaches for ladies only.

Coach for ladies only.

Once we arrived the view was already intense. We first saw a huge statue of Lord Rama.

Peter Lamb and Lord Rama.

We kept walking, but already from there we saw the amazing statue of Lord Murugan and the high stairs we were going to climb. They consisted of 272 uneven concrete steps.

Lord Murugan next to the 272 steps.

While going up the steps we met the monkeys that our host had mentioned on the previous day. The monkeys were used to tourists, extremely rude and cheeky. They are known to steal from tourists anything that they can grab or snatch from hands. One of them actually grabbed a fruit out of Laura's plastic bag! 

Cheeky monkey with the stolen fruit.

The climb was not as bad as we expected it to be and we were up in no time. The view from the top of the big flight of the stairs is phenomenal.

View from the top.

We then continued into the caves, water was dripping form the walls, it was wet, fairly dark and humid. Once you get there, there is another smaller flight of stairs that take people right to the temple. It looked sad inside as in the corners there were old things, like unwanted furniture and garbage. But there were also beautiful pieces of art. 

The cave is deep but on the top there is a huge hole where light came in. We walked around while taking pictures and enjoying what we saw.

Inside the cave.

Then it was time to head back down. Again we got to see the nice view from the top, and meet some more monkeys along the way.

Monkey enjoying coconuts.

We then took a metro back to the centre. Santiago and Laura got off a stop before us. We got off at KL Sentral so we could go to the bus station and decide how to get to our next stop.

Peter Lamb pointing out to the rules of metro.

Due to lack of time we decided to head straight to Penang. We were thinking about taking the train, but again, there was no way they would allow to take the bikes on the train. And also, to our surprise, tickets to many of the destinations were sold out up until December, some even the end of December. Later we found out that is was most likely because it was school holiday in Malaysia at that time. So it was decided, we were going to take the bus. After a long time of thinking and looking through multiple options to multiple destinations we got tickets to go to and island to Georgetown in Penang. We got tickets for the following day noon and paid 149 ringgit for two tickets and we did not have to pay extra for the bikes.

Rainbow in KL.

With that finally settled we walked around a bit, but then it was time to meet up with our fellow couchsurfers. Alina and her friend Yan were nice and offered to give us a ride to go see the Petrona towers. For that we had to meet up with them at the metro station Kampung Baru. So we all gathered together and went for some food. As Pedro and I had recently eaten we just had some drinks. Yan joined us a bit later, sadly she had had a car accident. But thankfully she was fine and the most damage to her car was that the front number plate was falling of because a screw was lost.
Alina and Yan then drove us to the towers were we took some time to take pictures.

The Petronas Towers.

Couchserfers and the Petronas Towers.

After more and more pictures we got back to the cars. We then drove to a hilltop where there was a beautiful view over the city!

In some time we were back at our host's house. Guy from Indonesia ran off to get to the airport, he had an early flight the following morning, so he decided to stay the night there. Back at Alina's place rest of us stayed to chat, and once again it was very late when we got to sleep.

View of KL from a hilltop.

To The Big City

Monday 24/11

The hotel where we stayed not only had a pool, but also breakfast included in the price. We decided to seize the inclusive breakfast, but as it started only at 7 in the morning, it meant a late start for cycling. And since we did not have internet in the room we took our devices to the breakfast table and in the end we only finished our breakfast after eight. Further more, we took a long time packing, so we started cycling only at around 9:00! This was no good, no good at all. But turned out Pedro had a plan to cycle till Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), which was around 50 km away, but Kuala Lumpur was 110 km. And his plan was to take some transportation from the airport to the city. This turned out to be a good idea as we started much too late to get to the city, and it also started to furiously rain while we were at the airport.

It was very difficult to get to the city with bicycles. The train was not an option, as they don't allow bikes there. And as for the bus, the only company that might take bikes had transfers to the city only from the other terminal. To get to the other terminal we ended up paying 12 ringgit. Of those 1 was for each person, and 5 per each bike! Unbelievable! And we never got the bike ticket. Meaning that the driver most likely put that extra 10 straight to his pocket. Then from the terminal we payed 10 per person to get to the city. There was no extra charge for the bicycles. This seemed strange until we realized that the driver sold us d tickets. What a joke! Turns out the guy has a full pocket of tickets with other time stamps that he resells to the passengers. There is even another guy who encourages people without tickets to save the walk to the ticket counter and buy tickets from the driver. What a scam!
But we got to the city, and that's all that really mattered at this point. We got off the bus in KL Sentral. It started to rain again so we did not go anywhere, just sat in a place where there was internet so we could get in touch with a girl who said she could host us. Yes, Pedro managed to get a positive response even though he sent the couch request only in the morning. Alina had already agreed to host four other people, but was kind enough to also accept our last minute request. The four other people surfing the same couch were:
One guy from Sweden, Kim, who has been travelling the world for two and half years now.
Then there was a couple from Argentina, Laura and Santiago, they had been travelling for a few months now.
And there was also a guy from Indonesia who was on a two week trip in South East Asia. Unfortunately I do not recall his name.
It was difficult to get to Alina's place because the city is not very bicycle friendly. As we had no other choice, we got on the highway, at one point I got myself into a very dangerous situation. The car did not see me even though Pedro was riding in front and indicating that we're switching lanes. The car approached with a high speed and the driver was clearly not paying enough attention. I heard tires squeal and now I just wanted to get off the road ASAP!
After a while we finally got to our host's home, and I was glad to put the bike to the side for now. It first looked like nobody was home, but soon Alina appeared in the window and came down to let us in the house. We sat down for a quick chat, but soon it was time to take a shower. Around that time Laura and Santiago also arrived to Alina's place, and minutes after them Kim came. While I was in the shower, Yan, a friend of our host had also came. It took some while for everyone to shower. But once everyone was ready Alina and her friend Yan drove us all out for dinner. We stopped in a place where there were many vendors selling local dishes. So Yan went to order food from many vendors and then we all tried the different dishes. Some were really spicy, but for me all seemed very tasty. With bellies full it was time to drive back to Alina's place because the Indonesian guy was waiting already by the door. As we were in a car with Yan, she took her time to drive back and was super nice to stop by the Petronas towers so we could get a close-up glimpse of the tallest twin towers in the world. Once we also were back, we all stayed up for a long chat. We had agreed to go to the Batu caves with the Argentinian couple the next day.
It was very late when we all finally headed to sleep. 

It Ain't Always Easy

Sunday 23/11

It was yet another morning. The alarm went off and and unwillingly we had to climb out of the bed. The hotel had some coffee and tea for breakfast. They also had toast, and we were wise enough to buy a nice chocolate-peanut butter spread the day before just so we would not have to have plain toast. After having some food in our systems we were ready to hit the road. When we begun to cycle the sun was already up, but most of the people were still asleep, so the cities streets were quite empty.
For me it was not such a good cycling day, I felt weak. The road was not wide, so some cars when passing were much to close, this made me feel unsafe. The road had some ups and downs, for me this was also a challenge as I'm not too experienced and my knees were beginning to hurt. The scenery was very beautiful but I was feeling too down to fully enjoy it. Meanwhile Pedro was on a good pace and he stopped often to wait for me. Along the way we passed some forests where monkeys lived. 

They were quite shy, so it was hard to get a good picture of them. However, we had a good look. Some of the monkeys had little ones in their arms. We kept cycling until about 11 o'clock when we turned off the main road to some hotel where we thought to have dinner. But they did not have a kitchen, however, we asked if we could cycle down to their beach area just to have a peak at the sea, the woman we were talking to did not mind at all. We cycled u a bit up and down passed the neat houses they had with rooms, at the edge where the sea was they even had a pool where people where busy enjoying the hot weather. One thing to note that local, Muslim people swim with their clothes on. For me this was strange because naturally I find that swimming with as little clothes as possible is more comfortable and less of a hassle than dealing with wet clothes. But religion is religion, and what ever makes them happy was fine with me. We went down to the beach, took some pictures, enjoyed the view but then headed back to the road to keep going. 

A few meters later we saw a sign for another hotel, we followed the sign deep in thorough the forest till we reached the place. The parking lot was full of cars, so this must be a really good place, I thought. We got there and asked if they had anything to eat, and they said that in an hours time they will have some lunch. So we set our bikes to the side and went for a walk along the beach. Once we reached some rocks we stopped and sat down in the sand for some rest. The view was nice and no people where around, so we sat there for more than an hour. Later on we went back to have lunch. We sat down and they bought us two plates of chicken rice, the most common dish in the entire South East Asia, I believe. Don't think I've mentioned this before, but they serve food with fork and spoon, very, very rarely will they have knives. And if you ask for one, there is a good chance they will not understand what you're asking for. But it's not so hard to get used to that, as a big majority of the dishes don't really require a knife. The food was nice, after the meal we just sat there enjoying the view to the sea. It was very peaceful. 

We were then joined by another cycler. He asked if he could join us, and of course we did not mind. Jeff is from England, he is also cycling a lot, he has a job that he can manage working for half a year roughly and the other half he spends travelling. He said that now he is on a five month journey. He has travelled a lot, so it was nice to heat about his experiences and tips and suggestions for our future trips. We chatted for quite some time. Jeff said that he would find a place to stay somewhere nearby, but we had decided to get to Port Dickson that day. So we all begun cycling, but parted soon after we reached the main road.
The sky had gotten very cloudy, and soon before we reached the city it started to rain a bit. Later on we actually met Jeff again, he said that in the area he could not find a decent priced place, so he had cycled to Port Dickson as well. It started raining more and more, we stopped at McDonalds got some food and hoped to get online and look for a place to stay. But their WiFi was down, so now we had to stay there and wait for the rain to pass. In a matter of minutes it got dark, but the rain did not stop.
After spending quite some time in the overly air conditioned cold "restaurant" the rain calmed down and we got out of the place in search for a WiFi or accommodation. We got internet and managed to book a nice looking place not far from where we were. The hotel had a pool, it was closed but the receptionist did not mind us using it for some minutes. So after getting our things to the room and having a nice shower we went to the pool for a swim. But then, of course, it was time to get to sleep and get some good rest. The following day we were going to arrive to Kuala Lumpur.

Getting to Malacca

Thursday 20/11

As we had not cycled much the previous day only about 37km, today we had to get going and get some kilometers done.
We ready to leave Pulai at around 8 in the morning. The sun was long up and we had a quick breakfast at the hotel. Pedro, as usual, navigated us to the right roads.
We spent the day cycling until we stopped for a rest in a park. Pedro hanged one hammock up in a tree. While I slept on a bench in a a wooden shelter near by. While we were resting some schoolboys stopped on their scooters and popped some petards of some sort. 

Later on we stopped for dinner, we had some rice with chicken. After we continued to cycle until we found a nice looking Home-stay, we knocked on the doors and rang our bells, but it seemed like nobody was home. So we sat down to wait hoping that who ever run the place would show up soon. While we waited, the sun set, and from a nearby mosque we heard people praying. Some while later we finally saw some people there, seemed like a son and his mother. We arranged a decent price of 45 ringgit. As we settled into the room it started to really rain outside, we were truly glad that we had a roof over our heads at this time.

Friday 21/11

Morning came sooner than expected, we woke up not very early, the sun was already up! Yesterday we had cycled close to 90 km, and today we were up for another decent day of cycling. For breakfast we stopped at one of the only places that was open at an early hour. We had a Indian dish served with curry sauce. Pedro loved the dish, and it was very nice, so we both asked for another one. This time for the brake we stopped in a coconut plantation and hanged the hammocks on some trees we found there.

It was a good place far away from the road, so we had a quite time while relaxing. Once we continued cycling two cyclists passed us! At first they did not stop, they flew passed us at a very impressive speed. Later on we met them as they had stopped for a quick stop. We found out that the two girls were from the UK. One of them, Katherine, is cycling all the way from Australia to UK. And the other girl is a friend of hers who joined her on cycling adventures for the distance from Singapore to Bangkok.
After getting to know each other it was time to keep rolling. We stopped for the day in a city called Muar. We went about looking for a guesthouse that was not expensive, and meanwhile we saw that the two British girls were also in the same town. They stopped at a hotel, and so did we. We got a double room for 45 ringgit. 

This was a special cyclist discount. After settling in the room and having a shower we went our for some well deserved dinner. The city was full with life and open market. We sat in a nice looking place and the lady working there helped us with understanding the menu. The food was good!!! :D
Once we got back to the hotel we went straight to sleep!

Saturday 22/11

We got up at around seven, got ready, but on our way down to our bikes we stopped on the second floor where the hotel had it's WiFi area. So you can imagine that there we wasted a lot of time. While we were sitting there, the two girls passed us as they were going downstairs. We greeted them, and wished a good ride! When online things were finally somewhat done it was again late to begin a cycling day.

Yesterday we had cycled about 84 km, so we had not far to go to get to Malacca, only roughly 50 km. We got to the city in a good time cycling all the 50 in one stretch. We found our hotel that Pedro had booked online and checked in. The place was cosy. Near the reception there was a world map with pins in many countries. As there was no pin placed in Latvia, later on I put one in there. So I was their first guest from Latvia. We were feeling very lazy so we took a lot of time doing nothing but resting! The hot midday passed and we got our lazy asses out to the city. We agreed to meet up with Vaidas, the guy who surfed the same guys couch as us back in Dubai! We went to the hostel where he said we would find him, but as he was taking a nap, we decided to drop by again later. As we wondered the streets of the city, it started to rain. It was refreshing at first, so we kept walking about. We were in China-town area, and there was a market of some sort with people selling all sorts of things, including street food. We were forced to stop under one of the shelters because the rain grew in power, and now it was truly pouring!

It was most likely the wildest rain the two of us had seen. The sky turned from white to completely black in a matter of minutes. The thunder roared so loudly you'd think it was a war field, and the lightning was so bright it light up the entire sky when it struck. The water came like a river that had lost its direction. It was truly wild rainfall for at least an hour. The street vendors tried their best to save their things, but much of that was too late. Once the rain had finally calmed down a bit, we decided to keep moving. We went again to Vaidas hostel where he was playing chess with some local man. It was great meeting him! After he won his game he took us to a very cheap Indian restaurant where we ate roti. Roti are pancakes made from dough ball that is stretched out and folded and cooked on big pan surfaces that they have. If you take one that has something inside, it will be placed there after the stretching and before the folding. That evening we fell in love with roti, especially roti pisan (roti with banana)! After dinner Vaidas headed back to his hostel where he had to entertain some guests. Meanwhile we walked about the nice city. The cities streets were full of people, probably because it was a Saturday and that week some festival was taking place there. We did not manager to catch anything from the festival, but nevertheless we had a lovely walk around. While walking along the river, we saw a street musician who was playing his guitar and next to him he had a dancing donkey toy. We chatted to the man a bit, and then I even danced alongside the donkey a bit while bystanders had a good laugh.
Vaidas had invited us to join him at the hostel, it sounded like a nice idea, but as we decided not to stay another day in the city, it was time to head back to our place and get some good rest.

Another Border

Wednesday 19/11

We woke up later than planned. Sharon had left already while the four of us where still asleep. Jose and David also left before us, they planned to start the day with a visit to the botanical garden. We took the liberty to sleep in until about noon. Gosh we had missed some good sleep. But now we had at least rested well and we were ready to face the border. It was not very far until we reached the bridge. We rode our bicycles on the line that was for motorcycles. On Singapore's side they stamped our passports for leaving the country. On the other side we had no problems, the lady border officer stamped our passports allowing us to stay in the country for 90 days. Great!
With that done we were ready to cycle closer to the west coast as that is where the weather should be better. In Singapore we were told that on the east side of Malaysia there are monsoons at the moment, so we set to leave that cost for the next time we visit the country.
We did not cycle very much as it was relatively late and we both were tired. It was hard to find the right way, so we settled in a guesthouse soon after the border. As Malaysia is rapidly developing at the moment, more people spoke English than in Cambodia. Here it was not hard to find people who knew English, which made travelling slightly easier.