Malaysia   (For travel and country facts: Malaysia)

MURRAY'S DIARY for the complete story.

MALAYSIA

Cycling over the Northern plains

15/01/2004 Just after the crossing, a small road leads us up into our first Malaysian mountains. The road is steep and takes us to a small mountain ridge that provides us a warm welcome to Malaysia and a nice view over the plains of the North. At the top we settle ourselves in a wooden 'bus stop', open at all sides, and try to take a nap. It’s too hot to cycle anyway; we better wait till four o'clock. Just when we close our eyes another group of gibbons start yelling. It's fascinating, although we can't spot any. We continue cycling in the afternoon. Again on the emergency brake, I follow Raymond’s eyes and see what he is looking at. A small monkey of about an under arm length, black haired with white hair around the eyes which make them look bigger. Its holding on to a thin tree like a Koala beer and it looks at us from as close as 5 meters. Apparently he didn't hear us approaching nor could he smell us since the wind is blowing against us, though after our climb I wouldn't be surprised if our smell would reach him with the wind against. We pull our shoes from the pedals, which makes a metal 'click'. We regret this time that we use SPD shoes, the monkey hears us and makes a big jump while the tree snaps by his weight. He makes a jump into a higher tree further away where we can't see him anymore.

We enter the country via Kaki Bukit and spend our first night in Kangar, a town where the centre is dominated by the ethnic Chinese (like a lot of Malay towns). It's a typical Chinese guesthouse where hot water is served in a thermos can and most of the time clean rooms. The owner offers us mandarins due to the upcoming New Year; it’s a custom for Chinese to give away mandarins around Chinese (Mandarin) New Year. The population of Malaysia exists mainly out of three groups, the Malay, Chinese and for smaller portion Indies. Malaysia was an English colony till the late fifties. The main religion is Muslim, but Buddhist for the Chinese and Hindu for the Indies. The northern area (like Thai Southern area) is mainly conservative Muslim, what we notice mainly outside of the villages. The eastern side of the Peninsular has some difficulties from rebels coming from Malaysia going into Thailand and placing bombs at police or military stations (nothing for us to be worried about).

Kangar to Georgetown

The monsoon at the east coast of Malaysia forces us to cycle the west coast. We still remember rainy China and don’t want to make that a rehearsal for Malaysia. The northwestern part of Malaysia is funny enough just like The Netherlands. Can't help thinking 'same, same, but different'. Southern France would make a nice comparison as well. Grainfield’s that are divided by small canals. High power electricity lines reaching until the horizon. The road is flat and smoothly asphalted. Very peaceful scenery that will never get boring (except in your own country maybe). Two roads that are separated by a canal. One road ment for continuing traffic while the other one is a smaller country road and is mainly used by tractors. Along this road are houses and farms and the road is every kilometre connected by a small bridge with the main road. One big difference, here we have palm trees. We choose for the country road and leave the traffic on the main road.

Raymond opens the Malay phrasebook and sticks it in the map holder. So we cycle on.  'Satu, dua, tiga, empat....', our habit of at least trying to teach ourselves to count in the local language. We stop for today and order a rice dish 'Nasi goreng ayam', that a simple one. When we are finished I ask in Malay 'May I have the bill please?', big mistake. In countries like this you don't get a bill and the waiter simple says 'no'. I return to our table where two local Guinness beer salesmen join us. Malaysia is mostly Muslim and so this country doesn’t brew it's own beer. Guinness, Tiger and Singha beer are all imports. One of the salesmen encourages me, "Try again and ask "How much?"'. This time the waiter immediately tells me the amount that I have to pay.

It is difficult to find a good road map in this area, but a large supermarket brings the solution. Finally we can make a plan for Malaysia. First we go to Georgetown, to apply for an Indonesian visa at the consulate. Indonesia changes its visa regulations from the 1st of February. So we have to organise our visa before that date. Then we will head for the centre of the peninsular and visit the tea estates, the mountainous area and head southwards to Singapore. This will take about three and half weeks, so we will reach Indonesia around the 8th of February.

After Alor Setar we take road no. 1 to Georgetown, the last English port, and reach it on Saturday. A colonial city on an island connected to the mainland by a car ferry (and a recently opened toll bridge). Here we are expecting to stay a couple of days waiting for our visa.

Changed visa regulations for Indonesia

The announcement had been made a couple of months ago. Indonesia is changing its visa regulations. It was/is very difficult to get up to date information about the new rules and when they will be applied. It seems so far that citizens from most European countries will need to apply for a visa before approaching the border; Holland is not on the list of  'visa on arrival' countries. What is more important for us at the moment is to find out if it is true that an application can take up to 10 days (like at the moment in The Netherlands) and if the visa will only be valid for 30 days without the possibility of extending (so we have to go later to Indonesia because we fly back on the 15th of March and have to race through the country). Monday morning we visit the Indonesian consulate in Georgetown, Pinang Island. The reply of the consulate official is simple "We can not help you, we have not yet received a formal instruction from the embassy in Kuala Lumpur. As residents of The Netherlands you can go to Indonesia without visa at the moment for the duration of 60 days". That's fine if we wanted to go today, or before the first of February. This changes our plans drastically. We don't want to take the risk of having too little time to reach our final destination, without seeing the things we want to see on Java. We don't want to go to the embassy in Kuala Lumpur and try our luck there and probably have to wait for our passports (while it is Chinese New year... long weekend). So we choose the obvious, a speedy ride through the rest of Malaysia, cross the Indonesian waters before the new visa regulations apply and are irritated about the things we will miss.

Early the next morning we saddle up, and head for the ferry that will take us across to Butterworth where the train station is located and expect to take the first train to Kuala Lumpur. Unfortunately the first (and only) train leaves is the night train that leaves at 21:30 and arrives at 06:45. We go into the centre and find a small bakery for a long breakfast and spend the rest of the rainy day in an internet cafe. At 20:00 we are back at the train station. We take our bicycles to the stationmaster who directs us to the cargo area. The duty manager explains us that we cannot pick the bicycles up at 'Kuala Lumpur central' (where the passengers get off) but at 'Kuala Lumpur' the old train station. The train is an hour late but at least the cargo van is connected and we quickly jump into our clean beds for a good night rest (with ear plugs).

Kuala Lumpur to Singapore

At arrival in KL Central station we take a local train for one station to 'Kuala Lumpur' to pick up our bicycles. The cargo master did not want to hand over our bicycles at the platform, so we wait till the cargo van is pulled to this station. After an hour hanging around and having a 'local' breakfast existing of curry with rice and coffee, we pick up our bicycles and head for Chinatown. Everything is closed due to the holidays and we find a guesthouse in the middle of Chinatown at the 6th floor of a building. Luckily our bicycles fit into the elevator so we don't have to carry them up. Of course the owner offers us some mandarins. After a quick tour through a closed Chinatown and a visit to the highest building(s) in the world (at this moment) the Petronas twin towers we are ready to leave tomorrow.

N.B. The Petronas towers (452m) were a bit smaller than the NY twin towers (541m), but in 2004 the Shanghai World Financial Centre (460m), the Taipei 101 tower (508m) are ready and in 2008 the Centre of India Tower (677m) (speculative).

19/01/2004 Unlike the Chinese cities, KL's industry doesn't reach further than 30km from the city centre. But unlike Bangkok's heavy traffic, this city centre (with less traffic) is more difficult to escape from even on a holiday like today. If only we had bought a good map of the city to get out, most roads are one-way and look like a bobsled slope: left and right are fenced by half a meter high brick walls or fences and impossible to cross with bicycles to go in the other direction if you need to.

On route we find out that it’s difficult to find a guesthouse instead of a holiday resort that are packed along the coast. At Port Dickson we take a lunch and look at our map. There must be a sleeping place in the next couple of towns now we are out of the holiday-area. After 120km, and no luck so far, we decide to look out for alternative sleeping places (forest or rice field huts). We even consider continuing all the way to Malacca, which lies at 184km. Luckily after 155km we come into a town where several people direct us to the beach. There seem to be various bungalows at the beach, and after our longest day (164km!!) we reach the first. The owner explains that due to New Year everything along the coast is full and we ask for a corner of his carport where we can lay down our air mattresses with our mosquito net above. And so we spend Chinese New Year night only 10 meters from the beach.

While we start our 40km to Malacca, we notice a lot of tents on the beach. Maybe we shouldn't have sent ours home? Malacca is an old Portuguese/Dutch/English harbour town. The 'Stadhuys' still remembers of the Dutch period and is now a museum about the three periods. Chinatown of Malacca is not so interesting during this time and we laugh at the thought of the Tiger beer commercial that plays here in the cinemas (A man from a western bank calls the Chinese stock exchange, but the phone isn't answered. Some other western men, knocking hopeless on the closed glass doors of the Singaporean chamber of Commerce. Slogan "Now its our time!")

Singapore a 'fine' city

26/01/2004 "Stop!" shouts Raymond, and we both make another emergency stop. It seems that Raymond's gear cable is broken after 8000km. We sit ourselves next to the road and Raymond fixes it in 30 minutes. In the mean while an old man on a motorcycle stops and makes a conversation. He tells us that his son studies in Europe and that he has just visited him. He drives off, and after 5 minutes he returns with two coconuts from his own palm tree. Raymond washes his hands and drinks thirsty the quarter litre coconut milk that's inside, not my favourite. Finally the man cuts the coconut, we scrape out the inside and climb on our aluminium horses again.

In three days we reach Singapore and cross the border at 'The Second Link' the second bridge that connects Singapore to the mainland. 'The Second Link' is a highway border crossing; the other crossing lies at Johor Bahru, 80km more to the east and is a 'normal road' crossing. The last kilometres in Malaysia we cycle over an almost empty highway and the Singaporean border officials look quite surprised when we ride in front of their counter. At the moment we want to fill in the arrival form a police officer takes us aside. She points out that we cannot continue this road into Singapore (which is only an island of 30 by 40km), but her officer is wiser and lets us off the hook if we take the first exit at the bottom of the hill. He tells us that it is a 'criminal offence' to cycle on a highway in Singapore (probably in Malaysia as well). This is how Singapore gets its nickname 'fine city' (a fine of S$500, - for throwing chewing gum or cigarette buts on the street). We head down the slope and turn off as instructed. For the third time today it starts raining and we are starting to get tired. We also find out it is very difficult to stay off a highway in the outskirts of Singapore (especially if you don't have a proper map). It looks like it is another 20km to the east side of the centre and we wait for an half an hour in a bus stop before we try to find the small roads to the centre. We just keep on following the sky train and in another one and half-hour we reach Ali's nest guesthouse. Raymond was here in 1998, but its much more quiet now (due to SARS?). In the evening it seems that Ali (who speaks Dutch) is running a second business that has more to do with short staying guests than guests that stay overnight.

From Singapore we want to take the ferry to Bintan (Indonesia) and from Bintan to boat (http://www.pelni.co.id) to Jakarta. The boat leaves at the 28th but takes 48hours instead of the normal 24hours, while the next boat (24hours) leaves at the 2nd of February. We don't want to spend 4 days at an industrial island like Bintan so we decide to fly with Kuwait airlines to Jakarta which costs the same as taking the boat ($75,-). Our visit to Singapore is short because the flight for the 29th till the 3rd are full so we fly at the 28th to Jakarta. On the other hand, it saves us a lot of money on guesthouses and beer because Singapore is even more expensive than Malaysia.