At the bottom...

At the bottom of the Cameron Highlands I found another world. I kept riding on looking for a place to rest the night, past the dry rock formations and numerous cement and marble quarries. By 4pm I found a half finished double storey house off the main road with no security fence and plenty of green cover. I slept on the second floor thinking it was going to be much drier. It rained that night and as the rain began to bucket down the water seeped over the concrete floor and pooled around the tent. I began feeling wet patches all around and discovered many tiny holes in the bottom. Through the night I shifted my tent to the high ground but eventually I gave up trying to avoid the water and instead slept in the puddle. I woke early with the call to prayer bellowing from the nearby mosque but felt tired after a fretful sleep. I packed up my wet gear as best I could and was on the road by 7am. It didn’t take long to find a roadside cafe selling fresh Roti Cinai – a delicious thin bread made with rice flour and my morning’s iced coffee. I made a deal with myself that I could eat and drink whatever I wanted so long as I found a free place to sleep each night. By this stage I was surviving on about 15 Malaysian Ringit a day (approx $5 AUS), enough for four square meals but nothing more.

From Malaysia

With a full stomach I hit the road taking advantage of the cool morning air. It didn’t take long before I was feeling hungry again and I stopped for two servings of Nasi Lamak (a simple rice dish with a spicy coconut sauce and egg) for second breakfast. After the second breakfast and with a good cloud cover, I decided not to stop until I had cycled 100km. It’s amazing how the thought of a good place to stay can really motivate you to keep cycling.

I stayed outside of a town called Ipoh with a contact I’d met through Warm Showers. David had been cycling around the world in short trips for a long time. He understood what it was like to budget travel and told stories of sleeping in bus shelters in Europe, being looked after by strangers and camping rough by the side of the road most nights. We instantly understood each other and spent days sharing stories together. He maintains a website Cycle Touring Malaysia, where he invites guests to come and stay. It seemed like just about every touring cyclist coming through Malaysia stopped in to visit David as we flicked through his photo albums. Being a generous host, David showed me around town, I went cycling with his family, discovered the local fish markets, and even went ‘hashing’ with his friends while David was out of town.

For the record, hashing has nothing to do with the popular herb. It basically involves running through virgin jungle on course set up by someone earlier. As soon as you find a path they take you off it (into the bush) and you have to find it again. Seemed odd at first, but once I got into it I was enjoying running through the jungle, tripping over vines, slipping up steep climbs and falling down scree slopes on my bum. It keeps the bunch of old men fit and gives them an excuse to drink lots of beer in the car park afterwards. I tried some ‘todi’, a popular light alcoholic beverage made from fermented coconuts. It smelt awful but wasn’t that bad to taste. No worse than the first time I drank a beer.

After leaving David’s place I rode north toward the island of Penang where I was meeting my friend Hannah, who was joining the expedition for its Thailand leg. Hannah and I have been friends for the length of our adult lives. When I started seriously planning the CSX (around the time the website went public) I had little idea of how to raise money for charity. Hannah was living in Thailand at the time and working as a fund raising manager for Greenpeace. I sought her advice on exactly how to raise $100,000 for charity (perhaps I should have consulted her earlier!). After explaining that I was serious we thought that we could meet in Thailand. Two months into the expedition planning, Hannah decided to help take on a more proactive role in becoming the fundraising and PR consultant to the expedition. Fast forward another two months into the expedition after numerous emails back and forth, Hannah decided to join the expedition and Pai Straight Up was born. I was happy to have the company and looking forward to seeing a familiar face once again. As well as being good company she also speaks pretty good Thai.

It was great to see a familiar face again and catch up on events at home. We took each day slowly at first and I spent the day in the low gears pedalling everywhere but going nowhere. Before Hannah joined the expedition I wrote her an email explaining what it might be like. She knew that it was going to be difficult but she assured me that she was up for it. Despite this, Hannah had a rude shock to the expedition as we camped in an abandoned building on the first night and in a mechanic’s workshop the next. Learning to sleep on a concrete floor and getting used to the noise of the traffic was just the beginning, but I assured her that after we cycled 500km each week she’d be able to sleep anywhere.

We rode north through Alor Setar, to the port where we could get a boat to Langkawi Island. Langkawi is off the coast of northern Malaysia and from here we could enter Thailand, through Satun province. When we arrived we tried to find a quiet part of the island where we could rest up a few days. We’d been on the road for a week and I was cautious not to push it too hard. When I walked into the Tourist Information Office seeking information, a lady there asked me to sign a guest book. As I wrote away, the last piece of information to write down was the date. Being on the road for weeks at a time I often lose track of the day of the week and have a tendency to be very forgetful of the date as well. I knew it was mid November but had no idea of the day or date. When I began to write I soon realised that it was in fact my birthday! “Shit”, I thought, “It’s MY BIRTHDAY.” I came outside saying “Han!, Han! It’s my birthday!” and we both cracked up as neither of us had remembered. I was so chuffed that it was my birthday, and went around all day with a big smile on my face letting everyone know. One lovely guy gave me a free chocolate shake, which really made my day.

From Malaysia

We found ourselves staying with a contact Hannah found through Couch Surfing. We couldn’t believe our luck when the host invited us first to a lavish 50th Birthday party at a bar owned by one of his friends and then at another friends house who put on the ‘best BBQ outside of Australia’. We had tender beef steaks, prawns, garlic lobster, lamb cutlets, all kinds of salads, and buttery garlic scallops for desert. My eyes nearly fell out of my head. I hadn’t eaten this well since finding myself as a guest in the Whitsunday Islands. It felt like a fitting way to leave Malaysia, a country that I found increasingly interesting the more time that I spent there.