Crossing the customs at 6.45am and starting our journey to Kota Tinggi, we only reached the town by mid-morning. Breakfast came in the form of prata and after this “pit stop”, we rejoined Route 3 and Route 99 thereafter to Kota Lok Heng.
After the intense “warm-up” yesterday, my legs were starting to ache as the going got tougher. I couldn’t believe the sheer distances of the rolling hills we faced. I thought my form had pretty much dipped since I started work after getting back from the Alor Setar expedition.
We didn’t have that high expectations of Lok Heng and indeed, it was a quiet little outfit with pretty friendly people around. Although Lok Heng was still officially in Kota Tinggi, it was way far off the Pusat Bandar and was more of a self-sustainable plantation town. We rested there for awhile before deciding to head back to Kota Tinggi for lunch. By then, it was already close to 12.30pm.
The return route seemed to take forever but the real reason was because we were exhausted. Not surprisingly, I was beginning to falter. When Route 99 rejoined Route 3, we passed a row of makeshift roadside stalls selling food and fruits. I bought some kueh (known in Singapore as peanut pancake) and the Malaysian version proved to be a culinary delight. I had expected to find just peanut filling but the taste of “jagung manis” (corn) with peanut was really sweet. We had 11km to Kota Tinggi and I decided to save the rest of the kueh for the last 45km back to JB. Interestingly, we came across a sign by the road that read “Elephants Crossing” in Bahasa Malaysia. Wild elephants, maybe?
As we were having ba-kut-teh in Kota Tinggi, the weather poured. From then on, it was Cat 1 all the way back to JB and midway through, the storm just got worse! It seems that the weather turns bad every time I am clad in a long sleeve jersey with long pants!
Total distance: 190km
Money spent: RM13
Participants: LSH, Vincent
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