Road to Recovery

It felt weird to be in a more aggressive position (as compared to city bikes). After three weeks overseas, I discovered my untouched bike had settled in so much that the steering had jammed up. When I serviced it yesterday, the steerer tube and headset appeared normal and steering visibly improved when I reassembled the parts. Still, I could not wait to take the bike out today.

Familiarity set in as I clicked my SPDs into place. Yet, all did not seem too well. As I gained speed along the Sembawang Circuit and reached my usual cadence, I realised I had not fully recovered. I was sniffing as my heart rate increased and breathing became heavier. A hybrid was tagging close as I headed for Sembawang Park and I couldn't quite shake him off.

I increased my cadence again when I hit Simpang Kiri and maintained it for a couple of laps before easing off on the final approach. It was obvious the flu had taken a toll on my form but I was happy to cycle again.

I will be updating the entries on my backpacking trip as the days come and the thoughts flow in. So far, I am done with the first 6 days, so I still have 12 entries to write =)

Total distance: 14.3km
Money spent: $0
Participants: LSH

23 July 2009 (Day 18): KL - JB - Home!

I woke up feeling sick. The air-con was simply too cold. We had breakfast at my "favourite" Chinese coffeee shop before heading back to our rooms to pack our stuff.

We returned to the Central Market late morning for Lim Hwee to purchase his glass chess set. Lunch was at Chinatown and we hung around for awhile before heading to Hentian Puduraya. Today, I just felt like going home. Just as well, it was the last day of the trip.

Starmart Ekspres was a very slow bus. We had the privilege of great seats with massage functions though. It took forever to get to Johor and on the outskirts, we were informed that our bus was going to the Second Link. Passengers going to Larkin or Woodlands had to get off and get on an "identical" bus behind.

The driver was nice enough to drive us to the Malaysian customs although our tickets were for JB. In fact, we even got discounts on our tickets. I was glad to cross immigration. We were home! After 18 days and countless adventures, I was falling sick but elated to be home.

We had dinner at Woodlands before parting ways. I wondered if the four of us would have the opportunity to go overseas together again. It had been a great experience - something I would gladly and surely choose over school orientation.

This expedition has also enlightened me on the situation faced by our poorer neighbours. We as Singaporeans are indeed lucky to have more than our necessities. We live in comfort - begging for food to survive is probably the furthest thing on our mind. Getting a diploma or degree is not a problem financially to most of our younger generation, also thanks to generous education subsidies from our government. Sadly, most children in Cambodia or Vietnam do not have such a privilege and it's fortunate if they can even complete secondary school.

I read, with much sadness, news of four Vietnamese villagers including an entire family killed when they tried to remove gunpowder from an old bomb left over from the Vietnam War. The bomb had exploded. People may ask with incredulity why these poor people needed the gunpowder. The answer - to dig a well. I hope we try to understand the situation of these lesser privileged people, especially when we read the news. It is the least we can do. We should never take for granted the peace and stability in Singapore.

Total expenses over 18 days: S$535
Participants: LSH, Zi Kai, Jing Kai, Lim Hwee

22 July 2009 (Day 17): Gangsterism in KL

Surprisingly, Lim Hwee and I managed to catch sleep on the bus. Zi Kai and Jing Kai were kept awake by the loud roar of the bus engine and they barely caught any rest. I knew the bus was going incredibly fast. The driver was speeding. When the bus roared off the Lebuhraya Utara Selatan into KL, I could feel the pressure on the windows and I estimated we were going as fast as 160km/h. We passed cars in a blink of an eye and the rear brakes made an annoying screech every time the driver applied pressure.

We arrived in KL at around 4am. Breakfast was at the usual prata shop and closer to the earthly hour, we started combing Chinatown for accommodation. Wheeler's Lodge was full hence we had to go for slightly more expensive hotels. In the end, we stayed at Hotel Excel Inn (the same hotel Bro and I had stayed during our KL cycling expedition last year). Facilities were decent, there was even a water cooler, just that the water tended to turn milky.

We caught a few hours of rest before heading out for some shopping. We visited Central Market before heading back to the McDonald's at Chinatown for lunch. Along Jalan Tun HS Lee, we stumbled on a wholesale shop retailing snacks and we took the opportunity to buy some home. McDonald's was great (and very value for money too compared to Singapore prices), especially since we had been away from "civilisation" for some time.

In the afternoon, we checked out shopping malls in the Bukit Bintang area, visited the Giant hypermarket at Sungei Wang Plaza, then headed to Berjaya Times Square for dinner. That was when we encountered our second misadventure.

We talked to a waiter outside a restaurant and decided that the menu was not for us. We wanted to check out other places. As I stepped back to join the other, I bumped into this young man who looked rather aggressive but I just muttered an apology and left.

A couple of minutes later, somehow Lim Hwee got stopped by this Chinese man who wanted to know where we were from. He said he was checking something. Immediately, I said we were Johoreans. The young man whom I had bumped into earlier joined us and I noticed a couple of others lurking around. The young man appeared to be the leader. They started saying they wanted to make things clear. Apparently, they had beaten someone earlier in the day by mistake and they wanted to find the correct person. I was getting irritated especially when they wanted us to follow them to a restaurant to make things clear.

Anyway, we complied. In the restaurant, we occupied a wall seat and they pulled a chair over for the leader. Fortunately, we did not make the tactical mistake of occupying the wall seat two on each side. If we had done that, they could have boxed us in and we would be on losing ground. The questioning started and we basically called a bluff. Haha! I loved Zi Kai's performance in smoking them out. We led them to believe that we were from Skudai and grew up together in Skudai. We were also under-performers in school and were unemployed. =P

I couldn't help but feel very irritated and threatened when they made their threats. Someone had beaten their boss' son and stolen a briefcase full of counterfeit credit cards. They were not going to let the bugger off. At that moment, I was pondering whether to take the young leader out but since they had not touched us yet, it would be unwise for us to commit. I could feel people in the restaurant watching us. They were probably too afraid to do anything anyway.

It was great that the misunderstanding was cleared and we got away without getting into an altercation of any sort. We celebrated Jing Kai's birthday at Kenny Rogers' and surprised him with a chocolate fudge cake. I hope he had a very memorable birthday!

Total expenses over 18 days: S$535
Participants: LSH, Zi Kai, Jing Kai, Lim Hwee

21 July 2009 (Day 16): Cameron Highlands - Ipoh - KL

Zi Kai finally agreed to join me for a morning run. From Brinchang, we ran to Tanah Rata (6km), tried finding the Robinson waterfall by climbing a steep road (but failed), explored Tanah Rata, then headed back to Brinchang. The run was a total 12km, the longest I have ever done on a mountain of altitude around 1500m.

While we encountered a lot of climbs and down slopes along the way, it felt good to run in cool (almost cold) weather. I really enjoyed the experience and was also quite impressed to see both foreigners and locals running/walking. A local had told us the day before that the highlanders frequented the road up Gunung Brinchang for their daily evening jogs.

At Tanah Rata, we found the bus station and realised there were a few bus companies providing transport to Ipoh and other destinations. The tickets were also priced at lower rates (at the bus station), compared to the grocery shop we had purchased them from in Brinchang (for the sake of convenience). We also realised the bus had dropped us off at a parking area a couple of hundred metres away and in the dark of the night, we had not realised we passed the bus station. We visited the tourist information centre but there was no one in so we started our run back.

We realised the prawn noodles shop was closed so we explored the market at Brinchang. I found my breakfast there - bread and kueh and very good prices. Zi Kai and I went back to collect our valuables and we ran into the other two who had awakened and got sick of waiting for us. We had breakfast at the market; I had ang gu kueh, pizza bread and the biggest packet of soya bean drink in my life! I was simply bloated. Zi Kai ate a lot, as usual, and he was going crazy over cherry tomatoes! He just couldn't stop eating.

We spent the rest of the morning slacking in our rooms, packing up, slacking at the lobby after check-out, looking for lunch (each of us eating at different places), before slacking at the bus stop while awaiting our bus. Finally, we saw a bus approach the Shell petrol kiosk across the road and we ran over. To our disappointment, it was not the Kinta Omnibus. We waited a good half hour before the bus came.

I believe it was the same bus as the one we took up. The distinctive smell of exhaust in the bus, the incredible vibration as it ran over potholes and the "high Gs" of each turn caused us headaches as we tried to sleep. Thankfully, the bus pulled up at Medan Gopeng and we got off.

Medan Gopeng was just like Puduraya. Almost every company had buses going to KL and they were all awaiting their slice of the cake. In the end, we chose Ekspres Kesatuan because their 1am timing fitted us. We wanted to save a night's accommodation.

We caught a city bus to Pusat Bandaraya, which was a mistake because the town was dead at night. We managed to find a Indian-Muslim restaurant where we had dinner, then caught a bus back to Medan Gopeng where it was much more lively with restaurants and hawker centres. McDonald's and KFC beckoned us from a distance. We were definitely attracted. An apple pie each granted us a few hours' stay at McDonald's =P and we fully utilised their toilets!

Close to 12.15am, we stumbled back to the express bus terminal where we had to wait for the bus to arrive.

Total expenses over 18 days: S$535
Participants: LSH, Zi Kai, Jing Kai, Lim Hwee

20 July 2009 (Day 15): Trekking Gunung Brinchang, 2031m

We started our trek up the 2031m Gunung Brinchang around 8.30am. The trail head was just beside the army quarters, alongside of the road leading away from town. The weather was cool and it really felt like Mount Biang (Kanachanaburi, Thailand).

It took a couple of hours for us to cover the 3km jungle trek to the top and while going was not that easy at certain sections, I thought it was simpler and in fact more comfortable than our Chiling Waterfall adventure. Perhaps it was the weather that made the difference! We were more wary of hornets than anything else as we had been warned it was the bee season. Thus we were not at all surprised that there was no one else on the trail that day.

Last night, after being home safely for more than a week, I came across an article on the jungle trails on Cameron Highlands! Apparently, the Gunung Brinchang trail is one of the toughest, has a history of hikers getting lost and is rarely used. Another piece of information intrigued me. Tigers and the tracks left behind by these predators have been spotted on Cameron Highlands in the past, and they are still being spotted today. That was a wonderful piece of information to learn about after our trek (the chance of encountering one is pretty low anyway).

The scenery from Gunung Brinchang was breathtaking. The summit was occupied by transmitter stations and satellites but there was a watchtower which visitors could access. That was the highest point on Cameron Highlands. We could see the Boh Tea plantation and surrounding towns. Incredibly beautiful.

We decided to take the road back to Brinchang which was 12km away. Lim Hwee wanted to scale Gunung Irau and we went into the trail to have a look but we soon realised that at the speed we were progressing, we were not going to make it back to Brinchang by nightfall. Fallen trees, thick mud and the steep ridge lines impeded our movement and our progress was agonizingly slow. In the end, we had to talk Lim Hwee out of it and we started route march back to town.

Alon the way, we passed a strawberry and animal farm where the guys enjoyed strawberry ice-cream. Lim Hwee found pleasure in making fun of the goats. The sight of the tea plantation and the incredible gradient on which the crops were growing amazed us. Plantation workers were busy harvesting tea leaves and we immediately comprehended the immense task they undertook - cutting tea leaves while standing on very steep slopes!

The distance back to town took hours to cover by foot and when we got down to the "foot", we were still 4km away from Brinchang. We visited the bees' farm, bought strawberries and tomatoes at a roadside "pasar"; and continued our way home. Of course, we stopped along several interesting shops on the way and I tasted kiwi ice-cream. =P

We were drained when we got back to our room. It was still a couple of hours from dinner, hence we just slacked about. Dinner was steamboat and it was enjoyable! The guys were having lots of fun, and we kept ordering vegetables because they were free-flow!

Total expenses over 18 days: S$535
Participants: LSH, Zi Kai, Jing Kai, Lim Hwee

19 July 2009 (Day 14): Hat Yai - Ipoh - Cameron Highlands

Surprisingly, I caught sufficient rest on the bus to Hat Yai. We pulled into town in the morning and our first task was to secure tickets for our trip to Ipoh. From the posters we saw advertising rather interesting cabaret performances, we could easily deduce what Hat Yai was infamous for (if we had not known it had a reputation for sleaziness in the first place).

Anyway, we were not very interested to hang around any longer than necessary and quickly checked out the stores selling express bus tickets to Malaysia. Surprisingly, different stores quoted us different rates (quite extreme) and made baseless claims about their competitors. In the end, we decided to purchase the cheapest tickets (370baht for SE Super) we could find and proceeded to have breakfast. We realised we had not enough money to pay for breakfast - we were slightly short - but the aunties were kind enough to accept whatever we had. It was not the first time in the trip that we were "broke"!

Someone shouted at us and we realised our "bus" had arrived. We were ushered onto a tuk-tuk that would supposedly take us to our bus. We were a little wary but there was nothing much we could do at the moment. We took a spin around town. It seemed that Hat Yai was very much a quiet place, perhaps only coming to life at night.

We stopped at a parked Eltabina Ekspres coach in front of a tour agency. Surprise, surprise. We were rather glad that it was Eltabina and not SE Super. The person in-charge, a pleasant Chinese lady, checked our tickets and invited us to settle down and wait for the bus which was only due to leave 45min later. She was fluent in Mandarin, Bahasa Melayu and Thai. Impressive.

The bus didn't fail to impress too. After spending days on coaches with small and uncomfortable seats, Eltabina Ekspres seemed overly luxurious. While it was not the fastest on the road, the quiet hum of the engine and steadiness of its air suspension system made the ride a dream. The driver took the down slopes cautiously and other coaches always pulled ahead but our coach closed in on the steep mountain passes. I reckoned our bus had a lot of horsepower and could attain much higher speeds comparatively but the driver was not pushing it.

We reached Ipoh safe and sound. The driver dropped us at a Petronas petrol station on the outskirts but he was kind enough to give us directions to Medanki. We caught a city bus there but Zi Kai left some stuff at the bus stop and only realised when we were on the bus. We agreed to meet at the bus station.

The three of us arrived at Medanki. The Kinta Omnibus Cameron Highlands - Ipoh Ekspres ran four times a day from each location - 8am, 11am, 3pm and 6pm. Jing Kai and I attempted to check out accommodation in Ipoh but we realised we were a little far from the main centre of activity. When Zi Kai arrived, we decided to catch the 6pm bus to Cameron Highlands.

We had dinner first before boarding the bus. It was my first time up Cameron Highlands and the scenery from the mountain range was just stunning as the sun started to set. The bus stopped at several towns along the way and we were a little lost but I was glad we met Ying Xin who gave us pretty useful information. At least we now knew the bus would take us to Tanah Rata and Brinchang was the best bet for accommodation.

We went straight to Tanah Rata and it was great that the Unititi Information Counter assisted us in booking a cheap but very decent accommodation at Jasmine Hotel. The tours they offered were pretty interesting but we had to turn them down as they were a little expensive and we felt we could manage on our own. It was getting late and no one was keen on my proposal of walking 6km to Brinchang thus we took a taxi, or rather, mini-bus courtesy of Unititi straight to our doorstep.

The staff of Jasmine Hotel provided excellent service and were very friendly - we were glad to have found a nice place. We took a walk around town, bought some snacks, scouted the entrance of the trail up Gunung Brinchang and checked out the steamboat restaurants before retiring for the night.

Total expenses over 18 days: S$535
Participants: LSH, Zi Kai, Jing Kai, Lim Hwee

18 July 2009 (Day 13): Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok

We visited the Chatuchak Weekend Market. I must say it's gigantic. Without a map, it will be impossible to track our progress through the market. Not that we covered every inch of the market in a planned, logical manner anyway. We were just walking in random directions, looking out for interesting items for sale.

I was rather intrigued by the stalls selling figures made out of steel wires. The life-sized Alien and Predator were impressive. If only we could get a set home! After spending hours and passing hundreds of stalls, I only bought a watch compass - a cheap replacement for my failing army-issue.

Mid-afternoon, we took a cab back to Khao San (the others had left their stuff with the hotel) before proceeding on to the Bangkok Bus Terminal. We had an early dinner at a roadside stall before boarding the 5.30pm bus for a 14hr journey to Hat Yai.

Total expenses over 18 days: S$535
Participants: LSH, Zi Kai, Jing Kai, Lim Hwee