It's back to bike touring again but now I'm all by myself. It's a lot more fun riding with Ginny but I'm glad she's taking it easy at her brother's place in Singapore. If you haven't read it, check out her blog post from Singapore:
https://hanoitosingaporebybike.blogspot.my/2018/05/may-28-singapore.html
So why am I still riding? Hmm, very good question! Those of you who know me well know that I'm stubborn, hard headed and very goal oriented...hence the marathon addiction! So when I set out to do something, I don't easily walk away from it until the job is done. In this case the job was to bike from Hanoi to Singapore so I wanted to complete as much of the ride as possible once Ginny was healthy again.
The past four days I've ridden roughly 400km from Penang to Kuala Lumpur. It certainly hasn't been the nicest riding of the trip but the riding is relatively easy here - the roads are good, it's fairly flat and the drivers are generally respectful of cyclists. Below are a few highlights/lowlights related to bike touring:
Here are a few observations from being in Malaysia the past week:
https://hanoitosingaporebybike.blogspot.my/2018/05/may-28-singapore.html
So why am I still riding? Hmm, very good question! Those of you who know me well know that I'm stubborn, hard headed and very goal oriented...hence the marathon addiction! So when I set out to do something, I don't easily walk away from it until the job is done. In this case the job was to bike from Hanoi to Singapore so I wanted to complete as much of the ride as possible once Ginny was healthy again.
The past four days I've ridden roughly 400km from Penang to Kuala Lumpur. It certainly hasn't been the nicest riding of the trip but the riding is relatively easy here - the roads are good, it's fairly flat and the drivers are generally respectful of cyclists. Below are a few highlights/lowlights related to bike touring:
- Chafing - I can't believe it's taken me this long to write about chafing! You would think that after nearly 80 days of bike touring, I would no longer get chafing, eh? I think it must be all the sweating - I noticed that my cycle jersey was completely drenched 15 minutes into my ride this morning!
- Broken spoke #2 - I broke my second spoke of the trip the other day. Fortunately I was only 5km where I was planning to spend the night and was able to find a bike shop to fix it. I had the spare spoke but they only charged me $2.50 for labor!
- I love the hidden gems that you really only find bike touring. When you're traveling by other modes, you often skip the smaller towns figuring there's not much to see there. You don't always have that option when you're bike touring because you're tired and have to stop for the night. A couple great towns that we've discovered just in the past two weeks have been Prachuapkhirikhan, Thailand and Taiping, Malaysia. I would love to return to both of those towns someday as they both have a great vibe, have plenty going on and aren't overrun with tourists.
- Riding into KL - ugh!!!! We have not ridden into too many large cities on this trip for good reason. We trained into Saigon and skipped Bangkok entirely by taking the bus. Well, I wasn't so lucky today as I spent the last 25km of my ride in some of the worst riding conditions of my life. I rode on a couple motorways where I would have to climb up a flyover and then bomb down the other side with another three lanes of traffic merging on to the motorway. It was not fun and I'm already dreading riding out of here in a couple days.
Here are a few observations from being in Malaysia the past week:
- Super friendly people - many of the other countries have had friendly people too but I would have to say that the Malaysians win the prize for friendliest people. It probably helps that English is so commonly spoken here but I have had so many people come up to me to ask about my trip since being in Malaysia. That didn't happen much in the other countries.
- Heat not as bad as I imagined - maybe I am like the frog in the pot of water that gets boiled but I thought it was going to be hotter and more humid than it is.
- Afternoon thunderstorms - see photo below where I had lunch today during one of these downpours. When it starts raining here, you have to go for cover quick because it comes down in sheets and the streets turn into rivers.
- Good and cheap food - I still prefer Thai food but the food here is more diverse and probably cheaper as well. It seems to be a blend of Indian, Chinese and Malaysian cuisines. A common meal is some rice with some really tasty curries and a drink. I don't know what it is but they're always pushing the drinks here. A good court that Ginny and I ate at in George Town charged you extra if you didn't order a drink!
- Beer is not so cheap anymore! I think they tax it like hell as it's predominantly a Muslim country and they're not supposed to drink, right?
- Lots of mosques with chanting piped through the loud speakers at all hours! The mosques are cool to see but I think I prefer all the buddist temples in Thailand.
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