We have been on the road for 4 days now - update: 5 actually, because I wrote this yesterday but could not post it as I could not get online. Time to talk about these important first impressions (and I'll just throw some recent pictures in).
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| Early morning view over the Sungai Besar (or Big River), with a strange difference in water colours. Probably somehow caused by mud and the currents happening due to the bridge pillars. |
Afirst big thing we noticed and I guess the most important one, is the incredible friendliness of people we meet on the road. Yes, we have been in Malaysia for more than 8 years now and we know people are really nice, but what we find on our way is way beyond our normal experience. Of course there are the enthusiastic hi's and hello's everywhere, and they're great, we love it. But the first and third day, during our lunch, we had a short friendly conversation with one of the other guests in the restaurant. In both these occasions, they paid for our lunch without us realising this! It's really a welcoming gesture, a form and level of hospitality we have never experienced anywhere before! Seriously, it gives you goose bumps when you realise it! It's everywhere: friendly, helpful, joyful, and of course regularly also very surprised looks, or even confused; "what are these mat saleh's doing here, on a bicycle, and why???"
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| Really, these coffee moments, they're great! One for the coffee and two, to rest and cool down! |
To be honest, we are even really surprised about how well things go in traffic. Cars (and also the lorries, yes) slow down behind us, overtake carefully (most of the time) and are friendly as well! Unfortunately we have had to do a few stretches of very busy roads with really lots of lorries, these roads are no fun. They're generally not too bad in terms of safety, as mostly there is a hard shoulder that gives us a safe distance from the traffic. This is where you just pedal and pedal to get it over with as soon as possible, and get back to some smaller and quieter roads. The vast majority of our trip so far has been on small roads with little or no traffic, through beautiful and peaceful kampungs or even unsealed roads through plantations and nature. You really appreciate kampung life when riding through them, it's such a different life, such a different way of living. You can appreciate this more than ever traveling this way, it sticks.
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| Interesting integration of electricity poles in the road construction |
The environment in which we cycle changes a lot. There are parts very green and natural, both plantations and nature, a real pleasure to cycle through, very beautiful. Did I mention the kingfishers already? They're everywhere! Also monkeys, we've seen hundreds and hundreds already! Some other parts were more industrial or commercial areas and these can be really ugly, messy and smelly. The contrasts are sometimes quite striking, you can go from the one extreme into the other in a matter of minutes. We also noticed, that in some stretches it's clean and tidy, while other places can be a big mess with litter everywhere and smelly dumps on the side of the road. I guess it depends to which extend the local authorities control littering, and once they let it go people just continue to dump their rubbish...
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| Suddenly the road stops but the path goes on! Beautiful riding besides mangrove forest, while not forgetting to drink regularly (I think Ellen must have been very thirsty by the look of it)! |
For us, it's been going very well so far. The cycling goes well, we have done almost 300km in the first 4 days - we had in mind to do around 50 to 60 a day initially - and that went "easily" (really). We have been on so many nice roads and beautiful places already, have met so many nice people, it's all going so much easier than we had anticipated. I mean, it's only the beginning of course, let's see what we say in some weeks and months from now, but in any case: we're doing great and we're loving it!