It's hard to believe that it has been more than a year since our last real bike tour, in
Cambodia and
Vietnam, at the end of 2018. Since then, we've only done a short trip: 2 days, from
KL to Jeram and back. Other than that, our bicycles had been collecting dust for a long time. So, we're really glad to be on the road again, this time we're riding from Kuala Lumpur to Langkawi. In fact, we've
done that before, in 2016 at the beginning of our long journey, although this time we'll be taking a slightly different route - stay tuned for that!
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| Minutes after leaving home, we took shelter as it started to pour down. It did not stop until 4pm! |
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| Our first day destination was the location of the KLH3 run |
Our initial plan for the first months of this year was to go back to Sydney as I had a project going on there. Too complicated and boring to explain, but this project did not happen and therefore I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands. It didn't take long to decide what to do with that! Get on those bikes again! So as I said, we are now on the way to Langkawi, where next week Thursday we'll meet with a good friend from Belgium (de Veckie!). So all in all, it'll be a bike trip of 9 days. And early March we'll be leaving for a longer trip, around 2,5 months - and I won't give the destination away yet.
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| Dusun Suku Abad homestay in the morning |
The first day of this trip was a bit unusual. We left KL yesterday morning, for a short day (36km) of cycling towards the location of... the weekly Wednesday Harriettes run. The location was nicely on the way for us, so we found ourselves a nice homestay close to the run site and cycled there. It poured down, the entire ride, and we were really happy to get to our destination by 1pm; the rain finally stopped at 4pm! The
Dusun Suku Abad homestay was a nice surprise, it surely looked nice online - which is why we booked it - but it was even better in reality. A mixture of farm, orchard, fish pond and even mini deer park, with basic but decent accommodation and a super friendly host - "Moe". The KLH3 run was just 1km away, we had a great run with our friends, a few good beers afterwards, and then returned to our homestay for a great, local dinner around the corner.
We left today at 7.30am - our habit when cycling in hot countries... It was a beautiful, cool morning, just perfect cycling conditions. We stopped first for a local breakfast - nasi lemak of course - and then continued for a beautiful day on the bike. It was indeed a beautiful day, but a bit "snakey"; we saw a giant python (3m?) in the early morning, freshly flattened by a car; another snake that was very dead, but had curled itself up in a knot; and finally, another 1,5m specimen crawling over the road, and once we were close we realised it was a cobra - the neck was widening when we got closer... Still on the zoo stories, we saw several roadkill monitor lizards as well. And, to my delight, many kingfishers - alive and kicking!
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| The unfortunate python |
It's fantastic, once you get out of KL (even after 20km or so yesterday), how green and rural Malaysia gets. You ride through kampungs, plantations, and forests. After around 25km we arrived at the coast, and had a beautiful half hour on an unsealed (but good) road along the coastline. Fantastic cycling! At lunch, we happened to be in Kuala Selangor, seafood heaven - what a coincidence. The final destination today was Sekinchan, known for its endless rice paddies. It was hot by the time we arrived, so we did not cycle through the paddies (plain sun!) and in fact, it's not the best season for it: they've been harvested and are now not as attractive as they can be.
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| We've been many times to Kuala Selangor for seafood, and now having come here on bicycles we fully deserve a good lunch! |
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| Kuala Selangor treated us to some cycling lanes! |
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So this is it, a new blogpost, the first one in almost a year! I'll be writing more regularly again, first on this trip, and then the next starting in March! Stay tuned!
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| Takeaway message to end with. Tanjung Karang is one of those very unfortunate examples of a world gone wrong. What you see on this picture is what you think it is: plastic. The shore is a total plastic mess, it's all over the place. That entire stretch of road is a garbage dump in fact, really sad to see. And all of you can make a difference! Avoiding plastic is one thing, properly getting rid of it another. And getting rid of all these stupid consumption habits of ours is even better! |
