Cycling Malaysia's Mountains: Gua Musang to Perlis // World Bicycle Touring Episode 34

We're riding over this bridge in the morning and we noticed some elephant tracks down in the stream bed which is pretty exciting. Maybe we'll see an elephant up here. That's something you see every day. Sign warning you to watch out for elephants and tapirs. Hopefully we see one. After quite a bit of debate about whether to stay on the coast and just head straight into Thailand or to cross the mountains and go over to Penang, we decided to go up into the mountains which has been a really good decision. There's hardly any cars up here and we've just had a lot of really pretty jungle scenery. This is such a huge change of pace from riding the coast. We're doing about 4,800 feet of climbing over 42 miles today. Well that's just to the next place where we can get food. We'll probably keep going a little after that. There's almost no cars on this road. Nice quiet jungle riding over these huge deep stream canyons. Just a complete change from the busy highways on the coast that are completely flat. Definitely getting worked a little bit. It's still really hot. Just had a big group of Malaysian cycle tourists pass us going the other direction. It's the first cycle tourist we've seen in all of Malaysia. Everybody's enjoying this jungle route I guess. It's been a super hot day and we just got hit with a nice short little jungle rainstorm while we were filling up on water and it cooled us down a ton. It's kind of nice. Now we got to ride wet though. We're getting ready to leave the spot we wild camped out last night and some guys just came up on a motorbike and told us not to stop here. It looks like we haven't been here long because we're pretty much packed up and ready to go and they were like don't stop here for long there's a tiger around. So I don't know what that's about. We didn't see a tiger last night. We heard some weird stuff in the night but nothing that was like scary. So I don't know they could be just kind of BSing us to get us out of here because maybe they work here or something but there could also be a tiger. So managed to grab some food, grab some water, getting back on the road. We're ready to moor for breakfast which is kind of like a fried flatbread with egg. We just left Jellawang and got some steamed buns to go for breakfast. There were a bunch of monkeys hanging out at this pavilion when we got here and we chased them off so hopefully they don't come back. We're headed out of Jelly headed towards Garrick. 77 miles and 8,000 feet of climbing like 2,300 meters of ascent. Not sure if we're going to be able to do it but there's no hotel in between and lots of jungle stuff so we're thinking about trying to just go all the way. We'll see how it goes. It's a lot of climbing. Here she comes. Jenny's finishing up our 3,400 foot climb this morning. We decided to do our longest day in Malaysia yet paired with also the most climbing and my stomach is also a little upset so I've pretty much never felt worse in my life I think. We're doing it. Only 24 miles left and 2,500 more feet of climbing. Almost there. Top of the last climb. Never felt worse. Now we just have 20 miles and 1,200 more feet of climbing but it'll be like little hills. I don't know hopefully. We're doing about 3,900 feet of climbing in 33 miles today and climbing is just so much tougher in the tropical heat. We got some nasi lemak for breakfast which is a pretty common breakfast dish in Malaysia. It's got fried chicken, rice, chili sauce, sardines and boiled eggs. Leaving Penang after a week-long stay. Did our oil change today. Got another 5,000 kilometers before we have to worry about it again. Today we've been riding through a lot of rice paddies which are very pretty. Super electric green and also some nice beach scenery today so it's a long day but it's pretty flat and very scenic. Baby water monitor sighting. Hello. Hello. We're about a mile from our hotel. It's been a long 70 mile day. Some really nice lighting at the end of the day. It's finally cooled off a bit. Very glad to be taking a shower in a few minutes though. I probably got dead bugs all over my face. We're about 50 miles from the border with Thailand. Last couple days we found some really nice routes kind of off the main highway. They're very nice and peaceful through kind of these agricultural areas. It's nice to finish off our trip in Malaysia with really nice riding. We've been here for about two months now. Although we took about a month off total to rest after our very long trip through Europe where we were wild camping for months on end. So it was nice to take advantage of the cheaper hotel prices and take some time off the bike. Do some video editing and kind of just relax for a bit. We're headed into Thailand now. I've got about 1100 miles of riding to do in Thailand. We're gonna head up to Chiang Mai and then over to the border with Laos. Cross over into Laos and then ride over to Vietnam. Still got a lot of miles in Southeast Asia but we're looking forward to the change in culture and food and language and everything that we're going to experience in Thailand. Well we finished the really steep thousand foot climb. Full sun, sweating like crazy. Now we're a couple hundred yards from the border with Thailand. Hopefully they let us in. I don't know why they wouldn't but you always never know with these things. A little bit of apprehension approaching international borders by bicycle pretty much every time. The Thailand adventure begins.