Cycling Malaysia's West Coast // KL to Johor // World Bicycle Touring Episode 32

We made it to Malaysia, finished putting our bikes together in the airport. Gonna ride out to a hotel. Well, we made it to Malaysia, unboxed and assembled our bikes in the airport, and then had a kind of crazy late night ride to our hotel. It was about 8 miles. It was pretty hectic, but we made it. Hopefully we won't be riding at night much. Now we are headed to our Airbnb in downtown Kuala Lumpur. Got a 35 mile ride across the city. We're trying to make our way into the heart of Kuala Lumpur on back roads so we don't have to be in the crazy traffic. Following navigation directions from Osmand, we'll see if this actually goes through. But I prefer crappy gravel to crazy traffic, so hopefully it works. Moo! So we're on our way out of Kuala Lumpur. We've gone about 13 miles so far. We're trying to stay off of the busier roads, so we're taking a really roundabout path through the city. But we're getting to see all these little neighborhoods and stuff. It's pretty interesting at least. The traffic is manageable. Definitely pretty hectic compared to Europe, but it's a pretty safe feeling. As we get further from Kuala Lumpur, the traffic is thinning out a little bit and we're getting into some more jungly, hilly terrain. Still on a pretty busy road, but there's often a pretty decent shoulder at least. We've been riding in Malaysia for a couple days now. We've been doing pretty short days because we need to acclimatize to the heat and the traffic and the humidity. Also we ate a huge breakfast this morning and it was really hard to start bagging again. We're finally on a nice quiet road headed towards the ocean and Port Dixon. The last few days have been quite a change from Europe. It's just really hard to find a quiet side road. A lot of the times your only options are basically freeways. Sometimes they have a shoulder, sometimes the shoulder just randomly ends. Luckily there's a lot of scooters on the road, so drivers are used to two wheel vehicles like us. So we haven't really had any close passes or anything. But it's still just not the most pleasant experience when you're biking on a large road with lots of traffic. We got a bit of a monkey gauntlet. So many monkeys in the bushes. Jenny's freaked out by them. Probably rightfully so. I'm more curious than anything. We found another nice little section of back roads off the main road. Again it's a little slower. We would be moving along faster if we stayed on the main road. But it's just way better than spending all day on the highway. What's the point of being here if all you're going to see is what you'd see from a taxi or bus. We're eating at the Jonker Street Night Market in Malacca. This is fried oysters in kind of a batter with cilantro and a bunch of spicy stuff. It's really tasty. In fact, this is not the first time he listens to me. Every time I come here, sometimes I let go of some small fish. When I see that fellow, I will also do the same. I can recognize him. So the same one. It's here? Yeah. A big Asian water monitor just crossed the road in front of us. We've seen a number of them, including a really nice one in pretty much downtown Malacca yesterday. We had no idea they were here, so we were kind of shocked to see the first one. Just like a giant lizard. But they're really cool and it's nice that there's so many of them around still. For dinner tonight we got wonton mee. It's at a restaurant. There's only one option on the menu. It's always nice to not have to think too much. Looks like it's going to be pretty good though. Okay, this is the most insane night in a hotel. It's like 1.30 in the morning. I'm just out the window here. These guys are just doing road work. Jenny had a spider family give birth basically in her water container. She's freaking out a little bit. She's not a spider fan. Somewhere in here, it happens. This is like my nightmare. I just have a bunch of spiders crawling around inside my water bladder. I don't know what to do about that. We stayed in Muar last night and we're on our way to Batu Pahat. Only about 35 miles today. We're going kind of slow because we want to hit Singapore on a weekday to have a cheaper hotel. So far the Malaysian stray dogs have been really well behaved. We haven't gotten chased a single time. We are starting to adjust to touring in Malaysia. It's definitely quite a bit different from Northern Europe where we were just before this. We're sweaty pretty much all the time and the traffic can be tough to contend with. But lately we've been on these nice side roads through smaller villages and farmland, which has been a lot more enjoyable. We're riding through a huge palm oil production area. We're always kind of told to avoid palm oil, in the U.S. at least, because it creates a monoculture and kind of ruins the environment. But it's very economically important for the people here, so it's kind of a double-edged sword. We're starting the evening off with some pork buns. It's a black bean one and then this one is pork. We've been taking a lot of ice cream breaks because it's extremely hot. We're doing about 45 miles today between Batu Pahat and Pontian, about 60 miles away from Singapore right now. We're on this highway pretty much all day, which is a bit of a bummer, but it's not terrible. It's just very, very hot today. Catching a ride on a 1960s rickshaw. We stayed at a hotel in Pontian and this morning the owner asked if we wanted to see his old rickshaw. So we got to ride around in that and then he cut us up a pineapple in a really fancy way up on his garden rooftop cafe at his other hotel. So that was a really cool experience. So now we're riding out around the coast up here. The ocean is right there and the waves are kind of crashing over a little bit. It's a pretty crazy spot.