The road of realisation to Surat Thani

The short route was road 4 which is a fast paced motorway basically with a few sights to see along the road. Then there was the 408 through Nakhon Si Thammarat then Surat Thani. The first one was about 80 kms shorter but the other one had more rural environments and most of the route was along the sea!  So the choice was obviously the latter one.. But I had come to regret that decision a few times later on.

The heavy rain showers in the 400 km long stretch between Hat Yai and Surat Thani almost killed me several times. If it wasnt the slippery roads, it was the insane pick up drivers and their bold overtake maneuvers or the heavy sidewinds from the sea.

Thailand have been lovely and great so far...but I cant shake this feeling that the human life is not very valuable here.

 I got this realisation from their careless driving and the dead man in the middle of the road as a result of a pickup vs moped incident.
On the scene there were three men, one was waving the traffic and two were taking pictures of his remains.

I dont know what the paramedics were doing but I think his condition was far beyond saving.
I got a bit sick to be honest...
This moment made the whole trip a bit more serious, and the thing is I dont know this man, but I cant do anything more than share a thought of him and his family.
I immediately slowed down, the rain was still pouring down and made it impossible to do more than 50 km/h. I left Hat Yai at 10 and got to Surat Thani at 7.

Still getting around for a place to stay and a place to eat. Condition: Wet...very wet and a bit miserable.

Anyway here are some pictures of a nice Buddhist temple I visited today in  Nakhon Si Thammarat .
This one was a big one with many graves of significant monks.
A nice man showed me how to light some incense and showed me around the temple...once again I am struck by the silence and the utter balance of the creatures around religious places...mosques, churches and now Buddhist temples I have visited along the road have shared the same senses.

I guess that, regardless of religion the search of peace is what they all proclaim and it gives fruit to the same spirituality and the same sense of peace and harmony.
Who's right who's wrong does not matter anymore in terms of spirituality, other distortions other than spirituality are just politics made by the ignorant man. Anyways, now I must go and search for my own little temple of peace and harmony aka a room with a fresh bed and where I can hang my socks to dry...

Entering Thailand

The next morning, I did some preperations for Thailand with a visit to the exchange office and a nice little treatment of Lil'Wayne... Sparkplugs,oil, new tires,sprocket and cleaning of the carburetor made the bike go...well actually exactly the same as before for some reason...naw well it is now prepared for the Thai roads!

At about 4 PM I went through the Malaysian/Thai Borders without any fuss, and now had all the legal stuff sorted out...Hat Yai was the nearest big city so I decided to go there and plan my route a bit further.. A few kms in Thailand I saw this big statue of a praying buddhist, so took a turn in there and started taking some photos. A few monks and other prayers waved me in in this pretty isolated place and offered me something to eat and a place to sleep! I was a bit chocked and didnt know how to respond to their kindness. However I took their offer of some food as I was pretty starving, but kindly rejected their accomodation offer. I had a nice chat about some of the travels ahead and the ones in the past with one of the monks. He told me that he was the "head monk" and clearly made his status by having a big picture of himself outside the temple, and a nice business card with his name on it..Definetly nothing I have expected to see a monk have! Well I left with a belly filled with food, a poloshirt with the temple logo on it,  a tiger scare of some sort (according to the monks) and a big smile on my face. At the same time there is an inch of dissapointment that I havent experienced this before, and I was ashamed that this kind of kindness would never be shown in the part of the world I have spent most of my life in...Something can be learned from here...

Anyway, I wanted to reach as far as I could in Thailand before the night, so during my stop in Hat Yai I asked for directions and away I went. But I could not get rid of the feeling that I was heading the wrong way..And all the signs were in Thai so I had to trust the locals sense of direction. 50-60 kms of rain and heavy traffic there was a sing in clear English: "Border 5 km"..Border?! What border? Damnit did I take the wrong side of road? Or have I driven so far and ended up on the Myanmar border?? Mind you I was really considering entering the border if it was Myanmar..and maybe have a meal there or something. At the border station I asked the inevitable question : "Myanmar?"...The guard started laughing and said it was the Malaysian border..Feeling rather embarrassed, I could not help to laugh myself and then head back to Hat Yai for the night.

Georgetown and Alo Setar

After a good night sleep, I went around Georgetown, which is not a very "malaysian city"...

Plenty of expats, so the locals are pretty used to us..After a few temple visits and the tiniest breakfast i've had, I called a friend from campus to meet up and do something. We decided to meet up on the beaches of Batu Ferringhi ,about 40 km from Georgetown.

A nice little beachsession for a few hours and some catching up over some arabic food was a nice break from the loneliness of highway hacking...
At about 6.30 PM I took farewell and headed towards Alo Setar.
This is one of the suprises along the road, as I did not have any exptections for this place.

A nice nightmarket just by the river, with the range of the nicest pastries I've had in Malaysia! I took a little ride around town and found really nice old colonial buildings, really nice mosques and a big tower in the middle of all this.

The cause

Folks! As I am doing this trip there is cause I am doing this for. Go on to this link below and read more about it!

http://www.causes.com/causes/649487-the-ironbutt-foundation?recruiter_id=8217396
God Bless!

Day One

So! Away I go!
I was supposed to start last night, but rain in Kajang just south of KL put me a bit off and I decided to go back to campus and wait for better weather.

The rain stopped in the morning and I could'nt be more happy to get away.

I headed to KL to get a good picture with the Petronas Towers, but caused some attention by the Petronas 5-0. One police officer wanted to ask me why had a backpack and a moped and the other one wanted to get rid of me as I was standing on "forbidden grounds". So answered their question by leaving, happy that I got at least one good picture before the police arrived.

 

There is no real schedule of what places im visiting along the road, so a few alternatives were open as first destination: Ipoh, Butterworth or Georgetown as they are not too far away from eachother and they are on my way to Thailand. But 80 km outside Ipoh I saw the sign for Cameron Highlands.

I have had the recommendation before to visit the place, so I thought I better check it out to see whats what. Exiting the highway and into the mountainous small roads, made me understand what other bikers are all on about when talking the fun of twisty roads....Although I had this little motor, it was a blast having a go on these sweet sweet roads! I'll tell ye this is something that I never dared to dream of when sitting in my old Volvo 240 and this is the very essence of driving...!

And soon after some driving on these roads I ended up in this tiny place called Lata Iskandar.
There was a nice little waterfall that had some people swimming in it and even more taking pictures of the scenery.
Naturally after a 6 hours in the hot gassing sun and all the pollution I was exposed to, I jumped in with the other people in the water. The water was so crisp and clear, and the falling water massaged away some of the back and shoulder pain I had from wearing the backpack.

After a good hour and new found strengths I headed further into the area and explored the magnificence of it!  Darkness fell as I was sitting in a little teaplace around some tea plantations , I decided to get out of there and head towards Georgetown to get a room for the night.
The road was, unlike during daytime , a nightmare. I have never in my life had so many near-deatch experiences in such a short time!

Trucks and cars in the oncoming lane were constantly crossing the lines in the middle and keeping the full lights on all time, and with my very limited driving experience, it could've gone very wrong at any time. But after 60-70 km's of this nightmare, I was finally out  into the highway and towards Georgetown. Got there at midnight and was feeling rather worn out...
Found a place as  I was driving around that was just about to close for the day.. 20 RM?
Taken. Good Night.

KL by night

I though it would be good to test the bike during night as I presumed that I have to do some driving in the dark druing the trip. So I headed towards KL to see how it was and to practice my gear changing skills. Well the initial remarks is that it has good lights, not so good breaks, the rear wheels are a bit worn out, but the gearbox is pretty smooth and so is the engine.

Also got up to a 120 km/h which is was frankly quite scary but it is feisty and willing to rev, and I had plenty of fun with it around the streets of KL. Matter of fact so much fun that the Police decided to have a check point exactly where I tried a nice turning maneuver!

Damnit! I only have the Swedish car license here, but Im going to play it cool and see what he says.

" You speak Malay?"

 "ehm...Boleh?" ,the cop smiled a bit and it looked down on the license... 

" This your license?" 

 " Ehm...Yes sir,of course" 

Wow.. prime Malay police investigation here. I might just get away with a little notice to get a Malaysian license or something. He looked confused and asked his colleague for assistance, and they together looked very confused. The tense was building up, is it

"OK you can go", or was it Malay prison for three months..... 

Then someone on the radio started yelling out stuff and they had to go!

This is the second time I was actually saved by a yelling man on the policeradio (the first time was in my Volvo a few months ago) and I was free to go! 

But me being me, I had to embarrass myself by starting the engine with the highest gear and trying to get away from there in the same gear.

This naturally wasnt very efficient and surely wasnt very good for the gearbox, instead of changing down I just smiled towards the other cops to maintain a good face and said something like "Its an old bike, so it is really slow".
This caused some laughter amongst the cops and the other bikers that were stopped, and my already non existent KL street cred sunk even lower.. So heading back to campus was the best thing to do now...

The bike

Headed to KL today  to have a look at this bike that was advertised on Mudah.my.

It was a little Honda with a 100 cc engine and it wasnt in mind condition. But for the price; the equivalent of 160 GBP and that was basically straining my budget, it was as good as it could get.
Mind you there was some initial problems: 1. I do not have a license for a bike 2. I haven't driven a manual bike before 3. I have no idea what things to check on it. Risking to look like a fool, I did the only right thing that a man could do in this situation. I acted like I knew stuff and asking about parts that obviously did not exist on the bike. In my world, I believed that they believed my act so I got down the price quite well and even included a helmet, roadtax, lock and a can of diet Coke.

Before any money was handed over I had to get the bike on my name, and that meant that I had to face my anxiety of waiting at the JPJ - the Malaysian department of transportation. If you have a good ol' European fetish for efficiency and workload productivity , then this place is no good for you. It took ages to get one thing through. However it is not the process it is just the pace of people working in the different instances that kills your soul. After 5 or so hours later, the bike was finally on my name and I was ready to hit the road!

I have always named my vehicles something..and this is no exception. My Volvo was named Wayne after its registration plate "WAY", so "Lil'Wayne" came as a suggestion after I showed the bike to my friends in KL - and so it shall be remembered.

There are several reasons why I chose to go with a moped through this part of the world. First, its cheap, very cheap! The fuel consumption is next to nothing, and the inconvenience of breaking down is presumably cured by any village mechanic along the road. Second, it is the symbolic significance of this mode of transportation here. The motorbike has literally kept South East Asia rolling and the concept of this easy and no-frills run-about made the bike a very attractive concept for so many.
To travel overland through these countries without sweating in tourist bus filled with people from the whitest parts of Europe and to see the typical touristy things, is nothing for me. At least with a bike I can go and wherever I want and that too is a reason why chose the bike over any other alternative.

Travels

This blog is dedicated to my travels; my present and future ones. Starting off with a trip that goes through Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and hopefully ending up in Lao, commencing on Saturday the 28th of January. The mode of transportation? A moped... Reason? No reason....Time frame? A few weeks..