End of the dream

After seven months of no work and all play, it's time for me to leave this paradise and come back to the land of the "free" and home of the paranoid. Actually, the well has gone dry. It's time to start working again. I will fly into San Francisco on April 10th.

Until then, I've been hanging in Phuket enjoying the last few weeks of my early retirement. After this weekend, I'm going to Cambodia to check out the ancient ruins of Ankor Wat. This will be my last adventure before leaving Asia.

What follows are some of my favorite photos from my journeys... (A warning again - the first group of photos are from the Vegetarian Festival [see http://therandychung.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_therandychung_archive.html Oct 11 entry]. Some of the photos are extremely painful.)

These are the some gods that are possessing the people to pierce and mutilate themselves.

These gods are waiting to be carried through the parade.

He is on his way to get pierced. I've tried to get this look in my eyes, but I just can't. I would have to say that he really is possessed.

These buddies are sharing the same sword to slide across their tongues. Obviously, AIDS is not a concern for them.

waiting for the parade to start

After marching about 10 kilometers around the city, all gather at a temple at the edge of town and say prayers into the horizon.

waterbuffaloes finish wading in the pond at sunset.

Than Bokkarani national park

This is my favorite beach in Thailand - Railey Beach. The water is clear blue, the beach has fine sand and the backdrop is of linestone caves.

perhistoric drawings alongside this wall on an island in Phang-Nga.

Here is plant growing in a trees branches in the Koh Sok rainforest.

Koh Sok River

monkeys hanging with Gonesh

construction of a new stairway.

This was a staged ceremony in a remote village north of Pai. The photographer on the right is working for a French magazine and paid the village to put on this ceremony.

nap time for a tailor and the street dog

Gabor and I paid a village woman to guide us through the forest in search of a couple of hidden caves.

scenes from Taman Negara rainforest

Our bus was delayed for an hour while en route to the park. We arrived just as the car driver sprayed the engine with a fire extinguisher but to no avail. After ten minutes, flames started shooting out from the front.




In the center of the photo is a dung beetle in part of a mating ritual. He is in direct competition with another male as to who can roll the bigger ball.


In the center of the photo is a macaque that was hiding from me.

Serenity now.

I am back in Thailand, finished with my travails on the Malaysian railway system. What started at midnite of Monday morning in Jerentut has finally ended in Phuket at 5:15 AM of Wednesday.

Forty hours in the same set of clothes (I only have two "sets" of clothes - one for biking and one for non-biking activities. This time I am wearing a hybrid of them, biking shirt and regular shorts with biking shoes).

All this for what normally is a twelve-hour ride. I was able to get out of Jerentut, but not on the 12:30 PM train. I had to wait another eight hours for the 6:22 PM train. The 12:30 is an "express" only and does not have cargo capacity.

Once out of Jerentut, the #58 local route (my third time on this route in four days) rolls on for seven hours until reaching the end of its line at Gua Musang. I arrive at one in the morning, Tuesday.

I then find out that the next train that leaves Gua Musang, the 4:44, is an express. So now I have to wait until seven in the morning for the train that hits every single town and village along the route until it reaches its destination of Pasir Mas at noontime. I am now thirty kilometers from crossing the Malaysian border.

I bike the distance after eating my last Malaysian meal, chicken in a tomato onion curry sauce over rice with sauteed oyster mushrooms (a common item in the daily market) and baby bok choy. Also in the veggies was some extra flavor provided by a couple of tiny, tiny silk worms (presumably) not washed out before cooking.

Eighteen miles to the Thai border is a short distance for me after going all the way down to Singapore. But the mood changed a little after considering all that I had to go through just to get my bicycle on the proper trains. During this hour's time, the thought did occur to me that if I just biked to the border from Jerentut in the first place, I would cross into Thailand just a few hours later. I saved almost no time by taking the train system!

The Malaysian immigration officer did have a curious look when he saw my passport. This only meant just a few more minutes standing at the border. The Thai side was easier. I just filled out a form and was back in Thailand.

The final challenge was getting out of southern Thailand. For the past few years, this area has had occasional insurgent activity that is being unsecessfully suppressed by the military. Thais from other areas try to avoid this area after nightfall, so I felt it was in my best interests to follow suit.

Only one bus was leaving town. The midnight express bus leaves at 5 pm and arrived Phuket twelve hours later. I managed to get four hours of sleep on the bus. This gave me enough strength to bike a final 18 km to get to Debbie and Eric's house close to Naiharn Beach.

Finally, my journey has ended...

Trapped!

I am trapped in hell!

Right now I am in Jerentut, Malaysia, the entryway into Taman Negara, Malaysia's rainforest.

Ever since I made the decision to get out of Malaysia (while I was in Singapore), I've been getting the screw job one way or another. The first is when I took the train out of Singapore to Jerentut. While crossing the Malaysian border, I noticed that there was no one getting off the train to get a visa stamp. This bothered me all the way to Jerentut (a seven hour ride. When I got off the train, I made an inquiry about the visa stamp, but no one could give me an answer. So I decided that I probably needed to go back to the border to get the stamp. This means that I needed to wait eight hours for the southbound train. Once I get there, the immigration officer informs me that I didn't need to do this my initial visa was still valid. I had the impression that once I left the country (for Singapore), the visa was canceled and I needed to get another one... wrong! So this trip was unnecessary.

Once back in Jerentut, I spent a day and a half in Taman Negara, trekking thru jungle trails and walking thru a half-kilometer canopy walk - a roped path high in the trees.



After coming back from the park, I made arrangements to get to the Thai border. This was 6 pm. I purchased a ticket and asked about the cost for taking my bike. The man said no charge. Interesting, it cost me almost the price of the ticket when I left Singapore.

Well, it seems that this bike is as much of a curse as it is a blessing. I went back to the train station an hour before its arrival, midnite. I wanted to confirm that taking the bike on the midnite express was not a problem (especially since the previous train station attendant said it was going to be free). He told me that it was a problem because it was an "express" and that it did not have cargo capacity. Unfortunately I had already purchased the ticket. The guy said that he could send the bike on a later train, but it would cost me 12 Ringgit.

In my pocket at the time was only 8 ringgit. (I did have 90 ringgit a few hours before, but wanted to go for broke as I was going to leave the country so I had a big meal and got some alcoholic beverages - something I rarely did in this Muslim country.) I told the guy that I would go to an ATM to get some more ringgit. The first ATM didn't accept foreign cards. The next five ATMs didn't dispense cash because it was after midnite.

I went back to the train station tell my story. He was rather unhelpful, meaning that he would not take any other currency (I have US $, Thai baht and Laos kip) to make up the remaining 3 ringgit (equivilent to 75 cents). No help here. I ended up having to scrap the ticket (refund of 50% - 9.5 ringgit) and stay the nite in Jerentut. The guy had the nerve to ask if I had 50 sens - I didn't even bother to check my pocket - I wasn't going to help him out either! Jeez, what a nice guy... he gave me 10 ringgit back.

I go back to the hotel and hope that I can use the room that I got just seven hours ago. The catch is that right when I left the hotel, I let someone else who was staying in a dorm room sleep in it. Not only that, it was 1 AM and I wasn't sure if any one was awake to unlock the front gate. A good thing that some people were still awake and in fact, the guy who took my room was also still up.

I woke up this morning with a mission to get out of this stinktown. I go to the bus station (right across from my hotel) to see what they can do. The bus driver refuses to deal with my bike. Off to the train station again. The attendant says that I can take the 12:44 train, though I need to come back at 11:30 to buy the ticket. Fine. I go back to the hotel and fortunately I can still use the room to lay down on the bed for a few hours.

Right about now my frustration level is very high. I am way past rage and anger - last nite's mishaps at the train station vented all that. I get to the train station and see a new attendant. (Every time I go to the window, there's a new guy.) This man tells me that the bike can't go because there's no cargo car. I ask him of my options and the best thing he suggests is that I take the 6:22 PM train to the end of its line (Gua Musang) then take another train to the Thai border, which requires a four hour wait in the middle of the nite. I hope this works, otherwise I am throwing the bike in front of the next train.

I love Singapore!

I missed a turnoff while trying to find a biker trail and ended up in a Nature Reserve in the northern part of the island. Above is one of the many trees in the mangroves.

Sunset from the "Southernmost point of Continental Asia" on Sentosa Island, Singapore's island resort. This is rather a misnomer, because this was on an island and not on the continent. Obviously, just another tourist trap.

Singapore is known for their harsh penalties (remember Michael Faye and the caning incident?). This sign is found at the begining of underpasses along the river. This is about a $625 US fine.

scenes from a Hindu temple

flower petals and lime peels are filled with candle wax and lit for the gods.

March 6: Batu Prahat to Singapore - Mission Accomplished!

Woke up with a full nite's sleep and the legs felt fresh. Yesterday was just a fluke. I was able to get into my top gears for extended periods. Maybe it was the excitement of this being the day that I cross the Malaysian border. Whatever it was, I was in a good mood.

Light traffic, no hills and cloud cover during almost half of the day. At one point, I was concerned about rain. This concerned distracted me at a critical point in the ride as I missed a turn.

Suddenly I saw a sign telling me that I was on highway 95. But wait, I was supposed to be on Highway 5. I kept going, thinking that maybe this stretch of road was both highways, which happens a lot in this country. I saw more signs for 95, but no mention of 5.

I stayed the course, thinking that even if I am on the wrong road, I should be able to correct it witha simple turn to the east. At the 16th kilometer, I decided to check the map. #%*&!!! Hwy 95 doesn't go to the border and it doesn't hook up with anything that does.

Here is a Muslim cemetary that I passed while going the wrong way.
I had to turn around and found out that the turnoff was the town where I had lunch. So what was supposed to be 150 km to Singapore just grew another 32 km. In other words, the ride just got an hour longer. That I didn't need.

I was able to shave maybe ten kilometers by taking the new, second bridge into Singapore. It was a risk, because my map showed that I would be on the expressway for a short spell before the bridge and I didn't know if bikes were even allowed on the bridge.

The expressway was not a problem. Traffic was so light, that even though it was a four lane highway, only one vehicle would pass me every minute or so.

The bridge was the same situation. The border cop at the Malaysian side let me on without any issue. She just stamped my passport and let me go in less than sixty seconds.

As I approached the Singapore border, a cop on foot was waiting for me. He informed me that bikes are not allowed on the bridge and gave me the safety speech despite the fact that traffic was very minimal. I suspect that since it was such a slow day, he didn't have anything better to do.

It was very official, he got on his walkie-talkie to inform the border patrol of the situation. He was very helpful and friendly and led me to the nicely air conditioned office to process my visa.

With everything taken care of, he escorted me to the customs agent. This was a very official stop, compared to crossing the borders in Thailand, Laos, Malaysia and Burma. The cop actually rifled thru my bag and gave me the run down of what I intended to do in the country.

Finally, it was all over and I was free to roam Singapore. Maybe I should have purchased a map of the island before coming here. I just figured that it would be rather self-explanatory on finding the city. But that is if I took the freeway.

TheTiger Beer brewery greeted me upon my arrival into Singapore as I got off the freeway. Ahhhhh, the smell of barley and hops in the air...

It was rush hour traffic, and I learned my lesson in Kuala Lumpur. I found myself in the industrial zone of Singapore and was asking people waiting for the bus where the city was. As I got closer to the City, traffic started to get heavier. At this point, my fatigue was weighing down on me - it was six pm and I had been on the bike for almost eleven hours.

The worse part was that I wasn't seeing any hotels. For thirty minutes, nothing. When I finally got into the downtown area, I saw hotels, but four and five-star places.

I finally found Chinatown, usually a sure-fire area for cheap hotels. No such luck, but I had come to the end of my rope and just wanted to stop. I found a rather nice hotel at $60 (Singapore currency... roughly $35 US) and well, I guess I should splurge after successfully touring the Malasian country.

Singapore is definitely part of the Developed World. A sign of this is that everything is at American prices. Cheap food is at a couple bucks, but would normally cost less than a dollar in Thailand or Malaysia. Yuppies populate the bars and drink prices are through the roof. I might as well be back in San Francisco!

One of the delicacies that I have eaten so far is the Black Pepper Crab. All the travel brochures made it a point that this was a must-eat. It was really tasty seasoned with black pepper (of course) and soy sauce, almost the size of a dungeness crab. I had to choke on the price of $20 for a kilogram's portion. After this, it's street food for me otherwise I'll go broke!

March 5: Melacca to Batu Prahat

I didn't want to admit it the other day, but after starting out this morning I feel as though I blew a piston yesterday. I'm still able to bike, but I just don't have the same speed as when I started this journey. Though I don't have an odometer or speedometer, I can tell that I'm not up to snuff because I'm not getting into my top gears as often.

Oh well, today's just going to have to be a slow day. Just make it into town, I tell myself.

It went by rather uneventful, actually. No hills, no mountains, not even any rain.

Finding a suitable hotel was my biggest challenge of the day. Most of the places that I checked out were either full or way above my price range. The last place I stopped at had an advertised rate of 35 ringgit for an AC room. I saw this place earlier, but avoided it due to its grim exterior. By American prices (less than $10), this sounds like a bargain. But compared to Thai prices, this was overpriced. By Malaysian standards, this was low-end.

It was my last chance and checked it out. On first glance, the room looked acceptable and I took it. Well, the next cheapest option was double the price, so I didn't really have a choice. The room was on the fifth floor, so I had to go back down to the lobby to check in.

That was when I saw the first problem. The elevator can only be used to go up. The owner made some excuse that the it was so old, he wanted to minimize the usage by preventing people from going down it. "Use the stairs," he told me.

Well, this did bother me, but not enough to leave the hotel and pay double elsewhere. At least I didn't have to go up the stairs, I thought.

After checking in, I went up the elevator and realized that the fifth floor button did not work. I wondered why the owner went up to the roof first, before going down to the 5th when he showed me the room. OK, so I do have to go up the stairs... but at least it was only one flight.

I turned on the TV. First channel I saw was HBO. This is a good sign. Then I toured the other options. Thirteen other options, two of those were duplicate channels and three were fuzz. Well, TV is not a priority and at least I have HBO. (Top Gun was the prime time movie)

So I went into the bathroom to take a shower. The shower head was missing! The water heater was ripped off. The only thing that was useful was a hose attached to a sink faucet, but that couldn't be the intended shower, I thought to myself.

I went down the five flights of stairs (floors in Malaysia start with level G for ground level, then level 1...) and notified the owner of a missing shower head. "There's no hose?!?," he replied. So that was its intended use.

At this point, most people would have run away, but a jobless cheapskate like me talked myself into staying. "I've been to Africa! I've taken bucket baths back in my Peace Corps days. I can live with this. The most important things are that the AC and TV work. I wanted to rest my legs, so as long as these two things work, I can live with it."

March 4 - Port Dickson to Melaca

the dead are remembered in a Chinese temple

Chinatown rooftops

Ahhh, today was an easy day! I woke up at the crack of dawn to cool temperatures and ocean breezes and a sign that said 96 kilometers to Melaca. The day before, I spoke to a bike mechanic in Port Dickson and he informed me that it was a straight shot southeastwards to Melaca, with many signs to lead the way.

The terrain was flat, traffic was light (well, lighter than a four-lane freeway) and my mental state was calm (it's amazing what listening to four lanes of cars at 100 km/h does to the mind). In fact, the day got better as the map that I have helped me out. This map, purchased in Thailand, was utterly useless during my stay in KL. It showed the major roads, but did not label them. It failed to name any of the towns bordering KL for a 40km radius. But this time, it helped me out by saving me 12 kilometers on a shortcut that the signs did not mention.

Triumphantly, I rolled into Melaca before noon with a head of steam and a smile on my face.

Melaca has its roots in the early age of exploration as a trading route between Europe and Asia. Portugese and Dutch influence can be found in the architecture and food. Plus there is the Chinese, Indian and Malaysian influences to be felt.

84 kilometers, 4 hours

March 3: Kuala Lumpur to Port Dickson

sunset at Port Dickson

I am so glad to be out of KL! If I stayed any longer, I would be coming home in a body bag. I started out of the city at the peak of rush hour, much to my dismay. The plan was to pass through Putrajaya (just 20km south of KL), then down to Melaca (144 km away from KL).

As predicted, I was forced to get on the freeway to leave the city. I made the effort to avoid this, but the street that I was on morphed into a freeway after ten minutes without notice. It didn't seem so bad at the time, an explicit motorcycle lane was separate from the automobile portion.

Thirty minutes later, I saw a sign for Melaca and moved onto another freeway. This is when things started to go awry. First of all, there wasn't a cycle lane any more. I was now on a slim shoulder of a three-lane highway (each direction had it's own section of road).

The next problem was that the signs only mention cities but not cardinal directions. When I saw the sign to Melaca, a city for the opposite direction was listed. Given my lack of knowledge to the area, I ended up going west instead of east.

When I noticed that I was going the wrong way, I tried to correct the situation, but only made matters worse. As a result, by the time I got back on track and going in the right direction, I had already ridden for four hours and biked probably fifty kilometers off course.

fields of coconuts near Port Dickson

My eyes jumped out of my head when I saw the sign to Melaca (six hours after starting) saying 121 kilometers. At that point, I realized that I had to change the plan and stay the night at the next major town - Port Dickson.

130 kilometers (maybe, I just don't know how far I strayed off course), 7 hours