Category: Travel Blogging

The Mullah woke me up by blasting his prayer of the day at me, once awake the incessant pounding of the rain kept me up. I met Sabine loading up her bike at daylight downstairs and we agreed to hang on for the rain to clear, since it was only a 30 mile day. It cleared just before 8. I checked my tyres before loading up and all seemed OK.

I had only been on the bike a few minutes and I got that sinking feeling 🙁 a few minutes later and it was a total flat with the tyre  coming of the rim 🙁  Fortunately the Madras Cafe was next door so after changing the inner tube (and not finding any nail etc 🙁 ) I had a wash and enjoyable breakfast chatting to an ex bank manager who trades derivatives on his own account. Interesting talk on risks etc

Then we started on Highway 5 which has a split personality, a new version that makes a loop, wide & boring or the old 5 more interesting but narrower through the villages. We discovered a couple of side roads which made it quieter and more interesting for a while.

Whilst having a drink in Kampung Pengkalan two French cyclists stopped for a chat, Guy & Noèmie have been biking for almost a year covering about 8,000km in Russia, Japan, China & SE Asia, their blog is at Escapade En Velo

We soon arrived in Muar past the huge semiconductor plants to find a very pleasant provincial town totally non touristy & really very pleasant. We bumped into Guy & Noèmie  again whilst searching for a hotel  eventually homing in on the Hotel Kingdom where the two old men were going to put all 4 of us in one room at 45 Ringgits (£9) a night for the room! Eventually we got through to him we wanted 3  separate rooms. The restaurant opposite, The Soup house is really excellent too.

Here is the Strava for today

Here are a few pictures

I’ve been looking forward to visiting Malacca as it has a fascinating history and lots of good reviews from other travellers.

We left at 7.20 at the crack of dawn not because of the distance but just to get biking in the cool. The traffic on the road soon thinned out and became quite pleasant, following the Google bike layer we headed on a real country road to a small fishing village ,all very pleasant with lots of cheery waves and no traffic. In fact at one place we even had a free drink with a family at their beach bungalow with tremendous ocean views if you looked right, looking left you saw all the offshore gas & oil platforms 🙁

At Kem Terendak, Google maps screwed up big time by trying to take us through a military base, the soldiers with the rifles were less than impressed! making us do a circuit back onto Highway 5 and round their base. How do you tell Gmaps about this mistake? I easily edited Open Street Map using the Go Map! app (whilst a Burmese waiter was giving his story about escaping  from the Muslim/Buddhist conflict their.

Malacca was every bit of good as folks suggested, it has a real nice arty vibe with a more mature type of person so all very civilised.  Cafe 1511 is a very grand stylish place to stay although the loo & shower are a floor below and the staircase up to my room would fail any UK building inspection, being very steep & narrow with no balustrade

So another short 50 miler but given the heat more than enough! The Strava is here

The photos are here.

Selena’s write up of the day is here