The first week I bicycled in Sulawesi I complained about closed restaurants and too much traffic because of the busy end of Ramadan holiday. Unfortunately I have to do the same thing for Malaysia. We did find some nice roads, and we did find some horrible roads (narrow with too much traffic), and it wasn’t at all predictable from looking at the map which would be which. For example what looked like a main road heading into Benut had almost no traffic, but what I expected to be quiet rural roads before that were crowded with way too many cars.
Closed restaurants were less of a problem. People were very friendly and invited us for food multiple times.
This place normally is a restaurant, but for the holiday they had prepared dishes for friends and family (and bicycle tourists?!).
It’s one of the few (the only?) times I had tempeh on this trip.
Restaurants in larger towns and on busier roads were more likely to be open.
Muar, Batu Pahat, Benut, Pekan Nanas, Johor Bahru — we weren’t exactly hitting Malaysia’s big tourist draws. In Muar every single hotel was full (another consequence of the holiday). When we finally found a place, well, it was pretty awful and one of the most expensive rooms of the whole trip. We got smarter (I guess) and booked ahead in Batu Pahat and Benut. The forecast called for rain every day, and it absolutely poured in Benut and Pekan Nanas. I’m not sure if this part of the world has much of a dry season.
The scenery was ok, not great — still lots of palm oil like we saw almost everywhere on this trip. For variety there was some coconut, rarely sirsak, some mango, banana, and pineapple.
On the busier roads there was roadkill — quite a few monitor lizards and at least one monkey. Then along one of the many canals was a sign warning of crocodiles. Great — I really don’t want to see a crocodile from my bicycle. I stopped in the shade to oil my chain, and Ferda watched a guy dragging a giant reptile from his scooter with a rope. Must be a giant lizard… or a crocodile? I got over there just as the man managed to dump the thing half dead into the canal. It was a snake — 4m long (?) and thick as my thigh. Is that really possible? Yep, in this part of Malaysia some park rangers found an 8m long python a few years ago.
Maybe we should stick to main roads?
Trying to avoid busy highways into the big city of Johor Bahru we spent about an hour messing around on tracks that there were a muddy disaster from construction work (and rain?). We gave up and were heading to the main roads when we ran into Zoë and Jody, a couple of the very few bicycle tourists (the only?) that we met on this ten-week trip. Amazingly we started our trips on the same day (though they started from Chiang Mai) and were flying out of Singapore the same day. They were also heading to Johor Bahru that day but still had energy to try one of the tracks that we hadn’t tried yet. We heard from them later that it was a muddy mess. Going on the main roads ended up being quite easy, and riding in Johor Bahru was better than I expected (a low bar).
The next day immigration (out of Malaysia and into Singapore) was easy. I had been worried about the causeway, but riding that wasn’t bad. It was the first 4km in Singapore on US-style interstates that I hadn’t expected.
The rest of the riding in Singapore was fantastic on some of the nicest urban paths I have ever seen. Pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure is superb. This was my third time in Singapore but the first I rode a bicycle there.
Ferda gets brave and approaches a monitor lizard
to find that two of them are sharing a turtle.
We picked up bicycle boxes, packed, and left everything in the lobby of our hotel for the lalamove package people (to bring to the airport for us). Then we had a few hours for some Singapore sightseeing.
The small streets around Sultan Mosque are a tourist trip. We had never been to this part of Singapore before.
Then we happened upon Parkview Square
and were treated to Salvador Dalí (Snail Queen (1974))
and Fernando Botero (Dressed Woman (2003))
and this fun one was as well.
If you go, don’t miss the interior.
Time for İstanbul via Mumbai and onto Antalya.
You two are having so much fun–I love it!