VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
The journey begins! After some planning and gear tweaking, I’m finally rolling out of Port Dickson with my fully loaded touring bike and trailer. But instead of following the well-traveled coasts, I’m heading straight up the middle of Malaysia—into the Titiwangsa mountain range, the lush backbone of the peninsula.
In this episode:
🚲 Saying goodbye to Port Dickson (and the Sumatra ferry!)
💦 Impromptu beach swim at Pantai Bagan Pinang
🐒 Monkey encounters (and a near-nap with the macaques)
🔥 Battling brutal midday heat (and a phone that kept overheating!)
🍵 Cold drinks & friendly chats with locals
🐊 Crocodile warnings by the riverside
🏕️ First night camping wild in Malaysia
My setup:
1998 Rocky Mountain Route 66 touring bike • Arkel GT54 panniers • Radical Design Cyclone 4 trailer • GoPro Hero 12 + Hero 9 dual-camera rig
Day 1 complete—only a few kilometers, but that’s a victory when you’re just getting started! The goal? Ride north through the Titiwangsa range all the way to Thailand, taking the road less traveled.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning and welcome back to Planet Doug. And I think you could say this is a somewhat special day. If you look down on the bottom left of the video screen, you’ll see that I have my bicycle trailer hooked up. And that means with my trailer attached, I’m fully packed and moving on from Port Dickson. Sort of an open-ended bike ride in Malaysia. We’ll see how things turn out based on the time that I have and weather conditions, road conditions, scenery, all that kind of stuff put together where I end up going. But I do have a vague idea, a certain plan kind of in a rough outline form anyway. So the plan right now is from here I’m in Port Dickson, Malaysia right now. So I just left from my hotel which is like half a kilometer back that way. And the idea is to leave from Port Dickson. And what I want to do is head inland to the base like the beginning point of the Titiwangsa mountain range which is something that I think is relatively unknown outside of Malaysia.
So, what I want to do is ride north through Malaysia, but instead of following either the west coast or the east coast, what I want to do is go straight up the middle. And that will take me alongside and sometimes through the Titiwangsa mountain range which stretches all the way from kind of here southern Malaysia all the way up into Thailand and it is a mountainous backbone of Malaysia but I don’t think as a mountain range it’s very well known outside of Malaysia.
And I’m doing a little bit of a dipsy doodle first, which often happens in Malaysia. And when I was in Sumatra, happened a lot, too, because there’s so many one-way streets. So, I wanted to go that way into downtown Port Dickson. But, to do that, I have to head north first to a traffic light, then I got to do a U-turn, and then head back again. So, I’m just waiting at a traffic light for my U-turn signal.
So, I went around my very first U-turn there for this trip. And in fact, I’m looking at my hotel. I’ve actually been on the road for quite a long time already just going up the highway, turning around, and coming back. But that’s because this being the first day of this trip, technically I have a lot of dialing in to do in terms of all of my cycling gear and camera gear.
So for any gear heads out there, I can tell you that right now I’m running with two GoPro cameras. Sort of a system I’ve been working on here in Port Dickson. So, I’ve got my GoPro Hero 12 over here on a broomstick, but what I did was I angled the broomstick off to the left so that you see it’s not directly in front of me so that shows me more of the bicycle and it shows a clear view of the traffic coming up behind me. And I have a second GoPro. It’s actually right below me and it’s also attached to the broomstick which was kind of an accidental technique because I attached the broomstick on an angle. It actually gives me a little bit of a base down here which I can use to mount another camera. And here’s the angle from that camera. I currently have it on a super view I think. Very wide angle. Oh, I lost track of what I was doing. I’m supposed to be turning here and I’m in the wrong lane for that.
Oh, no. There’s actually going to be very little traffic behind me, so I’ll be able to swing out into the right-hand turn lane. I always end up talking into the GoPro and I miss this intersection all the time which is kind of funny. It still takes me into Port Dickson. But today what I want to do is like go all the way into Port Dickson, go right through the town along the waterfront. Since I’m leaving Port Dickson, maybe forever, maybe for a while, I thought I would take another ride on my way out. Say goodbye and capture a little bit of it on video. So anyway, I had a lot to dial in even in the first hour. I think I’ve been on the road already for an hour because I cycle for like 10 minutes. Then I stop and check the video, check the audio, adjust the angle, move the camera a little bit, and now I have, as I said, the GoPro Hero 9 pointing ahead of me. And you can see my hands, I think, on the handlebars, even if I change gears. You can probably see my fingers here changing the gears, applying the brakes, and then when I want to switch to looking at me and looking behind me, then I switch to the Hero 12. So, that’s what I’ve got happening right now.
In my lifetime going on various bicycle trips, I’ve actually worked out kind of a routine where the first day of any trip, my goal is only to pack up and leave my hotel. I mean, that’s all I want to do on the first day. And if I manage to do that, that’s a victory. It’s like a major achievement because you grossly underestimate how many things you need to do. Even for like a normal long-distance bike tour, there’s a lot happening. You think you’re ready to go the night before, but then you wake up in the morning, start packing up your bike, and a lot of hours can suddenly go by because there’s like a dozen things that you suddenly need to do that you didn’t remember.
So it’s not like day one hop on the bike ride a thousand kilometers or anything like that. Not even 50 km. I would be happy if I just rode down the coast a little bit and then checked into a hotel like 20 kilometers away. Just packing up, riding across town, unpacking at a new hotel. That’s all you really want to do on your first day to be honest. And if you manage to do that, that’s kind of a victory.
Just reaching the outskirts of Port Dickson proper. Got a small hill to grind up. In a minute I’ll be going by the turnoff to the ferry that goes to Sumatra. And I know that dock very well. And I know the ferry very well. But that’s not where I’m going today.
And here we are just ahead of me from my Hero 9 Super View. That’s the turnoff heading down to the ferry. So I can wave goodbye to the ferry to Sumatra for now.
There’s a very complex intersection up ahead that I don’t want to deal with. But there’s a little bit of a shortcut here past the fire station that allows me to bypass that crazy intersection. One of the advantages of getting to know an area, you find all these little shortcuts. Every time I go downtown Port Dickson, I come this way.
It’s a bit later in the day than is ideal. You know, the full heat of the day has already started and I’m barely underway. But I did wake up really early this morning and I even timed the sunrise with the idea of being on the road right around sunrise. But as I mentioned before, your first day on the road, you suddenly discover you have a hundred other things that you need to do or dial in, spend some time on. So, and I decided to just relax a little bit, take it easy, not go crazy, just take my time.
Port Dickson is actually a pretty complicated town, as I said, in terms of the one-way streets and things like that. You have to do a lot of looping around in order to get through the town following the one-way streets. I normally would have done a little shortcut back there instead of doing this loop, but since I have my bike fully loaded, I thought I would just head in this direction. Oh, here’s something new. Let me park my bike here and go take a look at this thing.
So, what I spotted is this tourism map. Yeah, I actually think Port Dickson is quite a special little town. The atmosphere, the history, its proximity to this coast with all the beaches, homestays, things like that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Look at that. Here’s the jetty. The ferry to Sumatra that I was talking about. Jetty Penumpang Port Dickson right there. There’s the historic clock that greets you when you enter Port Dickson. Masjid Lama. I know that mosque. Very historic. And they have a waterfront area here that’s right downtown. Has a children’s playground. This is new. Doodle Port Dickson. Never seen that before. And then as you leave the downtown area, then you get all these beach properties all the way along to heading towards Malacca. Look at that. Right behind me is downtown Port Dickson. And there’s the tourism sign that I spotted just ahead of me. And I thought that since my bike is sitting here in the shade for a minute, for anyone who is new to my channel, this whole rig might be unfamiliar to you. So, just very quickly, I’ll tell you what’s going on here. The bicycle is a bike that I bought back in 1998. Back in the ’90s, I was teaching English in South Korea and then I was saving up money and then after I saved up enough money, I returned to Canada and then I was planning a trip to Africa and I settled on Ethiopia as my main interest and I bought this bike for that trip to Ethiopia which was like in 1999 2000 in that era. Was in Ethiopia for about a year. So, this is from a Canadian company called Rocky Mountain. It’s a Rocky Mountain Route 66. Back in those days, it was kind of a new thing, this sort of mountain bike style. And this was a hybrid mountain bike combined with a touring bike. And they actually made it for the European market. It wasn’t meant to be sold in North America, but I ordered one and they shipped it to me. And yeah, I’ve been riding it ever since. So that’s the bike. The wheels are relatively new. I had those built like maybe like it was actually before the pandemic actually. A bicycle company in Thailand built them for me. So the rims are heavy duty touring rims. They’re Ryde Andra touring rims, 36 spokes. Shimano XT hubs also 36 holes of course because these are touring wheels. So heavy duty rims, 36 holes for the spokes and yeah, heavy duty spokes as well. So these wheels can support something like 180 kg. That’s what the specs say. So yeah, they can carry a huge amount of weight. They shouldn’t break. They shouldn’t bend. Nothing like that. So that’s basically the bike. All of this I’ve done myself. I modified the handlebars with all of these extensions, different hand positions, mirror, and of course the new thing is that all the different ways of mounting GoPros. I’ve experimented with all kinds of things. This broomstick is my latest experiment. So I got the GoPro Hero 9 mounted here, like I said. So that’s the Hero 9 right there. And it is pointing forward like that over the handlebars. And then this is where I mount the Hero 12 up here. And of course it is aiming back at me and the bicycle. The panniers are from a Canadian company as well called Arkel. So these are the Arkel GT54. They’re kind of their grand expedition touring pannier bags and they’re designed to have a lot of pockets and they’re also very heavy duty. So you got like on this one pocket here, pocket here, pocket here, pocket here and they’re front loading. So you load this whole front comes down and you load it from the front which has a lot of disadvantages. They’re not waterproof. You have to put a cover over them to make them waterproof, but the advantage is all the pockets. And I really like having pockets. So, that’s why I use them basically. And they’re kind of interesting bags. They’re asymmetrical. So, the left bag is completely different from the right bag in terms of how they’re designed. So, like over here on the right, this pocket is designed for tent poles or a sleeping pad. You can see how tall it is. So, this is where you could put your sleeping pad or your tent pole. Anything that’s really high and long can go in this pocket sort of thing. So, every pocket here has a specific purpose. This was designed for a toiletry bag, etc., etc. And I have the trailer. A lot of pros and cons to using a trailer, but that’s what I have right now. And this trailer is a Radical Design. It’s a company out of the Netherlands, and it is the Cyclone 4 trekking trailer. Has 100 L of volume and is a dual wheel trailer. So, most of the weight is all here. Like all my camping equipment, anything that’s heavy is in the trailer. And I use the pannier bags. This is all my camera gear. And this one basically is for my laptop. And there’s a lot. Yeah. All my GoPro gear is over here. And then my laptop and other electronics. These bags, to be honest, are almost completely empty. There’s nothing in here. Nothing in here. The inside is almost completely empty, which I kind of like.
So, that’s one advantage to having the trailer. Just dump all of your big bulky stuff in the trailer. You don’t even have to think about it. And then if you have two rear pannier bags, you’re good to go. So, anyway, what else have I done? I did a custom mounting operation. So, I have three water bottles. 1.5 liters, 1.5, 1.5. And each one of these cages is a different design from a different company. This one down at the bottom is quite special cuz it’s designed, you could put any bottle in here, any size. It’s designed mainly for like a fuel bottle for a stove or something like that. But I use it with a Nalgene water bottle. And then it clicks into place on these spots here. And then these are just normal but designed for the large water bottles. And yeah, I mean I could go on and on about this bike. Oh, these are Jannu Expedition Packs. Also heavy duty pannier racks. Everything on this bike is overdesigned to be honest. Everything is too heavy. But I kind of like things that are more durable. So this pannier rack, I like having the big flat surface on the top, thick aluminum struts that this thing can carry way more weight than I could ever put on it, but which means it’s also a little bit heavier. Anyway, quick tour of my bike. Just thought it popped into my head I should do that right now. In the brief time that I was over there just giving a tour of my bicycle and gear, I was reminded of just how busy Port Dickson can be. It’s crazy. You think of it as a very small town, but it can really burst into life. Lot of traffic and yeah, a lot of weekend traffic, of course, holidays. It’s a very busy place. Though in terms of traffic flow, it’s very poorly designed. Something went wrong in the city planning where I mentioned all the one-way streets confusion already. But really, in terms of going in this direction through the town, the only option is to go through this parking lot. There’s no other way to get from there to the rest of the town. It’s just a weird sort of design. And this parking lot can be jammed, of course, because people come here to go shopping in the mall, not necessarily to drive through it. So, yeah, it’s a weird design. I don’t know how it came about like this. One funny thing, I was down here the other day on my bike and came across some treasure. I just found these sunglasses on the side of the road. I guess someone on a motorcycle or scooter lost them and I turned around and picked them up and it says on the side Ray-Ban, but they’re obviously not Ray-Ban. They’re like typical gas station sunglasses somebody picked up for five ringgit at the most probably. And they were really dirty and so they obviously been out for a long time. So anyway, I just picked them up, washed them off, and for the very first time, going to see if they work. I do have a pair of really good sunglasses, Oakley’s in fact. And these Oakleys were given to me by a Planet Doug subscriber, a mystery benefactor from Penang. And I don’t generally wear sunglasses when I’m cycling. I don’t really need them. And I already have reading glasses. And with the sunglasses, you can’t read smartphone screens or camera screens or anything like that. But yeah, you can feel it when you put them on. Your eyes kind of relax a little bit. Without them, you’re instantly squinting a little bit cuz it’s pretty bright out here. Put them on and yeah, you can feel your eyes relax. Yeah, the Oakleys much better lenses than this in terms of clarity and the polarization and things like that. But just for fun. Yeah, you can always have two pairs of sunglasses in case keep the Oakleys for special occasions. And so there’s the Port Dickson waterfront sign. I’ve shown that on video before. Nothing going on here today. It is I don’t even know what day it is. It’s a Tuesday. On a weekend, all of these stalls are open. They sell souvenirs, kites, toys for children, bubble making toys, clothing, but during the week they’re not usually open. But yeah, can get quite busy down here. It’s very popular on the weekend.
And looking off in that direction. Well, now yeah, we’re looking towards the dock and then it’s just around the corner there and you can take the ferry to Sumatra which is over there somewhere and you are looking at a very important place in the world. Of course, this is the Malacca Strait, the narrow strait between Sumatra and Malaysia and Singapore. I was just reading this morning that up to 30% of all the shipping in the world, all the sea shipping in the world, 30% of it goes right through here, goes right past us. So, it’s a very strategic, very important body of water, the Malacca Strait. And I think right at Singapore it narrows down to like 1.5 miles wide which is really narrow like 2.4 km something like that is the narrowest point and that’s very narrow for a shipping lane carrying you know 30% of the world’s shipping. But yeah this is the Port Dickson waterfront right downtown. It’s very nice down here. Yeah. And down at the waterfront, they’ve got a McDonald’s right there, Starbucks right there, and then farther along, you got a whole bunch of little restaurants, ice cream parlors, and that new building right there that you see built out over stilts, that’s the new location for Zeus, Zeus coffee.
It’s a much more interesting town than people give it credit for. And as you go along the coast here, you see some beautiful scenery and you run into a lot of army bases. I think some people refer to Port Dickson as an army town. Yeah. Here’s another complicated intersection. I think I can turn right here. Yeah, just have to wait for the lights to change. And that’s something else I’ve commented on in Malaysia many times on video, how long the traffic lights take to change. You’re waiting a long time for anything to go green.
Oh, everybody here is turning right. I thought some of them would be turning left, but there we go.
Just moving along the coast here. The road goes up a couple of hills away from the shoreline. And this hilly section, it separates Port Dickson from a lot of the main beaches. And yeah, there’s some really fascinating structures all along the shore here. I don’t know much about them, like in terms of renting them if you wanted to come down here for the weekend. Like these buildings right here for example. I don’t know if you’d call those hotels. Are they condominiums that people rent by the month or by the year? Can you rent rooms here by the night? Is it completely abandoned? I don’t know. These two look abandoned to me. But yeah, they look like they have some interesting history.
Yeah, that’s a wild building over there on my right. Yeah, definitely looks abandoned.
And over on my right is one of the beach areas. I’m going, if I can get across the traffic, I’m just going to pull in there. Just I’ve been here many times so it’s not new to me but if you’ve never been to this part of Malaysia before you might find it interesting just have to maneuver around so I can get across this busy road.
Yeah, this road can get crazy busy and motorcycles come around these corners at high speed, man. You really got to keep your eyes open. You really have to time it just right.
But yeah, here’s one of the beaches of Port Dickson. A lot of nice shady areas there under the trees. It’s the nicest feature of these beaches. All that shade. Yeah, nice long beach. And there’s the name of it, Pantai Bagan Pinang.
So far, my roadside found treasure, my fake Ray-Bans are coming in pretty handy. I’m enjoying them. Like I said, I’ve had other sunglasses in the past, but I guess because they were quite expensive, like mountaineering polarized like high-tech sunglasses, I worried about them. So, I would always keep them safe. And I would find as I was cycling, I’d start sweating and the sweat drips into the sunglasses and they get smeared and you can’t see through them. Anyway, they’re always more trouble. Felt like they were more trouble than they were worth. So, I often didn’t wear them even while cycling. But, yeah, having an old junky pair like this that you’re not worried about, just flip them on and toss them into your pannier bag. You don’t have to treat them with kid gloves. So, yeah. Here’s the beach. Nice. Nobody here on a Tuesday, midday.
I think that’s Cape Rachado over there. Yeah, really nice hiking area. So, I think I’m going to go in for a quick swim just to cool down. Just a quick yeah. Celebrate being on the road with my trusty bicycle. I mentioned that I do a lot of alterations and DIY adjustments to a lot of my gear. And one thing I did very recently, I’m very proud of this. I mentioned that my pannier bags are asymmetrical. They have different pockets on different sides. And on this side, there’s actually a pocket here that is removable. And cuz it’s attached by Velcro. And what I did was I detached it from there and I put it here on this side. This is my main pannier bag. And I spend nearly an entire day doing this where I sewed a piece of Velcro here on the inside so that this bag can be attached to the inside of this pannier bag, which gives me a very convenient pocket right here for valuables. So, I put my extra smartphone in there. Now that I’m going in for a swim, I can throw in my wallet in there and anything else that’s valuable. My other smartphone, I just toss it. Well, I’ll probably just toss this inside the bag, but just like having a little pocket here and then I can zip it closed and then close the main zipper like this. And now with the main zipper closed, I can lock the zippers with a little padlock. So now instead of putting my wallet in this pocket on the outside, I put it on the inside of the pannier bag. So yeah, just a little I just did that the other day in Port Dickson. I was just fiddling around. This is another DIY rig that I it’s not really that complicated, but this is actually a pocket from my old pannier bags. They were the same models as this one, but a previous generation and different color. They were like a rust orange like that. So when those old pannier bags wore out, I cut off all the pockets before, you know, I threw them away basically cuz the pannier bags were worn out, but the pockets were still in good condition. And I use this one for all of my tripods and grips. Yeah, it’s very, very handy. and it opens up and as you can see it unfolds and it has one, two, three pockets. So what I do with this, this is my big tripod. It goes in there, wraps around it. So, this is my tripod grip bag that opens up. And then I have my mini tripod in there, my 360, and then my swimming grip. So, I have all these four grips that I keep in there right now. And it fits in there quite nicely where these can all go into, you know, individual pockets, however I want to organize them. This one is too long to fit in there, but it doesn’t matter. It just goes in there and I wrap it around. And there it is. My little tripod grip. This is the one I wanted to get out because this is my swimming grip. It floats. So, there’s my bike in the shade changed into what passes for my swimming trunks. And yeah, I just head into the water just for a minute.
that the entire beach to myself. I hesitate to show my torso here has not been exposed to the sun in what feels like a very long time. So, I’m very very white. Oh, that feels nice. I find when you’re like traveling and on a bicycle in particular, it’s hard to stop. like you get focused on where you’re going, you know, like on your destination and then you go by a beautiful beach like this, like people will drive 200 miles to come to this beach and you’re just riding by on your bicycle, right? So yeah, why not just pop into the water for a minute? But sometimes it can be so it feels like it’s too much trouble to get off the bike and like I said, put everything away for security and change into your swimming trunks, you know? It’s sort of like and you just keep riding. But every time you do stop and you do something like this, just pop into the water like what takes 15 minutes. Oh, feels so good.
Yeah, the water is very shallow here. I’m pretty much down on my knees. If I stood up, the water wouldn’t even come to my knees. But I’m a little bit security conscious. I don’t want to go too far away from all of my gear. My other GoPros is back there. Actually, I have my Hero 12 recording. So, I can wave at the Hero 12. I have the two cameras recording at the same time.
But yeah, you kind of have to develop this mindset to take advantage of places as you ride by them. And yeah, why not, right? Oh, so nice to be in the water.
And I made sure to remember to remove my microphone. So that’s one danger. If you’re constantly going from riding to walking to going in the water, going into coffee shops, coming back out riding, you can sometimes forget your gear, forget you’re wearing something, plunge into the water, and end up destroying your microphone or your smartphone in your pocket or who knows, right? This reminds me of a time when I did this in the Philippines. Rode my bike down to a gorgeous like stunning tropical cove way in the middle of nowhere. Very isolated, very difficult to reach. You have to park your bike at the top of a cliff, climb down trails, and then I left a pannier bag out on the sand. And I thought I was keeping an eye on it like right now I’m keeping my bicycle in my field of vision, so I feel like I’m perfectly safe. I did the same thing in the Philippines and then I got distracted for like 3 minutes because another foreigner came walking along the beach and I walked up onto the sand and I was talking to him for like 3 minutes with my back to my pannier bag and by the time I turned around somebody I have no idea who or how opened up my pannier bag opened up my wallet like found my wallet which is buried deep in my pannier bag. I just happened to unlock my pannier bag because I wanted to get out a camera. So, I reached in, took out the camera, and then I saw the foreigner coming. So, it was like a perfect storm of circumstances where I forgot to relock my pannier bag. So, it was unlocked but closed. But then by the time I went back to it, somebody had opened my pannier bag, dug through it, found another bag, opened that bag, found my wallet, took my money, and then dropped my wallet on top of the open bag. So all they took was my money. But yeah, that was really dangerous though because in my bag I had everything like my passport, bank card, you know, it was for whatever reason I had all that stuff with me that day. And yeah, if that person had stolen the whole bag, I would have been in big trouble. But all they took was most of my money, but not even all of it. They took all the big bills and they left me like what they thought was just enough money to get me through the day like so I could still ride back to my hotel and buy drinks and buy water along the way. So it was a very thoughtful thief as it turned out. I have a vague idea. I think I know who it was. But yeah, that was a big story of my time in the Philippines. I went to the police and I reported the theft and the police took it very seriously and we all piled into a big police jeep and we drove down to the beach and we recreated everything and they took photos of everything. It was quite a big deal. But yeah, anyway, I think I’m okay here. Just have one other person on the beach. Woman there. She’s looking for rocks along the water with her umbrella. Anyway, this is all I wanted to do. Soak in the water for a few minutes and then get back on the road.
Still going up the coast. Just happened to be passing a very famous spot off on my right behind me, Avillion or something like that. Quite an expensive beachside resort with I think they have cabins out over the water on stilts. You can see it on Google Maps. Looks quite cool from satellite view.
Yeah, having an odd experience with the heat. The good news is my GoPro is shooting in 4K and so far the amount of recording that I’m doing, I guess, is short enough that it’s not overheating even in 4K, which is pretty amazing.
So, yeah, my Hero 12, Hero 9, neither one of them has overheated today, which is kind of unusual. But then I was trying to take a picture with my phone and my phone wouldn’t work. It had overheated and shut down.
Just the sun coming straight down like midday right now. It’s really hot. So, anything in your bags that’s lying flat is just roasting.
The way my mood is to be honest, I wouldn’t mind spending the night just here. I barely gone a few kilometers up the highway, but like I said earlier on your first day on a long trip, you really have to keep your ambitions pretty low. I’d be happy just, you know, doing what I’ve done so far today, packing up, getting on the road, and then just stopping early in the day. That’s enough for me. But all the hotels along here are for weekend beach holidays. So everything is pretty expensive.
Just a little ways up the coast. There’s another one of the big popular beaches here. Forget the name of it, but there’s a big sign right here. Anjung Saujana. Anjung Saujana. And yeah, let’s see if I can walk my bicycle along this beach for a little ways.
Yeah, there’s the name of it. Anjung Saujana. Pantai Saujana. There’s the name of the beach, the big sign. Pantai Saujana. Anjung Saujana. Yeah, it’s a nice beach. Nice white sand as you can see. And I think that’s the fancy resort over there. The one I was talking about that looks really cool in satellite view. Avillion or something like that. Yeah, nice beach. Got some little waves coming in. And on this side, you get some of that nice shade. It’s again not a camping beach. They have big signs up everywhere saying, you know, no camping, no motorcycles, you know, it’s just for day use only. No campfires, no camping, nothing like that.
Just walking my bike along the trail here. Staying in the shade a little bit, which is nice. I know somewhere along the coast here there is a dedicated campsite, H&N, I think. I was looking for it on Google Maps, but my main phone is still in shutdown mode because it’s so hot. It I can’t use the camera. It says, “Yeah, it’s too hot. Can’t use the camera.” But also when you try to use Google Maps, it automatically goes to dark mode. And in dark mode in this sun, you can’t see anything. You can’t make out any details at all. So yeah, you often underestimate how powerful the sun can be.
Luckily, I have two phones. So I got out my second phone, which hasn’t overheated yet, and I was able to connect it using a hotspot. So, once I get into this shade here, I’m going to sit down on one of these comfortable benches and check Google Maps and figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of the day. Whether I want to stay on the shore here somehow or head inland. I’d like to stay on the shore, but can’t really afford any of the hotels here. They’re outside of my budget.
Well, I’ve reached the turnoff. Here is where I turn away from the Malacca Strait and start the long journey to the north. Something like that. Anyway,
so this is the main intersection before you reach Cape Rachado. Turn. I’m turning left here. Hopefully onto a less busy road. And the military museum, the army museum is just up ahead on the right. I’ve been there three times, I think. It’s for various I went there by myself once, shot a video there. I went back with Daryl from the Wander Eats YouTube channel and he shot his video and I came along just for company, I think. And I think I went back a third time just out of interest.
So all on all sides of me here, you can see military compounds training and yeah, who knows what it all is. It will be interesting to see what happens with the weather as I go inland because I’m going to be mainly on the east side of the mountain range and I don’t know if that affects the monsoon weather cuz I think the weather on the west coast is sunny right now like this but on the east coast still a monsoon period so it’s rainy over there But going through the middle of Malaysia on the east side of the mountain range, I don’t know what that will do to the weather. I’ll climb a little bit so temperature will cool a little bit. And directly ahead of me there, that building with the orange roof and you can see a train on the outside, that’s the Army Museum.
It’s well worth visiting when you’re in the area. They have a lot of weaponry on display and they even have an underground tunnel, a replica of how the communists built their tunnels underground during the emergency. It’s quite interesting to see.
Complete change of scenery. Much more quiet road, which is nice. Oh, and going up and down pretty steadily. So, a lot of climbing and descending already. Very low.
But right up ahead there’s a whole bunch of monkeys. And I planned on pulling over here in the shade to take a drink. And yeah, I think I will do that. Even though the monkeys are also taking advantage of the shade, I’m sure we can coexist for a few minutes.
So, I kept talking about the military and yeah, here they are. Couple of large armored. Three of them. Four of them. Five. Six. Could be coming back from a training exercise.
Yeah, the convoy started with one of these MP cars with the flashing lights and it ends with one at the back. And there they go.
It looks like this is a popular spot for people to stop their cars and trucks and feed the monkeys. So, and they got these huge trees up there where they live. So, now that I’m resting here for a few minutes, they’re coming down out of the trees and coming back out onto the road again. See how close they’re willing to come to me.
All the ones that were on this side, they went back into the bush already. So, this is my resting spot. Yeah, I could spend the rest of the day here. It’s kind of nice because of the shade, which is really cool. You don’t get a lot of wind here, but once in a while a big truck goes by or two or three like oil trucks will go by and then they’ll carry a big blast of wind with them. Even the cars actually kick up a little bit of wind and it feels nice and cool right here. And I’m just sitting here as long as possible forcing myself to drink.
I find it really hard to drink warm water. So on a day like today, any cycling day, I just don’t drink enough at all. And yeah, I have to force myself to keep drinking as much as possible.
Yeah, all of the macaques are gone. There was a big truck there and I think the driver of the truck threw out a whole bunch of bananas for them onto the road and that’s why there were so many macaques. But in the time that I’ve been sitting here resting, I’ve yeah, all the macaques have disappeared, gone back into the forest.
I’ve got my little towel for wiping off sweat. It makes a nice little pillow. I’ve already been lying back like this for about 15 20 minutes. Really nice. Take a little nap almost. But while I was lying here, of course, I had to remember to keep my hands on my GoPro mount and my sunglasses cuz these macaques, of course, could probably come running in here and snatch it before I realize it. So, I’m holding on to things. Made sure all the bags on my bicycle are closed and locked so that if I close my eyes for a while. No macaque manages to get into the pockets and steal anything. And while I was lying down here, I realized I have to be careful with my microphone. I forgot I had this underneath my shirt.
And I was doing that when I was in Sumatra.
There goes the big truck. Yeah, nice breeze goes by. Feels nice and cool every time a truck goes by. But when I was in Sumatra, I wore a microphone underneath my shirt like this with a wind muff. And the wind muff collected all kinds of sweat that was dripping down my chest. And then it funneled all the sweat into the microphone. And yeah, it basically destroyed the microphone. So I just realized, yeah, I better be careful. I have to not use this wind muff or use a lavalier mic or something.
I remember on previous cycling trips if I would pull over to the side of the road to just relax or maybe make a cup of coffee with my stove or something or get a cold drink. I always wished I had a lawn chair with me. More gear, you know, to make your bike heavier, but it’d be really nice to be able to sit down on a comfortable chair at the side of the road.
But I’ve never bought one. Like you can buy small ones, camping chairs, but yeah, I’ve never bought one.
Back to pedaling. I just spotted a bunch of these macaques running up the road in a group. And yeah, I guess there’s a car parked up ahead there. I think as soon as they see a car come to a stop, they think maybe there’s food. So yeah, park your car and all the macaques will come to you.
Yeah. And there they are on that side of me.
Big male right there.
Lot of juveniles.
Yikes.
It’s a good thing there isn’t much traffic cuz yeah, there’s not a whole lot of shoulder for a slow moving bicycle like me.
My found treasure sunglasses already broke, which is not surprising. They were probably sitting out in the sun for a long time and then the plastic just gets brittle from the sunshine and just the ear just snapped off. But I can still wear them for the rest of today on one ear.
Beautiful stretch of forest here. But yeah, you see these macaques climb up to the top and they are so high and they’re just so nonchalant about it. They can climb up there and then just perch. None. These macaques are not afraid of heights. Can you imagine being a macaque part of this colony and then you’re afraid of heights? You know, you’re like this one weird macaque that for some reason you can’t stand heights. And there’s a Pixar animated movie in there somewhere about the young macaque who can’t fit in because he’s scared of heights and what adventures he ends up going on.
Beautiful road.
Very nice. I still hear the planes up above the jets landing at KLIA cuz we’re not very far from the airport. I keep seeing the jets go by overhead as they’re going in for a landing just like at Port Dickson. In this state, by the way, where I am, where Port Dickson is located, this whole area, I’m in the state of Negeri Sembilan. Negeri Sembilan, which in English, I think it translates to nine states. And it has a very interesting history which we might see today or in a couple of days in the future where this region is connected well connected it’s part of the Minangkabau people the Minangkabau people from Sumatra migrated to here so this whole area of Negeri Sembilan is also Minangkabau it’s a very interesting society because it’s one of the largest remaining matrilineal societies in the world where the family name and title to property all that kind of thing goes down the female line. So inheritance goes from mother to daughter in terms of property and possessions things like that. It’s a matrilineal society. It’s also sort of a unique state. I don’t understand the vocabulary exactly, but the name Negeri Sembilan means nine kind of like nine kingdoms because the whole state was made up of nine separate states and they all grouped together to become one. But they still have each has their own identity.
And each one has their own leader and then they pick a leader from the nine states. The group as a whole comes together and forms the government and then they pick one leader from amongst them. But I was thinking that because it’s a Minangkabau culture here, we should see some buildings, you know, particularly government buildings or large communal buildings that have that very special shape to them like water buffalo horns that you see all over Sumatra. Should see them here as well. Probably not as much as in Sumatra, but chances are we’ll see the special roof line that’s associated with the Minangkabau. We will see them here sometimes.
Yeah. Interesting area. All around me, you see a huge palm oil plantation.
It’s clearly run by a large corporation. They had some very big gates, guard, not guarded, but you know, locked gates and a lot of signs telling you it’s a restricted area. You’re not allowed in there. So, big company owns all this land and is running oil palm plantation. Yeah. Huge. Just see it’s stretching out in front of me. And I started recording video again because just up ahead I saw an outline of the Titiwangsa mountain range, but it’s all covered up already by the trees. Can’t see them.
One funny thing, while I was sitting there resting for a while in the shade, I felt my left foot burning and I was lying on my back and I was kind of too lazy to look to see what was going on. I just assumed the sun was burning my foot or something. And then the burning sensation just got stronger and stronger and it became so painful I had to look.
And if you’ve had experience with this, you know exactly what I’m going to say. I look down at my foot and there’s like a tiny ant, just like a one very small ant sitting on my foot with its mandibles biting into my flesh. But it was like my whole foot was on fire from that one bite. It’s incredible, an ant bite, how painful they can be. And then I’m, you know, I’m riding along here just looking around and suddenly I’ll feel my foot suddenly starts hurting. I was like, “What the heck? Why is my foot hurting so much?” I look down and there’s another little ant on my right foot just biting and biting and biting. It’s like, it’s crazy. They’re so small.
But they can cause so much pain.
Beautiful stretch of road. Usually very quiet until one of those motorbikes goes by. Has like a mosquito engine on it. A high buzzing sound. Not long after my rest with the macaques, call that the macaque nap, I saw this spot. There haven’t been a lot of places open again. I think because of Ramadan and it’s a weekday and this is kind of a weekend warrior holiday kind of district. But this place I spotted from the road. But I heard music coming from it and I thought, “Ah, let’s duck inside. They got some shade in there, so I’ve got my bike out here and I just got a cold drink. Looks like it could be quite a happening place. They have a sound stage up there. I was chatting with the waiter, the guy who came to my table and he says he’s from Lukut. So, he actually was born and grew up in Lukut, but he works here and he sleeps at night in the back of this restaurant. So this is where he probably works like five, six days a week and then goes home to Lukut for the weekend or one day a week or something like that. Yeah. He says his boss, the owner of the restaurant lives in this house down there. So that’s his boss down there. And yeah, I just found a spot here to rest out of the sun. The sun has been pretty brutal today. Ordered an iced tea. I’ve been letting it get cold and cold and cold. I haven’t even touched it yet. They did have a water cooler here, but the water came out of it like boiling hot. I noticed though that the switch wasn’t turned on, so I tracked down which plug and I turned it on. So, I’m waiting now to see how quickly it can cool down some water. So, let’s give this a try. It’s just a KO sweetened.
Nice. Though to be honest, when if you’re cycling in a hot climate like this, you can’t stay hydrated with drinks like this. Well, if you’re a millionaire, maybe you could. Cuz right now, I could drink 10 of these. like line up 10 of them if I could go through all of them. So really to stay hydrated you have to rely on water. But as I mentioned during the macaque nap I have trouble drinking warm water. I don’t know what it is. My throat just closes up when warm water hits it and I’m just like forcing my I’m swallowing takes it’s really hard to swallow. So it’s kind of hard to stay hydrated with just water. So anyway, I’m hoping this will get cold. I’m going to go find out. It’s a funny thing about warm water. In most of Asia, in my experience, people prefer hot water, at least warm water. It’s not a habit here to drink ice cold water the way it is in the West. So yeah, people I think that people have a certain idea that cold water isn’t healthy. It’s not good for you. and they prefer, you know, room temperature at least, or even hot water. They like it better than cold water. But yeah, not me. Not me.
And I have some new technology that I’ve never really used on the road before. So, I’ve got this power bank, for example, and I don’t know if it’s working properly because my number one phone was running out of power. So, I thought, hey, I’m a genius. I bought a power bank. So, now I can just plug in the power bank, put this into my pannier bag, and then just let it charge up while I’m riding, right? But I’ve had it plugged in for hours and it doesn’t really seem to be doing any charging. Could be because I’m running Strava and Relive like tracking apps. So they’re using power in the background. So maybe all the power that’s being drawn from this is only going to keeping the phone running. And every time I take it out, it’s overheated. So like when I go to Google Maps, it automatically turns on dark mode because it’s overheating. And I haven’t been able to take pictures. So it feels like when the phone overheats, it can’t charge. I think that’s what’s going on. I plug this in, it starts charging, it overheats, and then it goes into safety mode and as part of safety mode, it stops charging. And I may have gotten like 1 or 2% of battery and then it just shuts off. And even though it’s plugged in, it’s not charging anymore. So yeah, I think that’s what’s going on. It’s one thing about the modern world where you have such good maps. I was looking at there’s actually a little town right up ahead here that had a couple of homestays listed on Google Maps and I assume they’re just really expensive.
But I noticed on Google Maps that this little town is right beside a river. And I was thinking I could find a little camping spot beside the river.
But knowing that there’s a river up here kind of makes sense because all while I was riding earlier, it was all uphill. Just steadily steadily going uphill for the most part. And now I seem to be going downhill very gradually. And that makes sense because there’s a river up ahead. And the land always goes down to the river, crosses, you know, a road will go down to a river, cross, and then go back up the other side. So right now I’m just sort of coasting along with the help of gravity right now, which is kind of interesting.
Everything around me is a very serious corporate sort of oil palm plantation. They have a lot of security and yeah, a lot of signs telling you no, no, no, no, no, no, don’t come in here. So, even though it looks like you could go in there and camp, not in this area, it’s not how that works.
Yeah, cycling. Today is day number one on my trip. Oh, so very difficult today. Did you ever arrive today from Canada? No, I didn’t arrive from I came from Indonesia. Indonesia. So then I stayed in Port Dickson for a little while and then today I rode my bicycle from Port Dickson to here. In this country, why Malaysia? Why Malaysia? Well, yeah. I hope to like keep riding to the north, go all the way to Thailand. You want to Thailand? Yeah. Yeah. Cycle, but then come back to Malaysia to Terengganu. Terengganu and then Kota Bharu Terengganu down the coast. How old are you? How old are you? Uh 62. 62. You’re strong, huh? No, today I’m very weak. Like I said, today is day number one. So, my legs are not in good condition. I’m very tired today. But, it’s hot. Yeah. Today was so hot. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to go to Rantau. Rantau, but there’s no hotel in Rantau. Rantau has a hotel, but doors. Ah, so long. I think 15 km. Oh yeah. From here. Okay. Probably expensive hotel as well. No. Yeah. I have camping equipment. So you want camping at a beach. Where’s that? Yeah. I can camp here. You visit this side and right go have a beach. Oh beach. Yeah. But it’s so far away. 20 km. Yeah. It’s too far. No. No. I can’t go there to me. The day is finished. Is over. I maybe I will look down here. There is a river. Maybe I can camp beside the river there. Oh, river is very dangerous as a crocodile. It’s okay. They won’t bother me. What is this drink here? Corn. Corn. Corn. Corn. Corn. Is that Malay word? No. No. English. Corn. C O R N. Oh, corn. Oh, it doesn’t look like corn. Huh. And this one chocolate. Chocolate. Green tea. Okay. Strawberry ly. Lime. So could I have one? Green tea. Green tea. And I guess one. Yeah. Is it three ringgit? Three ringgit. Three ringgit. Okay. You want cup with a straw? Yes. Yeah. Two.
Touch and go. Touch and go again. I will try.
So, one of the great things about a hot day is you get to enjoy a lot of cold drinks. So, I was just cycling through this really nice town here. Really beautiful, really pleasant. And I came across this roadside place. So, I got my green tea iced drink. They even have touch and go here. So, I could pay with a touch and go. So, there’s the place. Very busy. Now that it’s later in the day, the day of fasting is over. So, everybody here can have a cold drink. So, all these places at the side of the road are opening up. And I have a nice chair to sit in. I said, “Yeah, have a seat.” And I was chatting with the young guy here and he suggested a place to camp. It’s an area I was looking at on Google Maps actually across the river and he said there’s like a little park there with shelters and it’s right beside the highway, but that’s fine with me. But I’ll after I finish my drink, I’ll ride across the bridge and check this place out. See if spend the night there. Yeah, it’s a lovely little town. Really nice people here. Very friendly. Feels very suburban, almost like a Canadian suburb with this grid pattern of streets. It’s very open, very casual kind of town. Yeah. The young man at the drink stall, he did talk there is a homestay here. I saw it on Google Maps, but he asked around and they said, “Yeah, it’s 200 ringgit a night.” It’s like a kind of place where you rent the whole house for your family. It’s not like a hotel where you just rent a room. So, it’s not really an option though. When I was chatting with people there, I think I figured out a trick for getting people to understand what I’m doing.
If they ask me where I’m going, like today, then if I mention the next town up the road, it just gets very confused. People don’t really know what I’m talking about. And if I talk about going all the way to the, you know, north Malaysia and crossing the border into Thailand, that also doesn’t really click with people. Nobody really knows what I’m trying to say. But I found out that when I mentioned Terengganu, then everyone went, “Oh, that’s what you Okay. So if I just say like the people ask me where am I going and I say Kota Bharu or Terengganu then they understand. It’s like oh you’re on a bicycle journey across Malaysia to go to Kota. Then it just clicks with everybody and they’re like oh okay okay now we get what you’re doing. But even this guy, I was talking to him about where I can go camping. Like where’s a you know, I told him about a tent and sleeping in the tent. Where can I camp? And he kept saying beach. Well, it didn’t sound like beach. He was saying something else. And I didn’t really know what he was talking about. And turned out what he was saying was go back to Port Dickson. like go down go to the beach and if you go to the beach you can go camping there but of course that’s where I just was right anyway but people that don’t do a lot of cycling they just assume well he told me it’s like it’s 20 km to go to the beach and I’m like well for me that my day is over I’m not turning around and going all the way back 20 km. So anyway, here’s the river. Here’s the bridge and the river. So this is what I had my eye on was this area down here. I saw that on Google satellite view. So this is what I was thinking of. Just go down there and put up my tent. And already the local people were totally freaked out when I said I put my tent by the river cuz they all said, “Oh, crocodiles, crocodiles.” But I’m not worried about any crocodiles down here. But he was suggesting a park over here. So that’s what I’m going to look at. Now, the good thing about these parks is that you can put your tent if depending on how it’s designed underneath one of those shelters. So if a rainstorm comes in during the night, you have a roof over top of your tent.
Yeah, I can see what he’s talking about over there.
But they look like picnics, like small.
They’re like small rooftops over top of benches.
So, you might not be able to put a tent underneath one of these roofs, but nice grassy area right by the highway. So, you’re going to have all the traffic noise all night. But a local person suggested this as a good place to camp. So, it feels like it’s a possibility. It’s a little bit stinky down here. There’s a manure smell. So, I think we’re near some farms. A lot of manure. All right, let’s check out what could be my home for the night. Seems doable. It’s reasonable. I’m hoping there isn’t a giant rainstorm during the night. I don’t know whether my tent is waterproof anymore. So, it could be a bit of a disaster to set up your tent and in the middle of the night water starts pouring in. But yeah, here’s a little park. It’s not in the town, which is good. So, it’s not like you’re bothering people. It’s actually outside of town. And I mean, if I put my tent up right down here, I’m hidden from the highway.
Got a little spot here if I had Yeah, I could actually buy some Well, I’m not in the mood to cook, I don’t think. If I don’t really have the energy to cook, but I mean, right here seems very nice. Put my tent right here next to this table. Yeah, I checked online and sunset is 7:30 right now and it’s 6:30 now. And I did the American hobo trick in his videos. He talks a lot about scouting out a camping spot, things like that. And then you have to make sure you have enough daylight to set up your tent. And then he would look at the sun and use fingers. One finger is I think he said 15 minutes, which works out because I’ve got four fingers between the sun and the horizon, which means sunset is in an hour and according to the internet. Yeah, sunset is in 1 hour cuz it’s 6:30 right now. So yeah, so this could be my first outdoor home in Malaysia. Yeah, I was kind of wondering whether I could camp underneath the giant water tower or whatever that thing is there. I love big industrial construction sites like that. But the town is on the other side of the river. There’s not much on this side, so this is probably a better place. But oddly enough, I don’t feel hungry at all.
But I should if I can get something to eat.
Hello. How are you? Hey, thanks. A roti John satu daging satu ayam. Okay.
And all right, dinner time. Actually, it’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I was so busy this morning getting my bike and all my gear ready. I don’t usually eat breakfast anyway. I just had coffee this morning. And then in a heat like this, I just don’t have an appetite. I’m not even hungry right now. Even to be honest, I could easily have just sat at my tent, lay down, and just said, “Okay, that’s it for the day.” I wouldn’t have anything to eat until tomorrow. I’ve got some extra around the middle right now anyway, so I can draw on that for energy. But I have noticed in the past if I go a long time without eating, I can get a little bit on edge, you know, emotionally or mentally, you get a little bit irritable. So, I figure it’s probably a good idea to get something to eat. The only place I could find in town there that jumped out at me anyway was a Roti John place. And I got two of them because I figure I can have one for dinner and then I can keep one for tomorrow for breakfast or I may end up powering through both of them right now. I’m not really sure. But anyway, one chicken, one beef. Anyway, this is a roti John. I don’t know if it’s only in Malaysia. Is it a Malaysian thing? This it’s a sandwich. Basically, a big kind of like a Subway sandwich. And yeah, basically jammed. This one would be jammed with either chicken or beef and sauce and all kinds of goodies, right? It’s basically a big sandwich. So, I’m pretty happy about that. Nice and simple to eat.
Yeah, I am hungry. I didn’t feel hungry, but now that I had a bite Yeah. I’m hungry.
I powered through one roti John and I think that’s all I can handle for now. I probably should have gotten just one the second one by the time it’s morning. It probably is going to have dissolved and I have no idea if I can protect it from ants and monkeys. There’s a whole bunch of macaques in those trees over there. If I bring this roti John into my tent, I’ll probably have like 10 macaques crawling around on the outside and give us that roti John. We want it. Yeah. It’s like a little things in life come as a big surprise. I’m sitting there eating the roti John, and you might think, well, you’re sitting out in the open. And you think, well, what are the problems that could arise? It’s still really hot. So, just the effort of eating. I just broke out into this huge sweat. So, I’m just like drenched in sweat again, just as if I’m riding the bicycle. And you might think mosquitoes. You might think of all kinds of things, but I’m sitting there eating the roti John. And then suddenly, again, my feet are just on fire. I look down and both of them are covered in ants. And I’ve always been a big fan of ants. I like ants. I think they’re cool. I think they’re interesting. So, I don’t know what it is about them that they get onto a human and they’re just wandering around and then they go, “Hm, this creature that is millions of times bigger and more powerful than I am. I think I’m just going to bite him.” It’s like, what did I ever do to you? Like, why are you biting me? Like I don’t understand what the impulse is. Yeah, I’m not their enemy. I haven’t done anything, but man, and then you start crushing all these ants and then your feet are still on fire and then you find they’re all underneath the straps of your sandals. So you undo the strap and there’s like ants underneath the strap and they’re all just biting you as well. It’s crazy. Yeah. I don’t know why they’re so upset with me. He’s like, “Quit biting me, dudes.” It’s like I didn’t do anything. So, I ended up sitting with my butt on one cement stool and my feet up on the other because as soon as I put my feet on the ground, the ants just poured onto my legs again and onto my feet. So, I have to keep my feet off the ground. Anyway, while there’s a little bit of sun left, I thought I would come down here to the river. I was going to look up the name of the river. I think it’s Linggi or something like that. River. Looks like there used to be some sort of a breakwater here and flooding tore it apart.
And as I said, the local people in the town, nearby town, they were warning me that it’s full of crocodiles. I’d love to see a crocodile. I keep hearing about them, but I’ve never actually seen one anywhere. But yeah, I don’t see any crocodiles.
So Oh, here they come. I heard something. They’re after my roti John. Yeah, you can’t leave anything out. Ah, look at that. The way they’re walking on the bottom wires and they have their tail hooked over the wire above them to balance themselves. So, that’s cool. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. That’s a behavior that they’ve learned over time.
So, here I am inside my tent at the end of the day. Hey, I just have my smartphone flashlight for lighting up the interior of my tent. There’s my sheet, my sleeping sheet, and it’s basically my clothing bag, and I use my bag of t-shirts and other clothes. Has a pillow. And got a little blowup sleeping pad, but you can see it’s all drenched in sweat already. All of my clothing from today is drenched in sweat. Pannier bags are soaking wet. Everything is just damp and there’s no way it’s going to dry at all. It’s so hot and humid. Yeah. So, yeah. Over here, my tent is kind of cool cuz it has two doors. Like that is a door that opens up the whole side of the tent. And there’s a vestibule over there. So, I have my trailer in that vestibule covered up by the tent fly. And then on the other side, there’s another door that opens up this whole side of the tent. So, you can get into the tent from the left or the right side. And I have my bicycle over there. And I have the fly on this side tied to my bicycle. And so this is the door that I can get in and out of. And then on this vestibule is where I store the trailer. And of course I brought my two pannier bags inside cuz they have all the valuable things inside there. And those two bags are from the trailer. And they contain all my little items that I might need during the night. All my camera gear is in one of those bags. and everything else. But so this closeup of my face is pretty much the end of the day. And yeah, not much else I can do tonight. If I were in a hotel room, of course, I’d set up my laptop and copy video files and audio files and all that kind of good stuff, but can’t really do that here. I mean, it’s possible to do it in a tent. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it. The American hobo, the YouTuber Daniel, the fact that he sleeps in a tent like this several nights in a row. Like, I’ve followed his journey and he could be like sleeping in a tent four or five nights in a row and the entire time he’s still editing video on his smartphone and uploading and yeah, it’s a lot of work. If you’re cycling in Indonesia, it’s just really really hard just to do that. And then cycling and shooting video at the same time is like it doubles the amount of energy required. And then if you’re camping out as on top of that, so you’re cycling, camping, and shooting and editing video in your tent. That’s amazing. Yeah, that’s quite an accomplishment. Yeah, who knows? I don’t think I could ever do that, but yeah, we’ll see how it goes. All right, that’s it for today. Day number one. Yeah, really fun day. Really enjoyed that. The heat was pretty hard to deal with. The sun and the heat pretty brutal, but a lot of interesting things along the way. Got to take a look at Port Dickson on my way out. Stop at all the beaches, go for a swim, stop for a cold drink here and there. And this last this little town that I saw at the end of the day, I didn’t get a lot of video of it, but it’s a really nice town. Really enjoyable place, very friendly. And then roti John for dinner and setting up my tent. So that’s it. Shutting down for now. And I’ll see you tomorrow.