VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Welcome back to Planet Doug!
I am finally back on the road! After a forced break to repair my bicycle (and a generous stay at the Royale Chulan hotel), I’m leaving Seremban behind. Today’s goal is the historic town of Kuala Pilah, a short 35-40km ride.
But as always on Planet Doug, nothing goes exactly to plan.
In this episode:
– I test out the repairs on my bike after the chain snapped.
– I battle the end-of-Raya holiday traffic jams heading out of and back to the city.
– I face a tough choice: take the flatter main road or the steep, winding scenic route?
– I narrowly avoid drinking laundry soap at a gas station (seriously).
– I arrive in Kuala Pilah only to run into a classic “OYO Hotel” mystery involving two hotels with the same name, a “King Deluxe” upgrade I didn’t ask for, and the eternal struggle of finding a working power outlet.
Join me for a sweaty, scenic, and slightly chaotic ride through the Malaysian countryside. Plus, stick around to the end for the full rundown on why a “Deluxe” room sometimes just means a higher floor.
📍 Route: Seremban to Kuala Pilah, Malaysia
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
That’s it. Thank you very much. See you next time. Okay, sir. Nice to meet you. You too. Uh, Kuala Pilah. Kuala Pilah. Yeah. Yeah.
Good morning and welcome back to Planet Doug. I’m just outside of my last hotel here in Seremban, the Royals Hotel, the OYO Hotel here. Yeah, I had a very comfortable stay. And uh as I mentioned when I came here, they’re connected with the hotel, the Gilang Star Hotel that I stayed in in Port Dickson. So once I uh showed up and I mentioned that I was on a bicycle, they went, “Oh, you were staying at the Gilang.” And that is ours, too. So, it’s always nice to feel recognized. You’re known. And because they knew I stayed at the Gilang Star Hotel in Port Dickson, they waved the early check-in fee for me. It’s normally a 30 ringgit extra to check in early.
Whoa. My first bus of the day whipping past, but um yeah, it’s normally and I showed up around 12:30 or 12:15, something like that, really early. And they said, “Oh, it’s 30 ringgit to check in before two.” But then once they realized who I was, my reputation preceded me and they said, “Ah, it’s okay.” You know, just here’s your room key. Go check in. Cuz a room was already ready. And I noticed later in the day, they put a sign on the wall saying they were full. They had no rooms available again because we’re still in the uh the Raya holidays here in Malaysia. What day is today? I think today is Sunday. No, Monday.
I just lost an entire day. I don’t think the road will be busy going in my direction, but there might be a lot of people heading back to KL later in the day.
I scouted this route out yesterday when I was walking around my new neighborhood. So, I know that I have to move over into this uh right-hand lane on this oneway street in order to turn right.
Today is going to be an interesting day for a few reasons. One is that it’s the first true test of the repairs on my bicycle when I set off on this trip. To be honest, I didn’t think the bicycle would factor in at all. I’m just so accustomed to getting on the bike and going that I don’t really worry about it or think about it that much. So, I thought all of my thoughts and all of my time and energy would go into just being in a new part of Malaysia.
But, as it turned out, most of my focus has been on the bicycle and just gear in general. Getting uh back in the saddle and my bike fell apart a little bit as I’m if you’ve seen my previous videos, you know, it’s how I ended up in Seremban going to a bicycle shop here and getting repairs done. And even after all the repairs were done and I rode my bicycle to Seremban to stay in that nice hotel, the minute just a few minutes before I arrived at my hotel, my chain fell off completely. It didn’t just fall off the sprockets, it broke in half. And I didn’t know exactly what had happened. And I went back to the bike shop and they checked it over and they said the chain was fine. It was just the master link somehow came apart.
And when we examined the bit of the master link that I was able to find, it did look a little bit bent. So that could have been the culprit.
And we put in a new master link. I checked it this morning, looked at my chain carefully. Master link seemed to still be in place and doing fine.
So, testing my bike will be one part of today. Another part, of course, is uh the road that I’m on. Heading out into the countryside, leaving the big city, kind of a smaller countryside road, and it divides at one point, like a uh maybe 11 kilometers ahead. It goes right and left. And I think the left is the newer road, and it’s more flat gradients, I think. I could go that way, or if I’m feeling uh energetic, I can turn to the right, and then that road is very windy. Goes up into the hills more, I think. So, I could go that way. So, but either way I go, I think the road that I follow, heading finally into the Titiwangsa Mountains, I think is going to be very pleasant today. Someone wrote in the comments, uh, I don’t know if they were joking or not. They might have been serious saying, “Yeah, to avoid the heat here in this time of year in Malaysia, it’s a good idea to leave at 5.” And uh I wrote back and said, “Well, in principle, yeah, leave early to avoid the sun and the heat, but 5, yeah, then you’re riding for 2 hours in the dark.” I don’t know. I didn’t I was up at 5. I was actually up at 4 this morning, so I could have done it, but no, I I’m on the road at 7, which is still pretty good. Nice and cool right now. No sun at all. Hasn’t even uh come up over the horizon yet. And the third reason the day will be interesting is because I’m going to a small town called Kuala Pilah. And I have a I’ve already booked a room at another OYO hotel. There are two orange hotels there. They have the almost the exact same name, like OYO Orange Hotel. I’m not quite sure which one I’m at. Or maybe it’s the same hotel with two different pins on Google Maps. But anyway, I’m staying at an orange hotel, an OYO Orange in Kuala Pilah, and it’s a historic town. And uh could be an interesting place to spend the night.
There are so many bits and pieces of the bike and the bicycle gear to think about. It’s very easy to forget about one and I forgot about my little CatEye cycling odometer.
It’s not one of the fancy ones. It just keeps track of your distance, basically how far you’ve gone.
But other than that, I think I remembered everything else. I’ve got all my GoPros running, my Hero 12 over here, my Hero 9 down here pointing forward. I’ve got my phone, I’ve got Strava running to track my uh path today. All my batteries are charged up. I think I’m okay. The sun has come up over the mountains. 7:30 right now.
You can just see it up ahead above the hills and the trees there.
I saw one cyclist going in the other direction already. I thought this road might be popular with cyclists. He was more of a sport cyclist.
He was out in the uh early morning to get uh get some exercise.
I spend more time at red lights this morning than I have actually cycling. Man, these and these, as I’ve always talked about, these lights take so long to cycle from red back to green. So, got to settle in here for a moment. Take advantage of the time to uh wipe the sweat. I mean, I barely moved. And look at me. I’m sweating to death. Maybe I’ve just got the wrong clothing or something. I think I’ve got the wrong body. Oh, if anybody has a slightly used better body, you know, let me know. Maybe we can uh work out a deal cuz I need a new one. This one can’t handle the heat of Malaysia.
Since lately, I’ve been watching a few cycling videos on YouTube. So, the YouTube algorithm has started feeding me more and more of them. And uh two of them jump out at me right now. I think one of them I’ve mentioned already, a guy called uh Spencer. He just popped into my mind because I mentioned maybe my clothing isn’t quite right because it’s I mean it’s a thin shirt. It’s one of these sport shirts. Quick dry, quick wash, all that stuff. But I sweat so badly. And this guy Spencer, he was uh going a lot faster than I am, like a real cyclist. But a lot of the time he was wearing like this one piece onesie Lycra thing, almost like a a weightlifter’s outfit, really tight fitting to his skin. And then uh he had no shirt on, but he just had straps, like black Lycra straps going over his shoulders. And of course, he was doing that for comfort, to be as cool as possible, as streamlined as possible, like a real cycling outfit. But as I was watching his videos, I was like, “Ooh, I didn’t like the way he looked, you know? It just seemed I wouldn’t feel comfortable riding a bike here or in Thailand, wherever he was, and then pulling over, going up to a little cafe, and then you’re standing there in your one onesie Lycra with your bare chest and uh yeah, it’s just a weird look. I prefer just to wear normal clothes. Another red light.
And uh another cyclist just popped up in my feed yesterday. I can’t remember his name right now. I’ll put it on the screen. And he just started his videos anyway. Who knows? He may be way way behind on his videos, but according to his videos, he’s currently cycling in Laos. And he’s posted two videos. And uh the first video was all about his idea and his plan and all that kind of stuff. And I had to smile because he’s doing something quite similar to what I’ve ended up doing, though his is much more extreme. The way he uh the way he described his situation.
He needed to ride 1,500 kilometers through Laos and he had 25 days to do it before his visa expired. And I was doing the math on that, you know, 1500 divided by 25 and that was 60 kilometers a day every day. And my knowledge of Laos, especially for cycling, is it’s a tough place to cycle. Very mountainous. I mean, just endless up and down, up and down climbs. And the cyclists that I’ve seen who pass through Laos, they seem to really struggle. Maybe it’s because before that they were often in Thailand. And in Thailand, life is so easy. Hotels are plentiful. There’s a 7-Eleven every kilometer. You know, it’s easy to ride around Thailand. It’s very, the infrastructure is good and very foreigner friendly in a way. But then they cross the border into Laos and they just everything disappears. Seems almost like an empty country from a cyclist point of view. Every cyclist seems to struggle finding places to stay, finding food, finding water. They go through all these towns and villages and there’s no people in them. Nothing is open. That just seems to be that seems to happen to a lot of people. So, I was thinking this guy heading 1,500 km and he had no cycling experience at all. He didn’t even have a bike. And uh 48 hours earlier he came up with this idea. He was in uh Pakse and then he says, “Yeah, okay. I got this great idea. 2 days from now I’m going to get on a bike and ride 1500 km.” So and then he bought a bike and but of course he didn’t have any pannier bags or any specialized gear. So he shipped his backpack with most of his stuff ahead of him at his destination. I think he was going to Luang Prabang. He shipped his backpack there and then he just kept a little bit of his stuff and he put it all in a kind of a smaller bag and strapped it to a rack on the rear of his bike with bungee cords and uh put a couple of 1.5 L water bottles underneath the bungee cords as well. And off he went. He bought a Giant Talon mountain bike for $600. The guy wanted seemed really expensive, but I don’t know, maybe the Talons have different levels, more expensive models, cheaper models. But anyway, seemed like he paid a lot of money for that bike. And then off he goes.
And the reason I was thinking about him is because he set off with a with a singlet. So, a lot of people, not a lot, but a few people have left comments on my video saying, you know, you should get, you know, long sleeve shirt, cover up your arms and your hands from the sun. And this guy, he had a singlet on, basically just a workout halter kind of thing with just one thin strap over each shoulder. And just out of nowhere, he set off on his bike. And by the end of the day, of course, he had burned, you know, he burned so badly.
And uh I was thinking he I mean his YouTube channel doesn’t have a large audience, so he doesn’t have a lot of people commenting. But if people were telling me, you know, you really needed to cover up from the sun, I was thinking, man, what what in the world what in the world would they say to this guy? But yeah, he got burned pretty badly and almost as soon as he started riding, his bags and his water bottles just fell off the rear rack and they just fell off, you know, again and again and again. Yeah. Over the first uh few days that he was riding.
Guess where I am. Red light. Been waiting and waiting and waiting. Yeah, at least I get to take a rest.
One problem that I created for myself is that one of my camera mounts that I put on my handlebars in order to put it on securely, I ended up covering up the gear shifter indicator. So, I can’t see the indicator anymore. It’s covered up with a uh hose clamp and electrical tape, so I can’t tell if I’m in the first, second, or third sprocket on the front on the on the uh Yeah, on the crankset.
All right. Yeah, this is definitely first gear. My my good friend. Wow. Sweating so badly already. Sun isn’t even out yet. Pouring into my eyes. I can’t see.
Some beautiful scenery up ahead. And I mentioned the other day that the Titiwangsa mountains are very old as far as mountain ranges go about I think they estimate them at uh 250 million years old.
And a good sign that they are that old is how rounded they are after 250 million years. I mean they started off with two tectonic plates hitting and then they rise up and they’re jagged, right? Very sharp and rocky and then over millions of years rainfall erodes the mountains. The peaks disappear and then they become rounded more like high hills and that’s what the uh the Titiwangsa mountain range is you know 250 million years old I think mountains like the Alps are about 50 maybe I’m just guessing I think they’re about 50 million years old the Rocky Mountains in Canada probably in that same range but they’re all very rocky and have jagged rocky peaks they’re still actually going up and uh the Titiwangsa mountains stopped going up a long time ago and they’ve been just rounding off and getting lower.
Yeah, a lot of the people on scooters here, they just ignore the red lights. They just drive right through them or they actually they do a a detour. So, a guy in a scooter to get past this intersection, another red light, he will turn left, cross over all the lanes, and then continue on the other side. But, uh,
when you’re on a bicycle, you don’t you don’t mind taking a break, you know?
There’s a sign right up ahead of me, a highway, a road sign that says Kurang Laju. I talked about that sign the other day cuz I Google translated it. And as I was typing it into Google Translate, it told me Kura meant turtle, Kurang meant less, and Kurangan meant reduce. That’s what Google Translate told me. Someone uh a Malaysian I assume left a comment saying that turtle is actually kura kura. You have to say it twice. Kura by itself doesn’t mean turtle which kind of makes sense. I’m guessing that the root word kura kind of means slow. So the the name for turtle would be slow slow. That that’s my guess. Anyway, big highway system right here. If I wanted to go to Kuala Lumpur on a motorcycle, I’m assuming that’s where I would go. Hop on this highway, head for KL.
These are always the trickiest parts of cycling in Malaysia. You often find yourself in the middle of a busy set of roads with on-ramps and off-ramps and then you have to navigate to the left or right. I’m anticipating that this road is going to be quite small. So far, it’s not starting out that way.
And at 2 kilometers ahead is where I have to decide if I want to go on the small road. A lot more uphill climbing or if I want to go on the main road and take it easier. To be honest, the wise course is to stay on the main road just because again, I haven’t been on the bike very much. I’m not in very good condition.
I just passed a gas station and there’s a van or a car selling sandwiches. So, I thought I’d grab a couple of sandwiches, throw them in my bag for uh later on.
And there they are.
The whole variety of sandwiches. I think I’m going to go for a couple sandwich egg. So this is egg maybe. Egg mayo. And that’s two. Yep. You want it? No, it’s okay. I’ll just throw it in there. Only this. Yep. Okay. Uh seven ringgit. Seven ringgit. I’ll try a touch and go. Okay.
There you go. Okay. Seven. Seven ringgit. Seven ringgit. Yeah. Don’t pass. No. Thank you. And uh there you are. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Just kidding.
Very popular uh sandwich place. It’s kind of a a indicator to me of how much we value convenience because I mean I passed a 7-Eleven, they have sandwiches.
I’m sure in the uh the gas station you can get food, snacks, sandwiches, but then you think, “Ah, I got to park. I got to get off. A good, you know, but you put a car at the side of the road, put some nice sandwiches on there, and people flock to to buy their sandwiches. And part of it is, yeah, just it’s so easy to do. It’s so convenient.
Yeah, my heart really wants to take the small road, but it’s kind of early in the trip for me to do that. On a scooter, on a motorcycle for sure.
I think today, yeah, I think this is the this is the intersection.
And I I don’t really know where the road goes. I’m assuming this side road goes between those two hills. Like there’d be a saddle there and it would go up and over through that saddle. But I don’t really know how steep a climb it is. So, it’s a tough tough choice. Any other day, yeah, I’m taking that road, but I’m just feeling conservative today. The bicycle giving me trouble. Little little twinge in my knee.
I think I’m going to stay on the lowlands for today. Just take it nice and easy. I’m sad, but yeah, I think I think it’s the wiser choice for today.
It’s looking like even this main road is going to have more than enough hills to keep me happy. I’m surprised again at how much traffic there is because I don’t think of Kuala Pilah as a very large place. I mean, I don’t know where else this road goes other than there. Why would there be so many cars on this road? And why would there be such a big highway going to such a small town?
I’m guessing though that this main highway probably goes up in altitude just as much as the small road in total climb. But here they would they would have had a lot less curves and the grade would be the gradient would be a lot shallower. I think you probably run into a lot steeper climbs on the small road. That’s probably the difference.
Still nice and cool with the sun not far up above the horizon. Still sweating a lot though. I keep having to stop and wipe off the sweat.
There’s a pretty strong wind.
Heat. Heat.
It’s been a long steady climb for a few kilometers getting up this side. I’m still really curious about what the the small road would would be like.
And I had this idea maybe, yikes, why there was so much uh traffic on this highway today, the last day of Raya.
Maybe everybody is going home. All these people have gone somewhere else for the Raya celebrations. And now on Monday, they’re all heading home again. And they all live off in this direction. But I don’t know. Seems like there’s always a lot of traffic here, though. Why else would they build such a big highway? Nice to ride on. Big wide shoulder.
Still climbing and climbing. I’m surprised. For some reason, I didn’t think this highway side would be climbing quite as much. We’ve gone over some huge bridges. Whoa. Ton of traffic. There’s so much going in the other direction back towards KL. It’s just like an endless stream. So, I think people are trying to get ahead of the traffic jams. But yeah, I’m on this uh this uh huge bridge going over these giant ravines. And that’s that’s why this road is able to stay so flat because of this. Uh look at that. I don’t know if you can see how far down that is.
But they spent a lot of money on these bridges that are crossing these ravines. Very high altitude.
Would not have been cheap, but that’s how they managed to build this road. They had to rely on these giant bridges.
A few meters back, I could see the town of Seremban below me. So that gave me a clear indication of the steady, steady climbing all the way to the top. Not a tough climb, just slow and steady. I didn’t realize I was going up so much, but then you can see the whole city down below. And I think I’ve gone over the over the top of the saddle. You can see that on my side of the highway now there’s only one lane cuz we’re going down and the dual lane for slow and fast traffic, it’s on the other side. So, they’re the ones going up. And you can see I’m not pedaling right now. So going downhill and somewhere up ahead, maybe a kilometer ahead, I’ll be meeting up with that the small road.
And that small road went through a very different area.
There’s a big sign up there. Selamat Datang Kuala Pilah right across the road from me. Yeah, that sign back there that said welcome to Kuala Pilah. That’s something I’ve come across in many countries in Asia where I don’t know what they call this. It’s not the state. I mean the state is Negeri Sembilan but Kuala Pilah is both a city and a district right they give the district a big area and the city the same name and I always you always get confused about that you see a road sign that says 5 km to Kuala Pilah and you think oh I’m almost there but it turns out it was 5 km to the district and then it’s another 20 km to the city. But they give the district and the city the same name. You got to keep your eye on that. And there’s another sign across the road there, Central Forest Spine.
But I noticed that it has a photograph of that bridge that I crossed over that I talked about. A huge bridge over that big ravine. But as you can see, we’re going downhill now. And here on the other side, we’re going uphill. Whoa, that car was backfiring.
Just coming up on the sign for that small road. It goes to road 361, Bukit Pasir.
So if I had taken the small road right here on the up on the right hand side, that’s where I would have joined up with the main road again.
Yeah, right over there. Yeah, I can tell going down that road would have been would have taken a lot longer. Would have been a lot harder.
But it would have been an interesting experience.
Certainly a lot less traffic. I can feel that all morning long I’ve been shouting. So I feel like I have to shout to be heard above the roar of the traffic. It feels a lot like cycling in Canada to be honest. The roar of the highways in Canada.
There’s really big roadside attraction here. Ulu Bendul. It’s a big one across the road there. Very busy. A lot of restaurants and things. And there’s something on this side as well. I just thought I’d pull over, take a look at it.
RNR Ulu Bendul.
Sure. There’s a a Oh, it’s closed. Of course it is.
Maybe that’s why it’s so busy on the other side. But this side there’s nobody in the parking lot. Yeah, the gate is uh closed there.
It’s getting later in the morning now, 11:00 a.m. I stopped for a little bit of a nap at the side of the road in a bus shelter, and I noticed the traffic has really started to build up. When I got back on my bike, traffic was at a standstill. There was a traffic jam this whole highway.
And now it’s started to move. But you can see it’s basically non-stop cars from beginning to end. Could be an accident up ahead or it’s just congestion because there’s so many people on the move today.
Heat. Heat.
It’s funny how on a day like this with this kind of hot sun, you don’t really feel how hot it is until you stop pedaling. I stopped at the side of the road there just to adjust something on my bike. And as soon as I wasn’t moving, I didn’t have the wind anymore. And the heat was just brutal. Then you start riding again and you’re kind of, you know, creating your own breeze.
As you can see around me, yeah, the traffic is still pretty thick going in both directions. Sometimes it uh is so heavy it comes to a standstill the end of Raya traffic. But at least it doesn’t affect me as a cyclist, except of course having sharing the road with all these uh cars.
Steep little hill here I’m climbing up. I’m keeping my eyes open for places selling cold drinks, but that doesn’t exist at all. That was one of the great pleasures of cycling through uh Sumatra for me side of the road. They were always selling iced drinks, all kinds of different types. But here, I haven’t seen a single place selling cold drinks.
I guess it kind of makes sense. A lot of the traffic in Sumatra was open air. People on scooters or even farmers on tractors, kids on uh scooters. Here almost I mean 98% of the traffic is cars and uh I guess people are pretty comfortable inside their cars. They’re not feeling that hot, so it doesn’t occur to them. Oh, I need a need a cold drink, so maybe there’s just no uh market for it.
Hello. Okay. Well, I’m going to uh Kuala Pilah. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Someone inviting me to their house in Kuala Pilah. But I don’t know how I would ever find them.
Yeah, just a woman in a car there calling out to me from her car window. One issue with the traffic and cycling is that scooters and motorcycles also like to like that one go alongside the cars on the shoulder, but I’m kind of blocking their way. So, they have to uh time their uh passage to get past me. Yeah, look at all this traffic into tiny Kuala Pilah.
One good thing, not many trucks. I’ve hardly seen any trucks at all. That was one of my first.
My gears are shifting pretty nicely. I can feel it when I all when I get all the way down to first gear. I’m in first gear right now. 5 km an hour gear.
Two honks means hello. Two short toots and uh no flat tires, no broken spokes that I’m aware of, no blown out sidewalls, and what else? There’s so many things I have to keep an eye out for.
I think I might uh sit in the shade here just for a minute.
So, I’m just going to sit down here for a little while, have a drink of water, and enjoy the shade. I could really use a cold drink now. I have to figure out a way to carry ice with me. Ice would be pretty sweet.
And this is also a good example of how the sidewall on my tires blew out just because I can sit in the shade, but my front of my bike is uh sitting in the sun and the sun is just going to be beating down on it, beating down on my tires, all the rubber, my GoPros, microphones, everything. The sun just tears everything up.
I hope this chair holds me up. Oh, it’s nice that there is a chair here. But I think this chair is meant for police to come and sit or something. I’m sitting beside a emergency assistance goto safety point site. It’s at a Petron gas station. Not a moment too soon. I needed to get off the bike and I needed uh some of my favorite drink.
So far, this little bike ride has been kind of a walk down memory lane for me. It’s like uh I’m like, “Oh, yeah. And now I remember how hard it is. And now I remember how tiring it is. I remember how hot it is out there. It’s sort of like it all slipped my mind.
And recording video, even a little bit of video, raises the bar on the difficulty level considerably. It’s crazy. Like even right now, I’ve been sitting here for a while already. And I still haven’t even caught my breath.
And now that I’m speaking, yeah, I actually I kind of get lightheaded because you’re hyperventilating cuz you’re breathing too much. I’m right outside the town, by the way. This is my destination for the day. Uh, Kuala Pilah. It’s about 1:00 in the afternoon. I just arrived at the outskirts of town.
And it’s a I chose to come here, of course, cuz I I thought the road would be very nice, and it was. It was a beautiful road, nice and hilly going up and down.
And uh Kuala Pilah, historic small town. Thought it might be interesting to come here. And I figured about 40 kilometers, that’s about my limit for the day.
I don’t want to go much farther than that. And uh it’s working out pretty nicely. My my legs are done for the day. I mean, I probably could rest for like 2 hours or 3 hours, get back on the bike, and do another 20, 30 km, but just for one sequence in the morning, riding here in the morning, stopping at 1:00 p.m., 40 kilometers is is for me with my heavy bike and heavy load, heavy laptop, heavy camera gear, heavy everything. 40 km is uh just right.
Well, here at the gas station. Oh, no. Hold up. I thought this was water. I thought it was a water dispenser. I was going to fill up all my water bottles, but I just stopped just in time. I noticed all these bright colors here. It’s some sort of a laundry soap. I think that’s funny. I was about to drink laundry soap.
You know, in the Oh, just from the outskirts of town, Kuala Pilah seems like a much larger place than I expected. There’s a McDonald’s, an A&W, 7-Elevens everywhere, an EconSave, tons of traffic, wide roads, and looking ahead of me there, I see some pretty big buildings, too.
It’s funny how I gauge the size of a town based on whether it supports a McDonald’s and a 7-Eleven or not. That’s the way the modern world works. I I had an idea it was more of a a small village.
So, I’m in downtown Kuala Pilah now, the original old part of town where I stopped at the gas station that was kind of like a new suburb full of strip malls. I even saw a Kentucky a KFC. Look at all the traffic. It’s crazy. My hotel is about half a kilometer up ahead. Just hit a T intersection and turn left.
And not a moment too soon, I’m wiped out.
It’s amazing to me how tired I am. I’m not usually I don’t think I’m usually this feeling this tired when I’m cycling. Even if I’m starting after a break.
And I turn left here, I think. And I’m aiming for one of two orange hotels. I’m not entirely sure which one is mine, but my guess is my orange hotel is the one up here.
And here we are. I hope Hotel Orange OYO.
Not much of a not much of an entrance.
Okay.
So, I’m guessing that the door is locked. Let’s find out. Yeah, but they have a uh doorbell.
So, I think I have to go around the corner.
Even when I booked this room and I looked at them at on Google Maps and Agoda, I couldn’t figure out which one was which. They’re all orange and they’re all OYO. And OYO hotels are always risky. They’re always a little bit odd.
This could be one of these places where you check in over here and then they’re going to banish me to this place over here. But hey, look at this cool neighborhood. Little outdoor cafes.
Maybe this is the back side of the same place. There it is. Here. Also, Hotel Orange. Yeah, this would be a lot nicer if I could stay here. More places to put my bicycle.
Okay, in we go. Let’s see how this works out.
Hello. How are you?
I hope I’m in the right place. The right orange hotel. I have a uh a reservation for one night. One night. All right. Everything okay? Uh can take but it it was already included on the um when I paid through a uh they included the tourist tax. It’s already paid. I do pay any uh tax? No, I I already paid it online. Online payment payment to booking and tax both in tax. Yeah, I can show you. Yeah. And right here, like when you pay online, they send you two receipts. I Yeah, the tourism tax cuz it’s already included online. So, there’s the uh receipt. I don’t know if you want to make a copy. Okay. Yes, please. Yeah. Yes, sir. Okay.
So, yeah, this place looks uh very nice lobby. Got some cold and hot water. Oh, yeah. And even Oh, yeah. Sink area here with pots and pans. Kettle. Oh, that’s very nice. Has a little bit of a hostel vibe. And uh my room is up here. So, 202 right here.
D.
Nah.
Hey, hey, hey.
Well, And if you know me at all through my videos, you know what happened after I unpacked here in my room and got organized. First thing I did, of course, was plug in my kettle to boil water for coffee. Took a shower. Took all of my clothes that I wore today into the bathroom and just rinse them all out. They were drenched in sweat, just soaked all the way through. So, took some time to rinse them and they’re busy drying out over there. I hung them up. Had my cup of coffee and then I had a lot of post day work to do. All the photos that I took, I had to upload them to my online archive and I had the Strava app running today. So then I have to close down that project. You finish it and then you write a title and a description and upload all the photos to Strava. But these days I don’t actually use the Strava other than to get the GPX file. I download that on my laptop. Um, and then I copy that into an app called Map Director, and I use Map Director to actually make the 3D flyover map that I put at the end of all of my videos. It’s a very complicated uh process. And then of course I had to take all the memory cards out of all the GoPros and copy those onto uh yeah the drive in my laptop and then into a um SSD backup drive. It’s a it’s a whole production when I land in a hotel room at the end of the day. And it’s actually now just after 8:00 at night and I’m exhausted. I mean that day just kicked my butt. I mean I woke up at 4 if I remember right. Um, I had my alarm set for 5, but I didn’t need it. I woke up at 4:00. I tried to sleep for another hour, but I never did. I couldn’t fall back to sleep. I never can. So, I was out there pretty early and before the sun rose as as you saw. And uh, yeah, the ride to get here in this heat. I didn’t I didn’t know that March was such a hot month. Everybody’s telling me now, oh yeah, March, that’s the brutal heatwave month of the year. Didn’t you know? And I’m like, I know. I I didn’t know. I honestly didn’t know. So, yeah, that was that was hard cycling in that sun. I was very happy that I started as early as I did. And I’m really enjoying Kuala Pilah. I went for a walk uh out when the sun was still out and found it to be quite an interesting place. Had uh something to eat out there and another cup of coffee. So, this is my evening coffee. I thought I would have this coffee to uh accompany me as I close down the video for today.
And then, to be honest, I’m going to be going to bed pretty early. I’m so tired. And I booked this room for a second night already. I had a suspicion I was going to do that. I can’t come to a town like this and then not explore it at all. I mean, I’m not going to be able to spend a week here and really get to know it, but I need at least a day where I can relax and go out walking the streets, shoot a bit of video. Um, it’s got a lot of history here, a lot of Chinese shophouses, um, that go, you know, back before the wars, I think. And I think this town started in the British colonial days as a mining town. This is what I was reading online earlier. Follows a very similar pattern to a lot of the towns in Malaysia. And then a Chinese population um sprang up here running businesses all connected with the the mining operations. Mining is all done now, of course. But the history of that kind of lives on in the streets here with all the shophouses and yeah, it’s a very quaint, very interesting looking town. So, I have to spend a day here at least tomorrow and I’ll just walk around the streets and shoot some video and explore a little bit. So, that is my plan. Of course, that led me into my usual hotel adventures. Yeah, it’s still the holidays, I guess, because they put a sign up on the front door saying full. So, every room is taken and I’ve had that experience at every hotel where like the small hotels and they put up a sign um saying we’re full because people wander around like walk-ins looking for a place to stay and they’re like, “Yeah, sorry.” You know, we’re full. We’re full. And and this place is full as well. So, I wanted to get on reserving my room for tomorrow night. So, I I talked to the guy downstairs because it’s so complicated. There’s two orange hotels listed on Google Maps and on Agoda. And I’m I’m talking to the guys at the front desk. I’m trying to figure out, okay, are they the same listing? Are they different hotels? Like, I can’t figure this out. They they don’t seem to know either. Um, even when I point out to them like look on the map there’s two orange hotels and on Agoda there’s two separate listings but they look like they’re for the same hotel are they the same or are they different? They have no idea. So I just basically have to pick one and but the guy said to me, “Oh, if you if you want to stay in your own room, like stay in the room you’re in, you have to pick the king deluxe.” I’m like, “Well, why do I have to do that?” Because when I booked the room, I booked the cheapest. Like I booked a double standard, right? Because that’s what it was on the cheapest price and I picked double standard. And when I came in here, they gave me this room 202. And I did think, well, yeah, that bed, you know, it looks a little bit bigger than a double. I don’t know. But anyway, so this is a double standard. But he said, no, no, no, no. We we gave you a special room because this one was available. So, we gave you our deluxe king. That’s the room you’re staying in. And I said, “Well, if I if I rebook my my original reservation, can’t I just stay in the room?” He’s like, “Well, no. We gave you an an upgrade. So, now if you book a double standard, you’re going to have to move from your king deluxe into the double standard.” Like, well, I didn’t want the king deluxe. I booked. It’s like, ah, these things always happen to me. And I’m looking at the listings now and of course every time you go from double to double standard, double deluxe, king standard, king deluxe, the price goes up and up and up and up and up. Not by much to be honest each time, but by the time you’re done going from a double standard to a king deluxe, yeah, the price goes up a lot. And now I’m faced with, you know, I can either leave the hotel or if I if I book a double standard, now I have that whole problem of, well, now I got to pack up, move to a new room, but there’s going to be the whole problem of check out at 12:00, check in at 2. And the guy says, “Well, I’m sorry, sir. You You have to pay for a King Deluxe because that’s what we gave you, and if you want to stay in that room, now you have to pay for a King Deluxe.” Oh, come on. How do these things always happen to me? It it’s it’s quite funny. And by the way, it turns out that when I tried to get into this hotel, I thought the entrance that first entrance I went to and I kept ringing the bell, ringing the bell, nobody came. It turns out that was the back entrance to this hotel. I found the hallway that I was looking at through that door and the hallway goes right from the main lobby here. So, I was at the right hotel, but I was just at the back entrance, but apparently the bell doesn’t work. So, even though I was ringing it, nobody came. And then I went around to the other side. And of course, I locked up my bicycle outside. I found a set of gas pipes that often come out out of the ground and go into these buildings. And I lock my bike to these gas pipes. And I’m here in my room relaxing. And then I get a I get a knock on the door. And every time there’s a knock on my door, I panic because I assume it’s a problem. I mean, it’s always a problem. And I was assuming it was going to be the tourism tax that the owner heard something about me saying I already paid it on. I was like, “Okay, here we go.” The knock on the door. But it turns out where I had parked my bike was blocking delivery trucks cuz it’s a very narrow space. And this truck needed to back up somehow and deliver to a a neighboring business. He says, “Yeah, your bike is kind of in the way.” But then they let me bring the bike inside. So, that is a good thing. My bike is actually in the lobby. The guy was very nice and Oh, yeah. Just, you know, you’re staying in our King Deluxe. You’re our preferred uh guest. So, uh yeah, just bring your bike uh inside. This is definitely another eclectic hotel to add to my list of eclectic hotels. I suppose in Malaysian terms, the price is reasonable for this type of hotel, but it does feel to me a little bit overpriced once you kind of spend some time here. Like right now, I can hear I’m hearing a lot of doors slamming. The walls are not that thick. The door isn’t thick. I hear children screaming, babies crying. There’s a lot of noise comes in and the room is pretty um pretty tight, pretty small, not a lot of space. And the funny thing is I was looking at the King Standard and the King Deluxe on Agoda and I’m trying to figure out why am I paying more for the King Deluxe? Like I’m I’m going through all the facilities, right? And it’s like, okay, what? They’re the same size listing, the same features. It looks absolutely identical, but then on the King Deluxe, it says a window that can open. I guess that makes it a deluxe. The window can open. And and I remember looking at the window earlier, and it’s held together by um giant clips, like paper clips, the big ones with a spring, and somehow they jam them in there, and that’s how they’re holding the window closed, right? So anyway, my um my window that I haven’t even tried to open it, it can’t lock. It can’t close and lock. Um so anyway, the whole King Deluxe thing, but I think the real reason it’s a King Deluxe is that it’s on the second floor. I’ve learned that in different hotels that I when I was staying at the Royale Chulan, I ran into that. I ran into this big problem there. I don’t even know if I told that story on video or not because my mystery benefactor booked two nights and then I was going to stay a third night. So, my mystery benefactor booked me a third night. So when I went down to the front desk and I gave them a heads up about that because again I wanted to stay in the same room and they looked at the new reservation and they said, “Oh, you you can’t stay in that room, sir, because your new reservation is for a deluxe. You are in a cheaper superior. So you have to move from the superior to the deluxe.” And I didn’t want to. And I says, “Well, okay. So that’s an upgrade, right?” Yeah, it’s an upgrade. So, can I just choose not to accept the upgrade? Give it to somebody else. Like, someone else booked a standard, give them a bonus, let them upgrade for free to the deluxe. I’ll give it to them if I can just stay in this room. And the first night they said, “No, sir. No, sir. We can’t do that. We can’t do that.” So, I ran into this whole problem where now they were telling me I was going to have to check out at noon, wait 3 hours in the lobby so that I can check back in at 3:00 to go from my um superior double twin, a superior twin to a deluxe twin. That that’s what they told me at night. But then in the morning when I went down for breakfast, I went back to the desk just to try again. And it was new staff members. And I went up to this woman there, very lovely young woman, very helpful, very friendly, big smile, very, very amazing service at that hotel. And I told her, “Oh, I’ve extended for another night and I’m hoping I can stay in my current room. I don’t want to change rooms. Is that possible?” And she says, “Yeah, no problem. Just give me your key cards.” And I handed over my two room keys and she put them in the little machine and went boop boop. There you are, sir. You’re all done. It’s like, ah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, the first staff, they told me, “No, I can’t do that.” And the new woman, she’s like, “Oh, yeah, that’s fine. We can do that for you.” But then I wanted to find out what I was missing. I said, “Okay, now I’ve given up on the deluxe. What am I missing? Like, what’s the difference between the superior twin and the deluxe twin?” And she says, “Oh, they’re exactly the same.” I says, “Well, why is it deluxe then?” Well, it’s on a higher floor. You get a nicer view from up there because you’re on a higher floor. And that’s the only difference between the Superior Twin and the Deluxe Twin. You’re just on a higher floor. And actually, I I went up in the elevator to the higher floor just to look out the windows to see if it was like amazing. But there really wasn’t that much difference in the view from my fourth floor to like a higher floor. So anyway, that was my room extension drama there. And then I ran into the same room extension drama here. And I thought about just booking a double standard and then just sticking to my guns and saying, “Well, you guys gave me this room. I didn’t ask to be in a deluxe king. You just, you know, I was going to like push.” But then I then I would end up spending the whole night on pins and needles worried about tomorrow and worried about what’s going to happen. And now I’m going to have to plan ahead and pack up just in case I have to move. Anyway, I just I just booked the king my king deluxe room. I booked it for another night. So yeah, the Planet Doug Adventures, I’m telling you, they never end. I don’t know whether I’m the one that causes all these issues, but I I certainly run into them all the time. And you really notice the difference going from the nice hotel, the Royale Chulan to this one because this is even more eclectic than the one the the budget hotel I stayed in in Seremban. So, for example, they do have a water dispenser down in the lobby. So, I thought, “Oh, great. I can get water.” But it’s a tiny model and my water bottles you can’t fit underneath. Your bottle has to go in at such an angle that the water misses the top of the bottle. So, I can’t actually fill up my water bottle. So, I don’t have drinking water available here. And then in setting up this room, it has one outlet. This this one over here beside the bed, I have an extension cord plugged in there. That’s it. There’s there’s only one outlet. And that becomes a problem because I have all of my, you know, devices plugged into this extension cord over here that I put on the bed. But now I have nowhere to plug in my kettle. So every time I want to plug in my kettle cuz I can’t put the kettle on the bed. It’s it’s going to fall over. I have to unplug all my devices and switch this over and rig up another extension cord. You know, just having one outlet in a room. Don’t tell me that’s the deluxe, the king deluxe room, but you only get one outlet. I’m like, “Oh, come on.” Anyway, it just it takes a lot more effort to to live in a room like this, this sort of eclectic one. I can’t get the hot water heater to turn on either. I’ve done everything I can think of. I’m a master when it comes to this sort of thing. I know where all the buttons are. You have to turn on the power. You got to check the fuse box. You got to push the, you know, you got to do everything. But there’s nothing I can do. I can’t get the hot water coming out of that uh shower, which I don’t mind. But still, King Deluxe should come with hot water in the shower, right? Just little things like that. And then the sheets don’t really fit the bed, which is one of the most annoying things for me. I hate hotels, especially if you stay in the same hotel for a few nights in a row, and then the fitted sheet doesn’t fit. And every time at night, you’re kind of turning over in the bed and then you just pull the sheet free from all the corners. The whole all the sheets just untuck. And then you’re lying there on the bare mattress. And you spend every single day you’re busy tucking the sheets back in and putting them back in place and tucking them back in. And I guess it’s because it’s a king-sized bed, but they don’t have king-sized sheets that fit it. So they put small sheets on the bed and it just pulls up on the side and yeah and that that is a problem for me because this is Planet Doug’s studio and I normally I work here and I put my mouse on the sheet and for the mouse to work properly the sheet has to be nice and tight. But on this bed, it’s going to be a huge hassle because the sheet is already pulled loose all over the place and it’s all crumpled and I’m constantly pulling it flat and smoothing it out and tucking it back in and just these little things. Each single little thing is not a big deal, but then you put like 10 of them together and yeah, it starts to become Yeah. You feel it. You feel the difference from a real hotel to like a lowbudget style um hostel. This is like kind This one has a bit of a a hostel feeling, but has hotel prices. So anyway, pretty happy in here altogether. I love the town. So I’m really really glad I came here today. And I guess those are all my stories. So I will shut down now. And as always, if you’ve made it this far in the video, you made it all the way to the end and heard all of my stories, all of my babbling, well, you know that makes you a member of the crunch club, the Planet Doug crunch club, because you made it to the end of the video, and I love you for that. So, you can put CC in the comments, crunch club, to let me know that you made it all the way to the end of the video. You are a Crunch Club member and I put uh updates on uh Patreon and if uh you want to support the channel and what I’m doing, you can do that through uh Patreon. Join there and you can now support the channel through Touch and Go, my absolute favorite thing here in Malaysia. And I put a Touch and Go QR code for Planet Doug at the end of the video. You can find it there and scan that QR code. I definitely love uh touch and go. So, that is it. I am shutting down for now and I’ll see you tomorrow in the next video as I go out and explore a little bit of this town. Not anything particularly special. I’m just going to be walking around the streets and uh checking the place out. Yeah, I think it’s a pretty cool place. So, that’s it. Shutting down. See you in the next video.