VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
It wasn’t the day I planned, but it was the adventure I needed.
Welcome back to Planet Doug! In this episode, I’m at the very beginning of a bicycle tour across Malaysia, heading north toward the Thai border. But things have hit a major snag.
After a rear tire blowout and a catastrophic derailleur-meets-spokes incident, my trusty (but very old) bicycle with 26-inch wheels is left with six broken spokes and a bent derailleur. Stranded in Rembau with a ticking visa clock and the upcoming Raya holidays, I decide to become the Planet Doug Errand Boy.
Come with me as I take a local train journey with just my rear wheel, navigate highways where pedestrians don’t exist, and find a local shop in Seremban to save the day. We get a deep dive into the art of wheel building, the struggle of finding 26-inch parts in a 29-inch world, and why taking your time (and carrying spare spokes) is the key to touring.
In this video:
– 🚲 The reality of a broken derailleur disaster
– 🚆 Riding the KTM commuter train with bike parts
– 🛠️ A masterclass in wheel truing and spoke replacement
– 🇲🇾 Why Malaysia’s infrastructure is a challenge for pedestrians
– 🥛 The classic Planet Doug liter of cold milk celebration
This is a story about setbacks, local kindness, and the constant learning curve of bicycle touring.
📍 Location: Rembau & Seremban, Malaysia
🚲 Bike: 27-year-old touring dinosaur (keeping it alive one spoke at a time)
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Ooh, the steam from the coffee or from the kettle fogged up my GoPro lens.
And today, not surprisingly, is going to be all about everything that you see all around me. My poor bicycle. Had a lot of trouble with that over the last couple of days, mainly to do with this my rear wheel.
For anyone that doesn’t know, I’m currently at the beginning. I’m not even in the middle. I’m at the very beginning of a bike tour through the middle of Malaysia. I’m heading to the border with Thailand because I have to reach the border before my visa expires. I thought I had plenty of time, but things are going very slowly. So now I’m starting to get a little bit worried. And of course, we have the end of Ramadan holidays coming up this weekend when the entire country celebrates, goes home, highways will be jammed, hotels will be full. Yeah. So that’s what’s going on.
And two days ago, I was riding out of this town of Rembau in Malaysia, a small town, and the Titiwangsa Mountains are right over there. It’s dark outside. I can’t show them to you. And when you leave from Rembau, my route was going to take me up a steep hill. I was going up the hill. I parked at the side of the road to set up my GoPro so that I could film myself riding by. And then while I was doing that, I heard a loud bang and the sidewall of my rear tire just blew out. So basically, I had to turn around, walk all the way back to where I had come from, this hotel in Rembau.
And then yesterday I spent all day because I came up with a plan. What I did was go over everything and put in patches everywhere. And then yesterday after I fixed my tires, I rode up and down the parking lot just testing it to see what kind of air pressure to put into it, make sure everything is okay. And then I was changing gears and because the derailleur was bent, it went too far, went into the spokes and broke two spokes. I think it’s actually a third one also is almost broken.
So what I’m doing today is getting on a train with only the wheel. I’m bringing the wheel to Seremban. Get the wheel fixed. That’s you caught up. Short story, my bike is broken because I’m a dummy and I wasn’t paying enough attention and now I have to go to Seremban by train to get my wheel fixed.
And off we go on today’s journey. I’ve got my rear wheel here and it’s going to be a pretty pleasant day, I would think. Hopefully I read the KTM train schedules properly. There’s supposed to be a train at 9:22 and that will get me into town almost just a few minutes before the main bicycle shop that I’m aiming for is scheduled to open at 10:00. It’s about just after 8:30 right now and the train station is a kilometer or two away. So I’m walking to the train station.
So this is the main road going through Rembau and over there are the Titiwangsa Mountains. That’s where I was trying to ride when my tire blew up over there.
Yeah, as I’ve mentioned a number of times in the past, Malaysia is not designed for people on foot. It’s not a pedestrian oriented country. So it’s going to be interesting to see how I have to get down to the train station from up here. I’m climbing up over this overpass, which goes over a river and the train tracks, but the train station is on the other side. But I have no idea how I’m supposed to get down to the station itself on foot. We’ll figure this out as we go. Here’s the overpass. And there are all the train tracks. The trains actually run right behind my hotel. And that’s the train station over there. I’m not sure if I can get there on a more direct route.
There seems to be a road over here.
And this might go right to the train station. That would be pretty handy. According to the Google Maps directions, they want me to cross all the way over here and then do a big circle and then come this way. But no, look at this. Much easier route.
And it’s a KTM train, which is kind of like a subway system. You don’t buy a ticket for a specific train. It’s just like going into a subway where you pay the fare and then you just wait on the tracks for the next train to show up. That’s how it works with the KTM. Look at the size of this station. It’s huge. For a little town like this. Yeah. I think this is the second last stop on the train. This train goes all the way to Batu Caves. So this train that I’m going to be getting on, it would have started at Batu Caves, traveled all the way down to Kuala Lumpur, out the other side of KL down here, and then it continues in that direction. The final stop is just down there somewhere. So almost at the end of the line here.
Well, uh-oh. Nope. Ah, Malaysia. Malaysia, what are you doing to me? Look, there’s the door. There’s the entrance closed. So here I thought I was on to something. But yeah, this looks like an official entrance. You know, you just cross over. But for reasons known only to them, this whole side of the train station is closed. So here I was patting myself on the back for outwitting Google Maps. But Google Maps was smarter than me. It knew that this was a dead end. Anyway, so I got to go do this big dipsy doodle.
I wonder if they just overestimated how popular this train station would be. Like maybe they overbuilt it, overdesigned it cuz they got all this parking over here, another entrance, this whole building. And it looks like they’re only using the other side. So maybe they decided, yeah, we don’t get enough passengers here. So all of this, they don’t want to maintain it or keep the doors open. They just locked it up. All right. So yeah, I better get moving.
Crossing the overpass. And from here, you get a nice look at the train station. You can see just how big it is. And I have to get down there somehow.
I’m hoping there’s a more direct route. I can just go straight down, turning right up here, just hop over the fence and go down. We’ll find out. So far, no reasonable way of getting through there. It’s like a ravine and a swamp on the other side. So,
I’m getting the full Planet Doug experience right out of the gate, walking alongside a dangerous highway where nobody is meant to be walking. But honestly, there’s no other way to do it. There’s no other route to follow. So yeah, for pedestrians get left out of urban planning in Malaysia for the most part. I have no option but to do the dipsy doodle. Make sure there’s nobody racing over the hill. Yeah, I have to go in this direction and go all the way around.
Good thing I’m an early person, early bird. I always go everywhere early so I have enough time to do this. There’s the sign KTM Rembau station, the Rembau train station. And if you’re driving, this is how you have to go. And if you’re walking, yeah, you have to follow the driving route. There’s no pedestrian route at all. Cool. Getting there slowly but surely. There’s some of Rembau. Pleasant little town. And this is the intersection. There’s another sign for the train station. And yeah, this dipsy doodle is necessary cuz you’ve got to get across this highway. So this entrance goes underneath that big highway up there.
Woo! Cleaning up the garbage here. Must have been here for a while. The odor is wafting in this direction. Yeah.
Morning.
Yeah, it’s just like a giant garbage drop off point. And then they come here with a backhoe and shovels to clean it all up. Maybe that’s what I need over there. One of those big floppy hats. But can’t really wear a hat like that when you’re cycling. It just blows off your head.
I don’t like those big floppy rims all around. Cuts off so much of your vision. You can’t see where you are or where you’re going. Anyway, here we are almost. And yeah, I still got 20 minutes till my train is supposed to arrive. So I think I’m okay. I didn’t expect to be sweating quite this badly. So early in the day. Come on, train station. I hope you’re open. What’s going on here? A lot of the doors here are closed as well. Okay. Phew, there’s stairs. I was worried that the whole area was blocked off. So here are the schedules. There’s two different schedules for weekends and weekdays. Effective January 1st. Southbound, eastbound, southbound. And that’s ETS. ETS. None of this schedule is making any sense to me. It looks different from. Oh, here it is. Here. So I guess I have no idea what this is. This is a different train. I guess what I’m looking for is here. Batu Caves. Commuter train. And from Rembau heading that way, 9:22 a.m. So that’s the one I want. If I miss it, 11:12 is the next. So 9:22. I do not want to go to Pulau Sebang. So don’t go that way. It’s a ghost town, ghost train station. I see one guy down there on the platform. And that’s it. So far, I don’t see any staff. I wonder if they have anybody in the office. They probably have one person over there.
Yeah, just trying to cool down a little bit. They have the bathrooms here. So just see just how much I’m sweating.
All right.
The power of Touch ‘n Go. Yeah, looks pretty simple. Platform one and two. Seremban KL Central Batu Caves. And then if you’re heading to the other direction, you go across that way.
I wonder if you had a bicycle, could you use the elevators? I’m not sure. Oh, yeah. Elevators are working. Might as well. Down to the platform. Yeah, I’m thinking ahead. Once I get my wheel fixed, then maybe I have to go back to Seremban to look for tires because I don’t know if the shop today will have any tires for sale. This could. Yeah, actually get my derailleur fixed. I forgot about that. Yeah, so the derailleur is the more pressing problem.
And here we are. Ah, at least we’re out of the sun. Nice and shady. Hello. Hello. Morning. Good morning. Has the train come to this side? Yeah, this side platform too. Yeah. Heading to Kuala Lumpur? No, today only Seremban. Okay. Yeah. So here around here nearby here. No, I’m traveling on a bicycle tour. Okay. But my bicycle wheel is broken. Oh. So I’m going to Seremban and hope I can find a bicycle shop. They can fix it. Yeah, happy. Yeah, I hope so. If you’re traveling through Malaysia, it’s a very good idea to get a Touch ‘n Go e-wallet, you know, Touch ‘n Go e-wallet and then the Touch ‘n Go enhanced card because there are quite a few situations where you show up and there’s no way to buy a ticket. Like, you can’t pay in cash. So you really want to have one of these cards just in case.
And here’s my train. Right on time. It’s actually 9:21 by my watch.
And in terms of putting a bicycle on this train, it certainly would not have been a problem. Look at this.
Yeah, I should have just. Who knows? I should have just tried to bring my bicycle. Like there’s nobody in this car at all. And then one other person up there. Yeah, I think the next car is completely empty as well. And when you bring a bicycle, of course, you’re supposed to bring it to the either the first or the last car. And I would just put my bicycle right here. Look at all that space. But really, it’s not a question of space. It’s a question of how strictly they apply the rules. And I could easily see showing up with my bicycle and they say, “No, no, no, not until 9:30.” And this train leaves at 9:22. And yeah, I didn’t want to risk it, but hey, I get a pleasant ride on a nicely air-conditioned KTM train. Here’s the KTM map in case you’re interested. This is my train right here. This red one. There’s Batu Caves and it goes all the way to Kuala Lumpur KL Central and then all the way down here to Tampin. That’s the final station. And I got on in Rembau and we’re just going one, two, three stops to Seremban.
We’re just approaching the big city of Seremban. That’s it out there. Train is slowing down as we’re moving into the platform.
Very simple, pleasant ride.
We arrived in Seremban and I just remembered I’ve actually been in and out of this station a few times already. That was when I was staying in Port Dickson and I needed to go into Kuala Lumpur. So I took a city bus to Seremban and then took the train from here into Kuala Lumpur and I remember this whole station. It’s been under construction for a long time.
See some of the construction over there. I’m not sure if they’re adding to the train station or they’re just building new buildings, but they’re definitely like right here, you can see they’re working on the platforms as well.
It’s been like this for as long as I’ve been coming in and out of this station. There’s the original train station. It’s very pleasant, very historic, traditional building. There’s my train.
I’ve been thinking a lot about why I’ve made so many mistakes so far on this little bicycle trip, why I’ve been so casual about it on other bicycle trips. I’ve taken them much more seriously and I’m really dialed in and focused on what I’m doing and all of the details. But for some reason this trip I just sort of drifted into it and haven’t taken it as seriously. And I think connected to that is having a YouTube channel and shooting video at the same time. I think the bulk of my mental energy is going into the cameras and shooting video. And that’s the main reason that I just have not been dialed in on the cycling side of things. It just got put on the back burner and I’m paying the price for that today and over the last couple of days.
The power of Touch ‘n Go.
Check that out. A nice city tourism map of Seremban. Okay, get oriented. Where is the you are here? Here I found it. You are here and sini. Sini means here. Sini and I think there is sana. So sini sana. So here. Oh yeah, here’s the train station right here. And yeah, I don’t really know anything about Seremban from a tourism point of view, but it looks like they’ve got bicycle parks, Malaysia Park, Royal Gallery, so some museums and galleries, some historic police station, churches, the mosques, of course, markets. Yeah, looks like a very pleasant town. And again, being near the mountains makes it really nice. Next stage of this multi-stage journey is a walk to the bicycle shop that is closest to the train station. Pretty handy actually. It’s about a kilometer and a half down this road. I think I just go out the front and turn right. 15-minute walk, something like that.
And as always, this may not be as easy as you might expect. I just turned right out of the train station and it basically the sidewalk ends and you have no choice to be walking against traffic on a big highway system.
Malaysia does not believe in walking. They want you in your car driving.
Yeah. I’m not quite sure what to do here. I guess cross over and walk along the other side.
So there is a pedestrian crossing. That’s kind of cool.
So there was a short break in the traffic.
Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know if that crosswalk. Oh, no. Look at that. It suddenly the crosswalk is green. It’s telling you it’s safe to cross, but the traffic light is also green. So yeah, the whole crosswalk here, I think if you waited it would never the traffic is never going to get a red light, so no point waiting.
This reminds me when I first arrived in Malaysia quite a long time ago now, my first trip here. And I ended up doing this a lot. I was doing a lot of errands all around KL and that was before I became a master of Touch ‘n Go and the MRT. So I ended up walking down highway systems quite a bit and I’d be like running across highways like this, climbing up walls, climbing up fences. It was just how you got around KL.
All right, found it. I’m starting to see signs of bicycle life. That’s great news. The main front doors are open. That’s even better news.
Rahang Cycle Sports.
So here we are. Let’s see what we can get done here. Luckily, this is a one-way street. Always easier to cross a one-way.
All right. I saw some photos of the shop like from this side and that I was thinking, “Oh, it’s not good because they have all these children’s bikes.” But on this side, it looks like got more like mountain bikes and road bikes.
Hello. How are you?
Yeah, I hope so. I have a wheel, rear wheel, and three I think three broken spokes. Can you fix that? Here. I have the spokes. The I was riding my bicycle and the derailleur went in and broke the spokes.
It’s on the it’s on the drive side. So I have one, two, and I think when I was looking at it, it looked like one of them was bent as well. I don’t know if it was damaged like, but you can take a look. And
You know how to make it like do the tension. Yeah. And everything. Yeah.
And Yeah. So these are the that those broke. And this one 261
I believe these are for the drive side.
Yeah. So the trick with the rear wheel is most of the tension is on the drive side where the cassette is. That’s where your spokes normally break. And then in order to replace the spoke, you have to remove the cassette. And you can see how easily he did it there because he has the right tools. If you have those tools, if you don’t have those tools, it’s so difficult to do. But these guys are the experts, so they know what they’re doing. Yeah, there’s one of the spokes. Yeah. Upon closer inspection, it looks like a lot of spokes got damaged. So this one, this one. Yeah. So we’re going to replace as many spokes as we need to. And then you just slide them through like that. And then you have to know how to thread them properly. I almost forgot. You also need the the nipples so that they screw into place with those.
Yeah, this rim is a double wall. So you it actually most rims aren’t like that.
And this is the other special tool you need to do this properly. So in an emergency you can replace your own spoke but it’s very it takes a professional to keep it proper tension and keep your rim. So he was just saying that the two spokes that are broken he’s going to replace them first. They already did. And now he’s going to retension the wheel. And then keeping that tension, he can one by one replace the other spokes because if you remove five spokes all at once, there’s so much tension the whole rim will just fold over and become warped. So that’s cool. All right. Thank you so much. No problem. And I’ll leave him to do his work. And they do have some tires here. So I’m going to take a look at what they have. Yeah, this is interesting. I’ve been in contact a lot with American Hobo. He’s a YouTuber and cyclist, and he bought a bike in Malaysia with 29-inch wheels. And it was a used bike, but he got a good deal on it. It was a good bike and had 29-inch wheels. And in Malaysia, that makes sense because 29 is the new standard. 26 used to be the standard, but now everybody is switching over to 29-inch wheels. But when he went to Indonesia, he ran into trouble because when his spokes broke, nobody had 29-inch spokes because in Indonesia, everybody where he was was still using 26-inch. But now here I’m in the exact opposite situation where I have old-fashioned 26 and everybody all the wheel all the tires here are 29
at least the ones that they have on display. He might have some cheaper ones. These two this one is normal one. This is those slick tires, right? Yeah. without those without the knobs at all. Yeah. So it’s 26 by 1.95. How big are these ones? This one is 26 by 1.5. Yeah, I kind of want as big as possible. Yeah, it’s normal. Something like maybe this is a local brand. Wanda tire. So probably a lot cheaper than these ones. How much are these ones? These are around 25 ringgit 25 25 All right, we’re making progress. The most important thing is getting the spokes replaced and then the wheel basically rebuilt and retensioned and he really seems to know what he’s doing. So I’m very happy about that. I knew that there were two spokes broken and I saw one more that had been bent and I thought, “Yeah, we should replace that one as well.” But when we took a closer look, there were at least two more. So he’s replacing at least five spokes. Cuz when my derailleur went into the wheel, just like toothpicks just mowed all the way. I wasn’t even going fast. I can’t imagine if I were like going downhill or something, it would have just torn the wheel into bits. It’s crazy. The worst thing you can do is get your derailleur to swing into the spokes. And of course, that’s exactly what I do. But anyway, he had a very interesting thing to say about the technique where I just wanted to make sure. Okay, so we are going to replace all of the damaged ones. And he says, “Yeah, but we have to do it step by step. Replace the two broken ones, retension the wheel, and then one by one. You remove the other spokes that are bent, replace them, and then you keep retensioning and keeping the tension as even as possible and then keeping it nice and straight. So yeah, wheel building is like an art form. Some guys are really good at it. I could never be good at it. So anyway, that’s what’s he’s working on my wheel back there. And then when it came to tires, as I pointed out, none of these high-end expensive tires, I can’t even use them anyway. They’re all 29 700C 27-inch. They don’t have any 26-inch. But he went into the storeroom and they have some like basic local brand 26 by 1.95. My original ones are 26 by 2 inches. So almost the same size. And they’re basically the same kind of tire that you would get on a bike like this. Like if you buy a bike out of the shop, you get one of these tires already pre-installed. That’s kind of the quality level we’re talking about. And they’re not touring tires. They’re not going to last 10,000 km. But the guy was saying, “Yeah, I mean, they’ll get you 3 months of riding, like daily riding for 3 months, and that’s good enough.” And I don’t have the option of really shopping around a whole lot. So I said, “Yeah, let’s just put those tires on.” And they’re 25 ringgit each, which is obviously a lot cheaper than these beasts. Yeah. Look at that. 200 ringgit each. A whole different ballpark in terms of quality. My only concern with these cheaper tires is not really wear and tear, but punctures. The tires that I have on there now, they’re world famous for being very puncture resistant, which is why I never get flat tires. Or at least I never used to. But these new tires might be more prone to flat tires. But hey, I’m just happy that they have anything that’s going to work. There are my new tires for now anyway. They’re from Wanda tire 26 by 1.95. And I mean the tread should be fine. It’s just sort of a standard tread. You can use those on the road or on off-road on gravel. This is my old tire. You can see it’s got a little bit of a flatter tread designed more for road. Not quite as knobby as that. And these ones are 2 inches. Yeah. 26 by 2 inches. This is 26 by 1.95. Assuming the numbers are accurate, but and I just spoke to them about bringing my bicycle in tomorrow. I asked them if I brought it in first thing in the morning, could they do an overhaul on it? So they’re going to check out the derailleur, see if they can fix it. And he asked me like, “Do you have a spare hanger?” The hanger is the part of the derailleur that hangs down. And it’s a good idea to carry a spare one of those for just this situation, but I don’t have a spare hanger. And my whole system is so old. If the hanger is they try to bend it back into position and it breaks, well then there’s nothing they can do. You have to replace the whole drivetrain. And on my bike, I don’t even know if you can anymore. Yeah, you can’t just take a drivetrain from one of these modern bikes and put it on that old bike frame. It just everything has to be compatible. So they’re going to try to do it. And then I said, “Well, if I’m bringing my bike in to have the derailleur worked on, well, can I also let’s just do a tune-up, like clean the derailleur at the same time, clean the chain, replace all the brake pads, adjust the brakes, you know, basically do an overhaul.” And he says, “Yeah, but they can do it, but I’d have to drop it off in the morning, come back at 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon.” So I guess that’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow. All right, that’s it. I’ve got my rear wheel here in this bag. Walking away from the bike shop. Stage one and stage two complete. Stage one being having my rear wheel fixed. The damage was much greater than I thought. They had to replace six broken spokes. And of course, replacing six spokes at all at once means doing some very professional wheel rebuilding. And they did that for me. And they did it all at no charge. They said that for rebuilding the wheel, I had all my own spokes already, so I didn’t have to pay for those. And they said for the labor. Yeah, don’t worry about it. Free of charge on the house. And they told me that my spokes are actually outdated now. That it was a really good thing I had so many extra spokes because they don’t even carry those kind anymore. I thought spokes were spokes, but apparently my type of spoke has like a J bend at the bottom where they mount. That’s how I’ve always known spokes my entire life. But I guess those are now considered outmoded. They’re old-fashioned. All the spokes now have a direct connection. There’s no elbow joint anymore. And they said, “Yeah, if I didn’t have those spokes with me, they wouldn’t be able to do the repair.” So yeah, luckily I had them. And when it came to the old spokes, the ones that were broken, or not the ones that were broken, but the ones that were bent and damaged, they said, “Yeah, you better take them with you. They’re not in perfect condition, but in an emergency, you can still use these spokes.” And chances are if I’m somewhere else in Malaysia with more broken spokes, the shop there, they won’t carry that type of spoke anymore, which is crazy for me. So that’s a lesson that you really should keep up with the times, bicycle technology has moved on so much that my bicycle is like a dinosaur now. It really is. So stage one. Yeah. Getting the wheel fixed. Here’s the road ahead of me. Walking back towards the train station. Stage two was getting new tires. And they’re not the best tires in the world, but man, can’t complain. 25 ringgit each, 26-inch. And as they told me there, like even those are very rare now. Most bikes in Malaysia don’t have 26-inch wheels anymore. So I was lucky that they had anything at all. And also a new tube. So that’s stage one and stage two complete. Stage three will be coming back first thing tomorrow morning, dropping off my bike, and then they’re going to try to fix my derailleur without it breaking. So yeah, fingers crossed there. Cuz once you break that derailleur, you pretty much the derailleur you can’t they won’t have a replacement. Like there’s derailleurs like that just don’t exist anymore. So probably have to replace the whole drivetrain. And to be honest, once you’re doing that, you might as well just buy a new bike, right? It’s like at some point, you just got to let go. My 27-year-old bicycle, it’s so old-fashioned now. They don’t even make parts for that bike anymore. Seems crazy, but that’s the way it is. So yeah, that’s going to be tomorrow. Hopefully I can bring my bike onto the trains onto the train. That’ll be the next part of this adventure. And when I talked to them about working on the derailleur, I asked them if they could just and since they have the bike in the shop, just replace the brake pads, clean the chain, clean the derailleur, just basically give the bike a tune-up, give it an overhaul, replace all the brake pads, get the brakes lined up properly. These guys are professionals. They could do it so much faster than I can. So yeah, by tomorrow afternoon, my bike could be like a brand new. I’m right across the road from the train station now. Just going to wait for my train to take me back to Rembau. And there might be a bus option as well. I’m going to see if there’s an earlier bus that I can take. I prefer to take the train. I don’t mind waiting until there’s a train available, but if there’s a handy bus, maybe I’ll do that. Got two of my favorite things in the whole world right now. A liter of ice cold milk.
Oh, that is so good. And my other my second favorite thing, a brand new fully tensioned rear wheel to a bicycle. Yeah, it’s kind of it’s not really fair for me in a way to feel relief that my tire is fixed because the reason it was broken to begin with was because I wasn’t paying attention.
Yeah, it was my own fault. But man, six broken spokes. Can you believe it? But there it is all put together and brand new tire.
They pumped it up for me. They put the rim back together, the rim tape, everything. So yeah, amazing service at that bike shop. It’s about 2:00 in the afternoon now. I popped over to this 7-Eleven right here across the road from the train station. I just sat outside there while I had my classic Planet Doug liter of cold milk and then I got a cup of coffee. And my train is somewhere around 2:30. There’s the Seremban train station. Historic building. See that clock tower up on the top? Very cool place. So I don’t want to risk getting this wrong. So I’m going to make sure I’m out on the platform nice and early.
The power of Touch ‘n Go.
The commuter has been delayed. This commuter has just departed from Senawang station. Good evening and we apologize for this inconvenience. Thank you. So that’s the message I’ve been hearing about my train. It’s been delayed, but they’ve been giving the exact same message for the last 40 minutes. They keep saying because of a signal delay, there’s been a delay or a signal problem. There’s been a delay. And they for the last 40 minutes, they keep saying the train has just left from Senawang station. And then, yeah, that was 40 minutes ago. And then I, you know, 20 minutes later, we’ve just left from Senawang. And now they just said it again, just left. So I don’t really know what’s going on.
Platform.
I have no idea what that announcement was all about, but I think it was about an ETS train, so it has nothing to do with me. Luckily, it’s amazing. The young woman’s voice is really nice, really clear, and very easy to understand when that man comes on. Yeah, he really overpowers the speakers. Can’t really hear anything he’s saying.
Yeah, it’s an ETS. It’s not my train.
This isn’t KTM to Tampin. No, this is KTM. But another train. Another train. Okay. Are you using the coffee? Yeah. Not the one. Yeah.
Just double checking. You never know, you know, just to make sure. Yeah, you have to keep the vocabulary straight in your head. I said to the woman cuz I’m waiting for the KTM commuter and I have it in my head that my train is a KTM, but this one is an ETS, but that’s not the way it works. They’re all KTM, but this is KTM ETS and mine is a KTM commuter. So when I said to her, “Is this a KTM?” And she’s like, “Well, yeah, it’s KTM, but this is an ETS. You’re waiting for the commuter, right? Okay. Yeah. So I got the vocabulary all mixed up, but yeah, I was saying that it’s a little bit nerve-wracking when you’re on an unfamiliar train station and then you’re at the right platform waiting for your train and a train does come up. There’s such you have this urge. You want to get on like you don’t know where the train is going. Here’s a train. You feel like, ah, I don’t want to miss my train. There’s such an urge to just get on whatever train shows up. And then so I’ve been sitting here quite a long time and it feels like and train after train after train after train has come stopped gone and each time I’m like it’s like oh where’s my train? Which one’s my train? But I guess I’m the universe is punishing me a little bit. I had such good luck with the bicycle shop and the fact that they were free to do the work right away and they were such great guys, such a good experience that yeah, I they have to balance the scales a little bit. I got a little bit of good luck there. So now, okay, your train is going to be about an hour late going home again. It’s like, yeah, fair enough. That’s how karma works. Everything’s got to balance out in the end. What do we got here? Oh, yeah. KTM commuter. Good thing I didn’t leave. This is the one.
Good things come to he who waits. I waited just long. I was just about to give up because I’ve had this experience before where a commuter train gets so delayed that it just becomes the later train, right? They just give up on the scheduled train if that makes any sense. And I was just about to leave and go check on a bus and I guess the announcements were about this train, but they were all in Malay, no English announcements. So anyway, back at Rembau Station with a brand new rebuilt wheel.
A few people getting off here.
Yeah, midday or mid-afternoon. The train is still pretty empty.
The power of Touch ‘n Go.
There we go.
Excuse me. Can I ask you a question? In the morning, I want to bring my bicycle to Seremban. And there’s a train at 9:22.
It’s the only train in the morning, right, to go to Seremban. I took the train this morning and it was completely empty. There was nobody on it. Well, I want to tomorrow morning take the KTM train but bring my bicycle onto the train. Yeah, that’s a problem. Okay, good. Okay, thank you.
I just saw a young staff member there, but I don’t think he understood. I have a I’m very awkward when it comes to asking questions. I’ve realized instead of just asking my question, I tend to go back in time and give like 10 years of backstory to the question first. And by the time I get to the question, nobody understands what I’m talking about. But anyway, it sounded promising. At least I’m going to give it a try.
Well, this is a popular garbage dump dumping spot. I walked by here this morning and they had a backhoe here and a big crew of men with shovels. They cleaned out this whole thing. All of this garbage has shown up here just today.
Yeah, I think they emptied this whole thing this morning, cleaned it all out, but a lot more showed up in the meantime.
And here we go, the home stretch. Just got to follow this highway over the overpass and then down the other side. What a journey. Pleasant one though.
Yeah, I’m competing with the scooters and motorcycles for this tiny walking path at the edge of the highway. It’s the only way you can go on foot or on a bicycle really.
And there’s my patient bicycle waiting for its rear tire to return. And I guess I’m going to put it on right now. Make sure that it’s ready to go for tomorrow. I won’t really be riding it tomorrow, of course. I’ll just be I might ride it if I can to the train station, but the idea is just to put the wheel on it so I can get it to the bicycle shop so that they can fix the derailleur hopefully. Doesn’t really look to be that bent, so I think they can salvage it. Won’t find out until tomorrow.
So here we are. Tire, wheel, everything has returned.
And now we need to put it back.
Huh. Yeah. I guess it’s a smaller tire than my old one. My other one was at least 2 inches. This is 1.95. And I had a feeling it was a small 1.95, but it looks like it. Yeah, it fits through the brake pads. I don’t have to let the air out. I just have to work it down into position. So yeah, it’s quite a bit smaller tire than my other one, but that should be okay for a while. Slide the skewer back in.
All right. Nothing has exploded yet. Nothing has broken. No spokes breaking.
There we are.
Look at it go. Look at it go. So I’ll just leave it in that gear for tomorrow.
Derailleur is nice and far away from the spokes. And I’m in a lower gear.
And now let’s just flip the bike over carefully. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And there we have it. I’ll probably have to do some work on the bike tonight just to get it ready for tomorrow. Make it easier for them to do their maintenance, like take some of these bags off. So they don’t get in their way, things like that. Some of my mounts, different things, just to make it easier for them to get at the bike. So that’s it. What a day. You know, you’ve seen Planet Doug Studios, you’ve seen Planet Doug workshop, but today you got an intimate look at Planet Doug errand boy. Basically running errands. I do a lot of that in my life. Heading out to get something fixed, pick up an adapter for my GoPro, pick up a spare part for my bike. There’s always something going on. So yeah, Planet Doug errand boy, that was the adventure for today. And yeah, tomorrow I do it all over again, but this time I bring my whole bicycle with me.