VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
After a full day of cycling from Rembau to Seremban without eating a single thing, I wake up at the Royale Chulan Hotel ready for my first meal. And what a meal it is! Join me as I navigate an absolutely overwhelming Malaysian breakfast buffet—from spicy fried noodles and beef strips to nasi lemak, butter cake, and a lukewarm latte. It’s a feast fit for a king, and a welcome break from life on the road.
But the vacation vibes don’t last long. My bike chain broke just 100 meters from the hotel yesterday, so today I’m walking my bike back to the fantastic family-run shop, Rahang Cycle Sports, to get it fixed. Watch as the mechanic shows me exactly how a 9-speed master link works (and why it might have come loose in the first place). It’s a great lesson in simple bike maintenance I won’t forget.
This video is a classic Planet Doug mix: the surreal experience of luxury after a life of simplicity, combined with the practical realities of a bicycle tourer. I hope you enjoy it!
In this video:
A ghost hotel & the breakfast quest begins
Touring the overwhelming breakfast buffet
My first plate: spicy noodles, beef, and sausage
Dessert course: butter cake, donuts, and a latte
Walking the bike to the shop (gravity assist!)
Fixing the master link with the mechanic
A tour of the bike shop & a family history
The test ride and my thoughts on bike frame size
A huge thank you again to the Planet Doug supporter who made this stay possible. It was the perfect place to recover, even if my bike had other plans!
If you’re enjoying this journey through Malaysia, please consider supporting the channel on Patreon or via the Touch ‘n Go QR code at the end of the video. Every little bit helps keep the wheels turning.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
I commented the other day when I was at my hotel in Rembau how rarely I see other people in the hotels here in Malaysia. Even here, this giant hotel, they tell me it has 350 rooms. Someone told me that doesn’t seem right, but maybe it’s that big. And I’m assuming it’s like fully booked. Every room is occupied. But here I am heading down for breakfast and it’s like a ghost hotel. There’s nobody in the hallways. I don’t hear anybody talking. I thought with a completely full hotel, I mean, even the elevator area would be jammed with people going down to have breakfast.
They’ve got so many elevators here. It’s great. As soon as you hit the button, boom, an elevator shows up.
And I think I know where I’m going for breakfast. I asked yesterday and I think I know where I’m supposed to go. Same thing down here in the lobby. Not a single person. It’s just empty. Suppose maybe it’s a bit early for most people to have breakfast. I don’t know. It’s 7:30. I don’t even know what time they start serving breakfast. Oh, there’s a—I love when they have maps on display. So, this is where I started: Port Dickson. Where is the exact— Okay, right here is the Port Dickson waterfront. And my journey so far has—it feels like I’ve traveled a thousand miles. I’ve had so many adventures and problems, but all I did was go down the coast somewhere around here and then turn inland and end up in Rembau. And then I tried to go across the hills where my wheel—my tire exploded. And then I got all the repairs done here in Seremban. And then I rode my bike from yesterday from here to Seremban. But like had I gone directly from Port Dickson to Seremban, I would have been here days and days ago. But I went for a very convoluted path to eventually get there. So I didn’t realize it, but these hotels are part of a chain. I saw that in their hotel book in my room yesterday. The Royale Chulan Hotels. So there’s mine in Seremban, but then there’s a bunch in Kuala Lumpur, you know, Damansara area, Cherating, London, and Penang.
I came down here just for a minute yesterday to see the crowds who came for a Ramadan buffet and all of these tables were full. I’m hearing some sounds over here. So, it sounds like breakfast is underway. Good morning.
414.
All right. Thank you.
Music playing. Lots of tables. Wow. I feel a bit intimidated looking at all of this. Like having so many choices. I’m like, I don’t—I don’t know what to do. I’m not a—I have a lot of difficulty making decisions. So, if you give me too many choices, I end up paralyzed. So, what I like to do is go very slowly so I can figure out what’s going on. So, we’ve got a clear soup over here. This I really like. It’s one of my favorite dishes if it’s here. Yeah. Porridge. So, I’ll definitely have some of that. And you just add some toppings to the porridge. And what is this? Some kind of noodles. I mean, a Malaysian person of course would know what all of these dishes are and how you would prepare it. Okay. It’s just chicken mee hun soup. So, you make your own soup with the noodles and the soup and the toppings.
Oh, I’m really glad they have the names. That helps me out a lot. Vanilla sauce to go with bread butter pudding. Oo. Okay. Hot chocolate butter cake.
And what’s going on here? This maybe these are toppings for the cake. You bet. You get the cake and you put orange or strawberry toppings. I don’t know. Croissants and Danish pastry. Okay. So, this is a toaster for sliced bread only. So, they got a whole bunch of bread here.
Oh, baked beans. That’s very— That’s jumping out at me. I love baked beans. Potato wedges. That looks good. Beef slice. Wow. Okay. I like—I like this. This is calling out to me as a good breakfast. Chicken sausage. Yes. Absolutely. Fried noodles. Oh, that looks so good. I think this is—this is my breakfast area right here.
Oh, no.
And then a vegetarian selection. Rice. No labels here. Oh, noodles. And okay, veggies. So, it looks like lettuce or cabbage. Drinks station.
Coffee and tea, local coffee. Some juices here. Cold juice.
And then, oh, there’s more. Okay. It looks like there’s a fruit station over there.
This would be chicken. Ooh, look at that. Wow, that looks good, too.
Nasi kerabu. Oh, so this would be like an egg station. This is where you get your fried or scrambled eggs. You ask for them individually. Some cereal, which would be nice.
Oh, and here they have some eggs as well. Nas. Oh, this is a nasi lemak station. Ah, of course, of course, of course. Sambal. These are all the condiments that you add. And then this would be the nasi lemak here.
And this would be the fruit station. It’s just—it really is overwhelming. So many choices where even if you know what you want, like where do you start?
I wonder if this is just a display or is there actual food here? Oh no, I don’t even know what that is. Rojak, I am me. All right. So, where do I start?
Pick a table for two by the window.
And if you didn’t see my video about my arrival here yesterday, there’s the outdoor pool. Yeah, I think morning would be the best time to go for a swim because you don’t have that brutal sun hammering down on you right now. That would be a nice time to go for a swim. I don’t think I have any commentary for cornflakes other than the fact that I love cornflakes.
As I said, I could have this for breakfast and a cup of coffee and I would be perfectly happy.
Oh, there’s another table. I didn’t even notice. Oh, tosai. Yeah. So, Indian food. Chicken curry. Chicken curry and dal. So, yeah. It’s a little table of Indian food here. So, let’s start with these mysterious potato wedges. Can you imagine? I—I—I—I struggle to even imagine the amount of work that goes into putting out this amount of food every single morning basically forever, right?
Of course, they develop a system for that. They have a routine and logistics and everything, but man, I can barely prepare a breakfast in my own life, let alone like every single morning putting all this food out. What a job that is.
Some beef slice. Fried noodle to go along with this.
and a chicken sausage.
All right, let’s dive into this. I go straight for the noodles every time.
Mhm.
Apparently I feel in need of some protein energy. A lot of beef strips, chicken,
a lot of flavor here.
The noodles are quite spicy.
Beef strips very spicy. salty and chili at the same time. Like a chili powder. That’s really nice. Ice ice cold, which is the most important thing. Yeah. Can you imagine living a life where this kind of food was available to you every morning? Like you just woke up every morning and then you went downstairs and you had a spread like this. I mean, it was just Yeah. Quite something. Yeah. I mean, I—I shouldn’t even confess this because it’s kind of crazy, but yesterday I had nothing to eat for the whole day. Nothing at all. I was so busy in the morning getting my bike ready after all the repairs and everything. Yeah, I had a lot of work to do getting organized and I drank a cup of instant coffee in my room while I was on my laptop. Woke up at 5 in the morning just to get a jump on the day. And then I rode my bike for the whole day. It was a hard, difficult ride for me, but I never stopped to have anything. I had a carton of milk and then when I got here at the end of the day, I was so tired. The heat just takes away my appetite. I just don’t feel hungry at all. And all I wanted to do was have many, many cups of water, cup of hot instant coffee, and then I went to bed. I mean, I was just so tired. I couldn’t even think about food. So yeah, an entire day on the road yesterday and I didn’t have a single thing to eat. So this is my first meal since I left from Rembau.
And I think I’d also like to try some of the porridge here. There we go. That looks—that looks good to me. I normally like my meals very simple. If you can put all of my food in one bowl, I can eat it with one spoon. I’m happy. That’s why I like corn flakes so much and things like porridge. Very simple. I came to get some fruit, but a lot of it has been taken, but I’ve got a little bit of watermelon here. That’ll do me fine.
There’s something interesting here. What is this exactly? Some sort of a Yeah, I don’t know what that is, but some sort of a sauce. Get some of that. And a little bit of a fruit cocktail. Ooh, knock some pineapple there. And every time I leave my table to go get another the next course, I come back and the previous bowl or plate has been quietly removed, which is very nice. Very magical.
All right, let’s see if I can figure out if I know what this might be. Yeah, I have no idea. I’m guessing, you know, some kind of a yogurt, but let’s give this a try.
Yeah, yogurt. A sweet yogurt. Yeah, really nice. I like that. Now it’s time to figure out the coffee machine and combine that with a little bit of dessert. Why not? This supreme cake looks good. Oo, that’s a heavy lid. You have to be careful with that.
And what else? Oh, buttercake.
M. I can smell the buttercake. That’s really, really good. And just for fun, maybe one of these little donuts.
Now, let’s see if I’m smart enough to figure out the coffee machine. I assume the cup goes under there. And then you just push a button. Cafe latte. And then you just wait. Oh, there we go. Pre-brewing. It actually has a little menu right here walking you through the steps or just telling you what the machine is doing. My dessert course. I see steam coming off the top of my cup. So hopefully that means it’s nice and hot.
Not really. No, it’s lukewarm. I don’t know why I thought there was steam. Maybe because it’s air conditioned in here. I like my coffee to be hot, hot, hot. I think this buttercake is going to be the star of the show here.
It’s nice. Very sweet. See if this yellow cake has a different flavor.
I like that better. It’s not quite as sweet. That would be my choice. Now, let’s try a bite of my mini donut.
Nice. Yeah. And I think that’s it for my breakfast. That was really nice.
Yeah. I enjoyed that a lot. It’s like an elaborate feast on a planet. Doug continues to be really quiet. It’s now almost 9:00 a.m. and I’ve seen almost no one come into the breakfast area. Family, a couple of small groups, but yeah, I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe people are gearing up for the big holiday days coming up starting tomorrow. And maybe the hotel isn’t fully booked as I thought it was. Yeah, very quiet. Heading to the bike shop and see what they tell me about my bicycle chain. Was it just the master link that’s broken or is it the rest of the chain?
What can be done? I think yeah, it’s a one-way street here. I can’t ride my bike obviously, but I think I can go downhill a little bit. Just sitting on my bike here. Got to double check directions.
All right.
It’s going to be so weird. I’m actually, you know, got my feet on the pedals, but turning the pedals has no effect. I can only use gravity. gravity and leg muscles for walking. So, in one way, it’s a good thing that this hotel is up on a hill. I can just coast down back to the city.
Well, I think that’s the end of downhill coasting.
From here we walk.
This is something that the American hobo Daniel had to deal with when he was in Indonesia on his bicycle chain. The master link also broke. But he was way out in the middle of nowhere and he was camping, sleeping in his tent and yeah, he had no choice but to try to fix it himself. So, if he was able to reconnect his master link at a campsite in his tent and he used a like a string or a shoelace. I think he looked it up on YouTube looking for like a tutorial video and he found out there’s a trick you can use to reconnect your master link using a shoelace or something like that. That’s what he did. But then it never quite fit together properly again after that.
Yes. I have another problem. Oh, what? My chain fell off. I—I went—I yesterday after I saw you, I rode to the hotel and about 100 meters from the hotel. So I have the chain. I think it’s the master link. Hey.
Okay. Yeah. Just before I got to the hotel yesterday. Okay. I wasn’t even pedaling really. Just And there’s the chain. Yeah. And I found this on the road. But I have I have extra master link. Okay. So maybe the master link is worn out. Oh my chain is okay. I don’t know. Maybe you can check for me. I don’t have a lot of experience. I found that on the street, you know, I had to go only the one, but I don’t know what else is there, but you think the chain is okay?
So, I have Well, you have the I think this one is missing lane.
Nice speed. Yeah, these are all nine speed. Yeah.
Do you mind if I watch you while you do it? Cuz I think I know how to do it myself, but I can’t remember how you put on the master link. If it happens again, I can fix it myself. Yeah. happened when you turn the pedal everything stuck or is it drop off? It just dropped off. I thought it stuck then you force it then you No, I didn’t put much pressure on the wheels on the pedal at all. So, this is just a normal link. Yeah, normal link. That’s not part of the master link. Yeah. And that’s just a normal normal. Yeah, that’s normal. Okay. So with this piece that fell, there should be two pieces. Yeah, two pieces. I see. Yeah. One at a time. Okay. Okay. Good. Good. Does that one look bent to you or does it look normal? Maybe a bit. A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Does it matter what goes to the front or like like this side or that side? It doesn’t matter. So you just And you don’t have to force it in. You just goes in. Same thing there. Yes. And you can do this by hand or you need a special tool. No, if you want to lock if you’re broken, you want to lock it back. You actually you can use without unless you want to open it. Opening you need to have tools. Okay. Okay. But you said this master link maybe is too loose because it’s 9 speed. Normally 9 is not. Oh yeah. Yeah. They easily to come out. Okay. Yeah. When you use hand to put some pressure, it will come up sometimes. Now it’s okay. When you push, he will come up. You need to have a tool. Okay. So, he’s taking my bike out for a test ride, making sure the two derailleurs are dialed in. And yeah, I never see anybody else ride my bike. When I see myself on video riding that bicycle, it looks way too small for me. I guess with a mountain bike frame, that’s just how they look. But to my eyes, I always look a little bit ridiculous. I look It looks like the bicycle is too small to fit my body. I feel like I need a bigger frame. But
sitting on it, I’m comfortable. So, and he’s back. Probably going to adjust the front derailleur cuz yesterday when the chain master link came apart, it was right after the chain fell off the inner ring. So, the set screws were not set exactly right, maybe. And here he comes. Let’s see if when he goes by me, I want to see how he looks on the bike, whether it seems too big for him or like the right size.
Oh, still
yeah, the seat of course is probably too high, but yeah, I don’t know about the frame in general, but yeah, all fixed. Ready to go. And I gave a tour of Rahang Cycle Sports when I came here the first time, but it’s actually a lot bigger than I realized. So that’s where I spend all my time. Sort of mountain bikes, road bikes, but they have a second section here for children’s bikes, mainly like over there on that wall, small bikes for kids, and then mountain bikes like teenagers, things like that. And then what I didn’t realize is they had an entirely third a new section all ebikes. So they’ve got all kinds of ebikes over here. And as I was chatting with the shop mechanic and he was saying yeah it’s trending right now. Ebikes are very very popular. So it’s a good business to be in right now. And he was just telling me yeah it’s a family business. The other man here that I’ve been talking to who’s in the photo with me, that’s his father. And then it was his grandfather that opened the shop originally a long time ago. And then after the grandfather, the father took over and now the son is taking over. So yeah, really nice family-run business. And look at me riding my bike again. So it turned out luckily to be a pretty easy fix. Again, I don’t think I mean, I know about master links and all that kind of stuff, but I don’t have any memory of doing it myself ever. I don’t think I’ve ever worked on a chain. So, I asked him, you know, just to sort of walk me through what he’s doing and let me take video of it and I can refresh my memory about how it all works
to get across to the other side of the road. This road can get quite busy.
And it was a very simple matter. He was saying that my system, my drivetrain is a nine-speed. I knew that. And he said that the nine-speed master links are very loose because when he clipped it in by hand. He really didn’t have to do anything.
No tools required. You didn’t have to like lock them into position. It looked like they could almost fall off that they’re that loose. So, I just have to keep that in mind.
I’m such a dummy that when the chain fell off yesterday, I went walking along the street because I thought half of the master link fell off and the other half was still on the chain. That’s what I thought. So, when I found part of the master link, I thought, “Oh, okay. Here’s the other half.” But it turns out there were two pieces and they both fell off. So the other piece of the master link is on that road somewhere. So maybe as I retrace my steps. Going to keep my eyes open. Maybe I can find the second part of that master link.
Keep it as a spare. I ended up feeling better about the size of my bicycle frame when I saw him riding this bike because it was clearly I think it was too big for him. So, it made me more confident that maybe this frame is the right size for my body. Even though to my eyes in the video, I kind of look like a circus clown when I’m riding it.
This is my intersection to go back up to my hotel.
And somewhere along here is the second half of my master link. Actually, I think I’m going to get off my bike and just walk, take it slowly. I don’t really need the second half of that master link, but could be could come in handy. So, I might as well just double check. And for the sake of curiosity, find out where it could be.
I think it was quite a bit farther up the road where the chain fell off, but who knows? Maybe the first part of the master link fell off early and then the second part fell off later.
So far, no luck.
Yeah, this is where I stopped here. And then I found the first half of the master link.
Nope, I’m not going to find the second half.