VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
🚴♂️ Welcome back to Planet Doug!
In this episode, I continue my cycling journey around Malaysia—this time riding from the small town of Kuala Pilah to Tampin. But if you’ve been following my route closely, you’ll notice something strange… I’m heading south instead of north. Why? Visa deadlines, weather, and a broken buffer zone after a tire blowout forced me to rethink my entire plan.
Along the way, I make several unexpected stops:
– 🛕 A massive Nine Emperor Gods temple hidden in the hills – elaborate, quiet in the morning, but clearly built for spectacular night festivals.
– 🪚 A sprawling lumber yard where I watch massive saws slice through logs like butter – and meet a few friendly (and not-so-friendly) dogs.
– 🚧 A roadside roadwork crew trimming brush with heavy-duty equipment – which brings back memories of fighting with weed whackers as a kid in Canada.
I also reflect on:
– Why cycling with a camera means no music or podcasts – and how that changes the pace of the journey.
– The strange mystery of so many permanently closed businesses in Malaysia.
– How I finally found one of the best budget hotels of the entire trip in Tampin.
If you make it all the way to the end, congratulations – you’ve earned a spot in the Planet Doug Crunch Club. Drop a “CC” in the comments so I know you stuck with me to the finish.
📌 Route: Kuala Pilah → Tampin (approx. 40 km)
🌡️ Conditions: Hot, humid, hilly – with a heat warning in effect
🛏️ Stay: Hotel Seri Intan, Tampin – highly recommended for budget cyclists
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning and welcome back to Planet Doug in Kuala Pilah. Just leaving from the Orange Hotel right behind me. It’s about quarter after 7 in the morning or I should say exactly quarter after 7:00 in the morning and yeah the sun isn’t out yet but I can really feel the humidity. It’s crazy just walking out of the hotel and putting my bags on my bike and attaching the trailer just Yeah, it’s really humid. I don’t know if that’s typical of March weather in Malaysia. It’s definitely supposed to be hot and it is hot. But yeah, this humidity is really something too.
And if you’re paying strict attention to geography, you might have noticed that I made a very odd turn just now.
According to the route I’m supposed to be following out of Malaysia, I’m supposed to be heading north to the border with Thailand alongside the Titiwangsa Mountains. But instead, I turned my bicycle to the south, heading back to the coast and to Malacca in that direction. Anyway, I’m not going to Malacca today, but I’m heading in that direction. And the reason for that is I crunched the numbers based on my visa expiry date and the distance I have to cover, the weather conditions, and the way I like to live. And it just doesn’t look feasible to follow through on heading to the north. Now, I’m still going to head north, but with my visa expiry date looming, I have to look for a quicker option. So, yeah, change of plans and I changed my route. So, with the days I have left, it felt a lot safer. I didn’t want to risk overstaying my visa, of course. So if I head to the coast, I have all kinds of options from the coast for exiting Malaysia and then hopefully I can go somewhere interesting for a few days, return to Malaysia and then continue my journey. So the idea is to go to Malacca, go along the coast to Johor Bahru and then swing north along the east coast. So instead of going south on the east coast, my new plan is to head north on the east coast going up towards Kuantan, Terengganu, Kota Bharu and then doing a loop back to KL. So I just stopped here to capture some of the scenery.
You can see the beautiful hills in the background there. Bit of mist and this interesting warehouse here. Looks like a tile warehouse. It’s fascinating in terms of their inventory. If a customer comes and asks for a specific tile, how do you know where that tile is? That’s pretty crowded down there. There’s a lot of beautiful traditional architecture here. Traditional Malaysian like kampung homes. Passed a number of nice examples already. There’s one with the yellow paint and another one there set back from the road a little bit. Both of them up on stilts.
And it looks like today is going to be another day of pretty constant traffic.
It’s barely past 7:00 in the morning and a lot of traffic is on this road already.
I don’t know if I mentioned it or not, but my destination for today is the small town of Tampin, and it’s about 40 km from Kuala Pilah where I spent the last couple of nights. I’m kind of glad that I’m heading to the town of Tampin. I was talking about it before that, you know, my original plan was to go through the interior of Malaysia beside the Titiwangsa mountain range. And when looking at the maps, I noticed that Tampin marks the beginning of that range. If you look at the terrain maps or satellite view, you can see the Titiwangsa mountain range sort of comes down like a triangle to a point right at the town of Tampin. It’s kind of where you could say the mountains begin there. So, you’re still on the edges of the mountains on the hills. So, you’ve got climbs like this and a beautiful valley here off to my left. Very lush jungle on both sides of the road. And then looking down off the hill, you can see this valley down there, the rising sun. There’s probably a lot of homestays here. I’ve noticed that. Yeah, this whole countryside area is full of homestays probably connected to, yeah, how beautiful it is here, but also how close it is to Malacca. If you want to visit Malacca, but not stay in the city, you could come out here to a homestay in the countryside. So, I’m back down in first gear, my favorite gear, climbing up this hill. And I think up at the top of the hill is a very famous, very well-known temple. I won’t try to say the name of the temple right now. We’ll probably see a sign there that’ll have the name on it, but it’s special because it is dedicated to the nine emperor gods, I think. Anyway, at least that’s what I’ve heard. And the nine emperor gods are like celestial gods. I think they’re associated with the Big Dipper. In any event, with the stars and the cosmos,
I think the best time to visit this temple is actually at night because according to the pictures that I’ve seen, most of the buildings are covered in a variety of lights.
And it looks its best at night in the dark with all the lights turned on, but I think even during the daytime, in the morning, it will be impressive, I think. So, I’m going to pull in on my bike just to take a quick look.
Made it to the top of the hill. Coming down the other side. And I believe that’s where the temple is located.
Yeah.
Big archway, entrance way.
I think it’s very busy at Chinese New Year. And for the emperor, the nine emperor gods, they have a festival which takes place appropriately enough in the ninth lunar month. And then at that time, yeah, this temple will be very busy as well.
Hey there, Poochie. Hi. How are you?
I’ve been chased by a lot of dogs this morning. But you’re a friendly one, huh? So you’re probably just looking for food, huh? Yeah. Anyway, yeah, I had one pack of dogs that were really quite aggressive and they followed me for a long time. I wish I had had my cameras running at that time. It would have been fun to get that on film.
Yeah, I’ve been in a few places during the nine emperor gods festival. It’s quite interesting. It involves vegetarianism. The followers of the nine emperor gods are strict vegetarians I believe and they have processions and festivals and it reminds me a lot of Thaipusam. There are elements of atonement and of making vows, purification and I believe there’s this idea that the followers, the devotees can be possessed by one of the nine emperor gods and go into a trance state and that’s very similar to the traditions in Thaipusam with the skewers and carrying the kavadi and the followers of Lord Murugan can also go into a trance state. So there are a lot of parallels between the nine emperor gods festival and traditions and Thaipusam.
Extensive grounds as you can see. Lot of parking. The main temple up here. And then there’s a stairway that goes all the way up there. A high viewpoint looking over the whole complex. And if I’m feeling dedicated, I suppose I could walk all the way up there. I’m not sure that I will. I might be content with just seeing the temple grounds from down here. Very elaborate as you can see even down here the beginning stairways. Lot of decoration.
Yeah, this time of the morning very very quiet, but you can see they have so many tables laid out. So, I guess nighttime would be the time to come here.
They still have a lot of decorations for a Chinese New Year, Year of the Horse.
That’s the main entrance, the gateway also with all the lanterns for Chinese New Year still up.
I found a road that climbs up into the hill behind the temple. It leads to more parking. So, I was able to ride up here on my bicycle and get a bit more open view of the grounds of the temple complex. Got a pond back here. And the stairs that I mentioned are over there that go up to that viewpoint above the temple. Big building here. So, yeah, very expansive complex. I think they hold a lot of big events here. Even sort of a fairy tale playground across the way there with the swans and the peacocks and yeah, the colorful mountains.
Yeah, I’m not sure whether the road will take me higher. Let’s see if I can get up there. Just in terms of the pros and cons of a bicycle tour of exploring an area or a new country, one of the cons is you do during the day, at least I end up feeling tied to my bicycle where you know you might want to go for a walk like go into the temple, go wandering all around the grounds, go exploring. But if you do that, what do you do with your bike and all your gear, right? You’re basically all you can do is park it in the parking lot. You can lock up the bike so nobody can ride away on it, but all of your bags are exposed unless you lock up every little, you know, pocket with another padlock. So, yeah, it’s kind of hard to park your bike securely and leave it and then go off exploring. I mean, they even had a sign down there, a big sign telling people that the temple is not responsible for your vehicles or any damage or theft or anything like that. So, they offer this parking area, but it’s all at your own risk, right? There’s a gateway here. And I imagine it’s to keep vehicles out, but I will stick with an argument that my bicycle is not really a vehicle. And there’s nobody here right now. So, I won’t be bothering anybody. Am I riding my bicycle up here? Take a look around.
It’s very steep coming up here again. But one thing you can do with a bicycle is create your own switchbacks. Instead of going directly up the hill, you can zigzag, go side to side like I’m doing now. And that makes the climb a lot less steep, just like a highway switchbacking up a mountain.
Yeah. Getting a very nice view of the temple complex from up here. And from here, I’ll just walk my bike to strengthen my argument that I’m allowed to be up here with my bicycle. Yeah, there’s a nice vantage point on the temple down below. Yeah, I wanted to come up here partially because the sun is aiming in this direction. So you get a nicer lighting from up here except you’re looking at the back of the temple. But yeah, there’s the Titiwangsa Mountains behind the temple. Those are some pretty high peaks back there. Wow.
And they have a nice garden area up here. I think even all these dragons that are on the hillside are all lit up at night. They all have lights inside them. And then they have long strings of light coming out of their mouth like they’re breathing fire, I guess. And up here there’s a big fountain show. Of course, this time of the morning there’s nothing going on. There’s no fountain show, but I think this is where it takes place. Yeah, I’m glad I took the time to come up here. Gives more insight into the place. Yeah, it’s a crazy amount of fountains spouts in there.
Yeah. And lights, too, right? All the waterproof lights in there. Must be pretty nice.
But yeah, it is a real issue when you’re bike touring that all day long you’re passing perhaps interesting and beautiful places and yet it’s hard sometimes to stop the bike, park it, secure it, and then go off exploring. You’re sort of tethered to your bicycle all during the day until you get to a hotel or camping spot for the night. And even when you’re camping now, you’re tethered to your campsite. You can’t leave it. And once you set up your tent and unload all your gear and set up camp, well, you’re pretty much stuck there for the night, which is one of the reasons why camping is a bit difficult sometimes. Oh, the dog that was down in the parking lot is all the way up here. Wonder if it was following me. Yeah, you’re probably looking for food, right? But yeah, I don’t have any.
So, are you a temple dog? You live here. This is your kingdom.
I’m very curious about the budget of a place like this. Of course, the cost of construction would have been astronomical, but upkeep and maintenance, running the fountain, all the light shows, staff, electricity bills, cleaning. I’m sure they have a number of full-time groundskeepers. I can see a bunch of them right now. Yeah, they’re all around working. Just looking at this fountain array, the more I look around, the more lights I see and probably speakers everywhere. So, there would be sound as well as a light show.
And speaking of budget and logistics, they also have to maintain things like this. I mean a huge parking area has to be maintained. The lighting there must be some kind of security. They don’t offer security like you park at your own risk. But and warehouses too. A temple this size with so many festivals and displays every year. Has to have its own warehouse for storage. All these decorations and all the other material they need for construction. Yeah, it’s a big operation. A lot bigger than one would think. Yeah, there’s a lot of ground, too. I mean, a lot of land that they own. It’s probably why it was located here in the first place. It’s a beautiful piece of land. Nicely landscaped, but it would also be cheaper because it’s out here in the countryside rather than downtown anywhere. Yeah, quite the place. And not to go crazy with this idea, but again, a complex this size needs a lot of water. So, you even have to have your own water tanks, a water delivery system, and there’s pumps, I’m sure, inside here. You can see pressure valves. They need a lot of water for that fountain up there and for the temple in general.
I see a lot of movement in the trees back there. Must be some macaques.
But just coming down the hill past the temple and I was passing some of my favorite people in the world, the unsung heroes of the modern world.
You see them all the time at the side of the road here in Malaysia.
Hard work.
Without these guys out here all day, the roads would be a bit of a mess. Hello.
Oh, that’s right. It looks like they use the twist ties up there. Okay. I guess that’s what they use rather than cord or zip ties.
Yeah, they would have to be dressed really well to be protected from the sun all day out here. Hello. How are you? Yeah.
Hi. How are you? Good, good, good.
Yeah, gas powered engines. Wonder how heavy they are. They’re on a swivel. You notice that engine is actually turning, which makes sense cuz it would have to be mobile for them to angle the cutter.
Yeah. Huh. And then they would get hit with a lot of debris as well. So they got to have clothing top to bottom to protect themselves, which I don’t have right now. So guess I better get out of here. Oh, support truck just showed up.
Maybe this is the truck that drops them off, puts them to work.
Ogawa I think it says the name of the Ogawa the name of this device this engine.
Hello. How are you?
Hello. How are you? Good. Good. They’re working hard. Oh, they do. Yeah. Working hard. Yeah.
Yeah. Picture.
Okay. All right. Only one. Only one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No friend. No friend. No family. Oh, only me. Malacca. Oh, Malacca. Yeah. Malacca. Then Johor Bahru. Oh, Malaysia. Yeah. Oh, Malaysia. Yeah. Very nice. Yeah, my trailer. Very strong. Strong, huh? Yeah, very strong.
Okay, sure. Yeah, sure. Okay. It’s big. There you go.
Whoop.
All set. One, two, three.
Maybe one more.
There we go.
Okay. Thanks. Yeah. You’re welcome. It’s okay.
Oh,
All right.
All right. Time to go. See you.
In my youth, of course, I did a lot of work like that. When you’re a young man in Canada and trying to make some extra money or even work in the summers to save money for university in the fall, you often found yourself doing lawn care or of course at home. Your dad would put you to work cutting the grass using the weed whacker. I remember with my father, we had a weed whacker. He loved using it. My dad, he really enjoyed lawn work and my mother really enjoyed gardening. For us kids, it was a chore. We didn’t like doing it. But I think they had more pride of ownership, right? That’s a key thing I find when it comes to work. We were just kids living in this house and we didn’t feel like we owned it or took any pride in it. But of course, my mother and father had saved up the money and bought the house and they owned it and took pride in it. So for them when they were out there working on the lawn, they were working on their, you know, prized possession. So it was just had more meaning for them than it did for the kids. So my dad would be out there with the weed whacker and I remember these like consumer level weed whackers. You had to buy these not sure what the word is right now. It’s like a cassette with the green cord wrapped up inside it. And as the cord wore out, it would automatically extend and replace itself. But of course, that mechanism always broke. And then every time it broke, my father would bring it to me because he didn’t have the patience for that fiddly kind of work. He liked to just, you know, do work. Do heavy work. And when it came to like fiddly little jobs, fighting with that little weed whacker mechanism, trying to get the line to extend properly, that just drove him crazy. So, he would always bring it to me to try and fix it whenever it broke. That’s why I was so interested to see that they didn’t do anything like that with those heavy duty machines. All they do is use zip ties. Which makes a lot of sense. You don’t spend an hour fighting with it every time you need to replace the cord. You just put in a new zip tie and away you go. Yeah, very efficient.
I don’t know if there’s any great mystery or meaning to this, but I was talking about this the other day and it’s still it’s always sort of there in the back of my mind. And that is this idea that I see in Asia in general and here in Malaysia a lot. A lot of businesses are just closed all the time. So like here we’ve got a commercial property, a strip mall, right? There’s got to be 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12 businesses or 12 locations for a business and not one of them is open. And I see that all the time. And I’m just curious about that.
Why are they permanently closed or only open on certain days? It’s just a trend that I’ve noticed where I see so many restaurants, so many cafes, so many businesses, and the doors are just shuttered all the time. Oh, got a tractor coming up.
Morning.
Looks like a yeah, grass cutting tractor. But yeah, I have no explanation for it. We’ve got Chia Baya Enterprise and it’s closed. Another one is closed. Shell Helix Auto Pro closed. So what are all these places being used for? I just don’t know. I just passed by a big lumber yard coming down this hill from the temple and just wanted to pop inside there. Just take a closer look at the place if they’ll let me if the dogs will let me. I noticed through the gate they had their lumber dogs. They probably won’t like it if I ride my bicycle through the gate, but I just want to peek my head through and take a look at the operation.
There were a couple of times in my life when I was living in British Columbia in the Rocky Mountains in Canada and that was a big logging area and I was working with men that ran like drove logging trucks and operated sawmills and built their own houses by hand out of the wood that they cut. Yeah. Here come the dogs.
How many of them are there? 1 2 3 4 5 6.
Wow.
It’s beautiful wood.
Wow.
Really smells nice, too. Lumber yards have that great smell.
Hey there, boy.
Yeah. I don’t know what kind of a wood it is or what trees it comes from.
Man, this is a big operation. Look at all of that wood.
And I imagine they have a sawmill back here.
Wow, they’ve got a whole bunch of them. I can see at least three different sawmills.
Hello. How are you?
Yeah, they clearly they really know what they’re doing. Very practiced.
Canada. Canada. Yeah, I’m from Canada. How are you? Hello. How are you? Morning. Morning. Oh, Canada. Yeah, Canada. Bicycle here. Yeah, by bicycle. So, this is the wood that they’re the lumber that they’re cutting.
That’s the size of the tree.
Look at that. Over here, they started with a really big one.
Yeah, the log is sitting on a trolley.
Oh, there’s one trolley on each side. There’s a trolley.
Look at that blade.
And here in the back you can see there’s stockpile. Stockpile of logs.
It’s amazing to watch that saw cut through one of those big logs. It goes so fast. It’s like, yeah, hot knife right through butter. It’s so sharp and it’s moving so fast.
I’ve got to run the gauntlet of dogs again.
Yeah, I really stand out to the dogs as something foreign, you know, something that doesn’t belong here.
Yeah, it’s a big operation.
One thing that jumps out at me though is how loud it is back there. I couldn’t even hear myself when I was speaking. I don’t know whether the video recorded my voice or not. But if I were working here, I’d probably want ear protection all day long. Otherwise, yeah, you won’t hear anything by the end of the day. Morning. Good morning. How are you?
Well, I’m from Canada. Canada. Where? Indonesia. Indonesia. Good, good, good, good.
Apakabar. Yeah, the one man I was just chatting with there, yeah, he said he was from Indonesia, which didn’t surprise me. You would think a lot of the workers in places like this would be from Indonesia, migrant workers.
Yeah, I’m glad I took the time to pop in, take a look around inside there. That was quite interesting.
Of course, it’d be nice to meet like one of the managers or someone who spoke English. Well, I could find out more of the details, what kind of trees that they cut down, that kind of lumber, what it’s used for, whether it’s all sold domestically or whether they ship it around the world.
And back on the road.
I hear some cutting up ahead and I think that means they’re cutting the oil palm down. I just saw a big branch of an oil palm tree go crashing down.
They use those long poles with a scythe on the end like a sharp blade like a hook to cut the branches and then cut the fruit.
Very hilly here.
The road itself seems to be on a steady decline because I’m heading down to the coast again, but on all sides and ahead of me, all I see are some really beautiful hills, very lush. Someone just sent me a message talking about how there was some kind of a like a heat warning ongoing for Malaysia right now. There’s some sort of a scale, I guess, for measuring this. And it’s a numbered scale. And it’s reached kind of a dangerous level where temperatures are steadily over 40°, which yeah, I believe it cuz I’ve been out on the road for a number of these days and it has been hot, roasting. Got some cloud cover today.
And I’m going underneath some tree canopy, so I get some shade from time to time, but I still feel the heat.
It’s interesting. I’ve noticed that compared to previous trips that I’ve gone on,
the kilometers seem to go by much more slowly. And I was wondering why that is. I mean, it feels like I’m at a much slower pace and just crawling along. And you can see the road signs and one right up ahead of me says it’s 21 km to Tampin, my destination for the day. So this is the 21k marker. And it’ll feel like 6 hours has gone by before I get to the 20 km marker. Like if I make 1 kilometer progress, it feels like it takes a very long time to do that. Like a psychological feeling. And I started thinking it’s probably because I’m shooting video and because I’m shooting video for YouTube, I’m not plugged into music. Like, I’m not listening to music and I’m not listening to podcasts.
On all of my like really long bike trips that I’ve gone on in the past. They were all quite a long time ago now. And it was before the digital era. So I was actually, if I remember right, yeah, I was carrying like a Sony Walkman and cassette tapes. So I was listening to music all the time. I brought a couple of tapes with me, my favorite music, and that music became the soundtrack for that trip. Even to this day, every time I hear music from that I listen to on those trips, it instantly brings me back to those countries. I associate that music with those experiences. And then I would buy cassette tapes of local music from that country. So, I was listening to music all the time and I guess that makes the roads, you know, the miles go by faster. But now, because I’m recording video, I’m not plugged into anything. I’m not listening to podcasts. I’m not listening to music because I always want to be ready to turn on the camera if I thought of something that I want to talk about or I see something interesting. So, I don’t have the distraction of music or podcasts right now.
I remember I did a lot of scooter trips when I was living in Taiwan. I started off doing bicycle trips there, but they were way too difficult and I didn’t have enough time. So, once I had a scooter, I would travel around Taiwan by scooter.
Yeah, very narrow road here. So, I got a car wants to pass me from behind, but they can’t get by me. There they go. I had one car just a little while ago.
It was a bad It was such a close accident, not with me, but with a truck.
It was a much wider road. I mean, it was a big wide road. There was lots of room, but for some reason this car went way into the other lane going around me and it felt like they drifted and there was a big transport truck coming the other way. And I swear that the front corners of that truck and the car just missed each other by an inch or two. I don’t think the car driver was paying attention. I think they were looking at me and as they were looking at me, they instinctively steered almost directly into that truck. I was like, whoa. Yeah, that was a bad one. But I was just saying that when I was in Taiwan going on long scooter trips, it was just automatic that before the trip, I loaded up my iPod Shuffle with podcasts and I would have, you know, 30 hours of podcasts all lined up and I would listen to podcasts all the time that I was driving the scooter. And that was part of the trip, part of the pleasure, just taking in the scenery, but also listening to interesting stories on the podcasts. But now for this trip anyway, so far, I haven’t really done that. Maybe that’s why the kilometers go by so much slower. I’m all I have are my own thoughts to accompany me.
And I’m just not used to that, I guess. Man, it’s a beautiful road, though. It’s so nice.
Feels like we’re far away from the center of the country, you know, like we’re in the deep wilderness. Oh, here’s the 20 km marker. So, we covered 1 kilometer in this time that I’ve been babbling about this topic. I was just saying it feels like I’m deep in remote Malaysia, but really KL is just a hop, skip, and a jump in that direction. Malacca, 30, 40. Well, maybe yeah, 40 km up ahead is Malacca. But even in Malaysia, it doesn’t take long to leave the populated areas and end up in this kind of jungly wilderness.
I get a lot of thumbs up. I had one truck go by me from way back behind me. They started honking shaving a haircut, you know, beep beep beep beep beep and then beep beep beep beep beep and all the way up and then right past me and on ahead of me. So it was that was quite funny.
Nice smooth tarmac. Easy riding. Gorgeous day. Really nice.
There’s an interesting landmark coming up for me. Right up ahead on the right is the road where all of my trouble started. This road right here is the one that goes over the hill down the other side to Rembau and I was trying to go over that hill back quite a few days ago now. That’s when my tire exploded, which led to my derailleur damage, which led to all the spokes being broken, which kind of led to me deciding to change my route because I lost my I don’t know, 7-day buffer zone for getting to the Thai border. But yeah, there’s the road right there. Had I made it over that hill, had my tires not exploded, come down the other side, I would have come to here, and then I would have turned north going to Kuala Pilah. That was my destination for that day. I forgot that I’d be going right by that road.
Yeah. Another
interesting example of the local architecture. Classic kampung houses. Sounds really nice. Got all the like almost like a veranda there with the awnings, the doors that open.
There’s the road ahead of me. Getting closer to my destination for today on my way to the town of Tampin, which is like 12 kilometers that way. Got pretty hot. Oh man, that sun is just roasting. Pulled over here at the side of the road, separated my bike and my trailer. I’m trying to be smarter these days cuz I know if I put my bike over here on the kickstand, there’s a heavy wind today. No matter what you do, the wind is going to blow the bike over. So, I’m trying to be more trying to lean it against things now. Trying to be more careful. But I pulled over just to take a closer look at this cemetery. I’ve seen lots of these Chinese cemeteries in the past, of course, but I thought maybe someone watching this video may not have had a close look at one before. It’s quite interesting. I like the style. I don’t know anything about the symbolism to be honest, particularly the shape of each plot. The fact that it is circular like that. I’m assuming it has a meaning of some kind. Certainly a history because I’ve seen this design, the style for these grave sites for many, many years.
Yeah, they end up occupying a lot more space than a typical cemetery in Canada would. You know, much smaller plots. These ones, of course, are much larger, much more elaborate. I don’t know if, again, I don’t know if it’s just one person. Maybe it’s two people together. Could be a design for a husband and wife. Flower on each side here. A name on each side. I’m not sure.
Some of these look quite a bit older.
And I imagine it’s no accident that this cemetery is on a hillside like this and that they’re all facing in that direction. I’m sure that has meaning as well.
Yeah, there you can see the Titiwangsa mountains and coming down down down down down down down down down and eventually coming to a point over there where you could say that the mountain range begins.
Yeah, looks like some of them have a photograph and this one just has a picture of one person. So yeah, it’s quite an elaborate plot for one individual. Very attractive design, but yeah, they’re all very large. Actually, this one up here looks like it has photographs of two people. And yeah, it does look to be twice the size.
Noisy truck going by. Primax 95 gas truck. Here comes another one.
Two of them. A truck on a truck. And another truck. Yeah, I’ve joined up with a busier road. There was an intersection just back a couple hundred meters. Turned off of that beautiful countryside road and joined a bigger one. More traffic and with that I’m I don’t know 3 kilometers two or three from Tampin my destination for the day.
And would you believe my bicycle did fall over again. I’ve never had so much trouble with keeping my bike upright. I’ve been riding this bike for yeah. 30 years. Always used a kickstand. Never had any trouble at all. But ever since I got this cheap kickstand, it’s just been a disaster. And it had fell over again and broke my rearview mirror and snapped it off. I can no longer look at what’s coming up behind me. See if I can put that back together.
My microphone battery died. So, I don’t know how well you can hear my voice. I’m using the built-in microphone on the media mod, the GoPro media mod, and I’m just like half a kilometer away from my hotel. Right out here on the main highway, there’s a whole bunch of hotels that are not pinned on Google Maps or in a there’s a Tampin Hotel, another one here, another one there. Three of them at least.
And in my experience, in my lifetime, that usually means they’re cheaper hotels. But in the modern era, that’s not true anymore. And it’s especially not true in Malaysia. The walk-in prices are so much higher than the prices you get when you book online. I don’t know why it works that way.
For someone like me, if I walk into a hotel without a reservation and they have the prices on the counter, I look at them and they’ll be really high, then I’ll just go to Agoda and look and the Agoda prices will be 40% lower than the walk-in price. So, I just book it on Agoda and then I check in. So, I don’t even know why they bother with the walk-in prices anymore.
And these hotels, yeah, maybe they’re on Agoda and I just never notice them, but I don’t think they are. My low budget place is just up ahead around the corner here.
It was the only hotel in town that had a price lower than like 80, 90, 100 ringgit and up. Seemed like a nice place, too.
And there, maybe on my Hero 9, you can see the very beginning of the Titiwangsa mountain range right there. That is so cool. All right. And there’s a sign for my hotel. At least I know it exists. The hotel Seri Intan,
huh? Very interesting building. It’s my kind of place. I love it when it’s just sort of big and accessible, right? Just a big open building like this. Looks like an old classic. And then right beside it, it’s the Sunday Cafe.
Look at that. They even put little benches outside. That is a very nice touch. It’s not something you see very often.
Yeah. Hello. Hello. How are you? I am fine. Good. Good. Good. Good. Booking. I have a booking. Yes. For Douglas. Douglas.
Douglas. Yes.
So you can plus 10 ringgit to tourism tax. Yeah. When you pay through Agoda, they all you can pay a Yeah, there’s a receipt there. Yeah. Oh, you’ve got it there. Okay. Yeah. I’m here with a bicycle. Your bicycle? Yeah, my bicycle is there.
Oh, I didn’t even bring my key. Oh, you have it. Okay. I thought it was I thought it was still on the counter.
You put here. Oh, okay. Oh, perfect. 804 right here. 804. Excellent. Oh, this is great.
Hello.
Okay. Yeah. Also in there, too. Okay. Yeah, it looks amazing. Thank you very much.
Fine, right? No struggles at all. I’m always nervous about the tourism tax. I’m like I’m always, oh, come on. I’ve got the receipt already ready on my phone, you know, before I go in. And then when he says, oh, you have to pay 10 ringgit. I’m thinking, oh, but then as soon as I said, well, I paid through Agoda already. He went, oh, oh, okay. And everything was fine. But I mean, look at the room in terms of a cyclist. That’s what I mean. Look at I can just bring my bike right in here. Just roll it in. It’s like having my own personal garage. And no, that’s great. Your basic bathroom, large bed, fan, air conditioning. Ooh, look at that. Even a hair dryer. Now, let’s count the outlets.
One. A lot of things here. A lot of switches. One outlet there anymore. Oh, two way down here. So, if I I think they’re supposed to have I don’t know something over here. Why else would they have so many outlets? Oh, yeah. There’s an outlet up there and then two down there. So, there are enough. So, yeah. Let me just go do this thing and just roll my bike right in here. Yeah, this place gets very high ratings. Sort of like 8.2 or something, 8.8. And that’s very, very high for a low-budget hotel. And I can see why. It’s just spacious, clean, looks organized, the guy is friendly. The front desk, helpful. Yeah, I can see why it would get high ratings from guests.
All right, Mr. Trailer in we go.
Water dispenser right here.
And that is the end of my day for now. Rinsed out all my clothing, unpacked, settled into this room. Wonderful little budget hotel. This is what they all should be like. It’s not luxurious. Doesn’t have a balcony. Doesn’t have windows. Doesn’t have fanciness, but everything is just nice. Everything works. There’s hooks to hang things up. There are electrical outlets. There’s lots of space. Even the water cooler outside, it actually dispenses cold water. I really love this hotel. This is a really nice place. One of the best low-budget hotels I’ve come across in a long time. And yeah, that’s it. Shutting down. I’ve got my coffee over there already boiled. I’m going to start copying all my video files from today. Do my Strava map director fly over map business, upload photos, do all that good stuff. So, if you made it all the way to the end of this video, congratulations. That makes you a member of the Planet Doug crunch club. Put CC in the comments to let me know you made it all the way to the end of yet another Planet Doug video. Everyone out there that has joined the Planet Doug Patreon, thank you very much for supporting me through the Patreon channel. I really appreciate that. Really do. So, that is it. Shutting down for now and I may stay here another night just to take advantage of this lovely place or I’ll hop on my bike mid-morning and cycle into Malacca and stay there for a couple of nights. Cuz I still haven’t decided how I’m going to be leaving Malaysia when my visa dictates that I must. Well, I haven’t figured that out yet. All right, that’s it. Shutting down. And hope you enjoyed my day on the road here in Malaysia. I enjoyed the day. Tough, hot, tiring, but very interesting. A lot of interesting little encounters along the way. Little discoveries. Yeah, I enjoyed that. So that’s it. Shutting down and I’ll see you in the next video.