This month we celebrate one year on the road, 37,000 miles traveled and 20 countries visited.

click here to see temple roof detail

We crossed into Malaysia on a late Friday afternoon and the road changed from a busy Thai two lane road to a well surfaced 6 lane motorway that rapidly carried us south. It came as a pleasant surprise to find Malaysia has their priorities right and allow motorcycles to travel for free on their toll motorway, unlike Thailand where we were not allowed to use them at all.The downside of this motorway travel is that it whisked us through beautiful countryside and sped us past interesting looking towns without us being able to stop and enjoy them. It did however enable us to get to the island of Penang on our first evening in the country although we broke our golden rule of not travelling night.

We crossed the very long bridge from the mainland (our guidebook says 13.5 kilometers but we reckon about 9) during rush hour traffic. Cars moved over to create a motorbike lane on the left side that we were too wide for so we crawled with the cars. Our first impressions of Penang were not the best; very busy streets in Georgetown, scanky hotels and rats the size of family pets frequently seen in the gutters, even in broad daylight. A further look around the island revealed some of the treasures on offer, snakes that hang out in a temple, hundreds of butterflies, some beautiful beaches as well as the gorgeous Indian, Chinese and British colonial architecture in Georgetown.

Click here to see Lisa

Everyone had raved to us about Malaysian food and particularly that in Penang but Chinese has never been our favorite and after 3 months in India we still can’t bring ourselves to go to an Indian restaurant even though it was 5 months ago that we were there. So instead we treated ourselves to the very colonial English lunch of tiffen at the Eastern and Oriental hotel, a beautiful old building built by the Sarkies brothers in 1884 before they built Raffles hotel in Singapore and also ate dim sum with the locals.

click here to see the Brit pub we found in the hills

Leaving Penang we headed south along the motorway then east up a sinuous new road into the hills leading to the Cameron Highlands. These cool, rolling hills are covered in vibrant green tea plantations and colourful fruit, vegetable and flower gardens and we passed roadside stalls selling roses, chrysanthemums, cabbages and strawberries. We toured a tea plantation and savoured some of their specialty teas and scones.

click here to see Orang asli fella on Lake Chini

Further, south east over the hills to the Taman Negara National Park, which is said to be the oldest standing forest in the world at over 130 million years. This is home to birds, snakes, huge spiders, lizards, tapir, deer, monkeys, rhinos, elephants, leopards, tigers, a silly amount of insects and of course trees.
We loved it here, walking on a rope bridge 60 meters above the forest floor amongst the canopy of some very big trees.

click here to see hornbill

We hired a canoe and paddled across a pink and white lily covered lake to visit an aboriginal tribe where we tried our hand at blowpipes. These very long, hand carved, wooden pipes are used by the village men to hunt their food with poison darts.

click here to see Rich in action with blowpipe

We continued across to the east coast to stay a few nights at Cherating Beach where a very long stretch of white sand forms a beautiful, pinetree lined bay. Very few foreign tourists make it here, preferring to go out to nearby islands so the beach was very quiet.

click here to see ladies picnicing at the beach

When we pulled into our guesthouse we were amused to find we could hardly find a parking spot. The parking area was full with about 35 big bikes, a sight we’d not seen for many a while. A group of Singapore bikers had ridden up Friday night (starting at 11pm – arriving at 8am Saturday morning) and were here for the weekend. They were a friendly bunch and curious to hear where we’d come from. Yet again we found ourselves having to explain that the vast majority of roads between England and NZ are sealed if a tad uneven on occasion. That the TDM is a perfect bike for the trip and no you don’t need a dirt bike as they are only really suitable for those with an iron butt.

click here to see our beachfront guesthouse

We were lucky on our last night to be taken to see a big Green turtle laying her eggs on the beach. They lay on a stretch strictly controlled by rangers at nights as all eggs laid are removed after being laid and hatch within a cage to stop poaching.

A guide came to our room around 10pm and whisked us off to the turtle sanctuary. There we waited in a group with about 2 dozen Malaysian tourists until the park ranger lead us to where this huge turtle had dug a pit in the sand and was laying her eggs. The ranger asked everyone to stand in a semi-circle behind the turtle and not to shine torches or use flash photography. We were pretty horrified when flashes started popping off, everyone started yelling excitedly to each other, pushing, shoving, falling in the egg pit and taking it in turns to pat the turtle while she laid her eggs! It amazed us that the turtles keep returning to this beach after what appeared such a traumatic experience but we were told that ‘apparently’ they don’t mind it.

click here to see what was lurking in our pond

We were then each allowed to release a baby that had hatched that day into the sea. This was pretty cool despite knowing that very few of them survive to return to the same beach and lay their eggs.

click here to see us releasing baby turtles

We spent a couple of days heading south to Jahor Bharu, Malaysia’s border town to Singapore. We left the bike in our hotel garage carpark while we went over to Singapore to meet Richard’s folks for 5 nights of fun. The hotelier warned us that the bike was left at our own risk as 2 or 3 times in the past couple of years they’d had 6 foot of water fill the basement when there was very heavy rain that the street drains couldn’t cope with. We were only slightly concerned at this prospect (it doesn’t rain on our holiday) but accepted the risk rather than ride over to Singapore. Several other overlanders have advised us its easier to park up in J.B. than deal with the beuracracy and expense of riding into Singapore.

Wearing our backpacks made us realise how much the bike has to carry and how much easier we have it than backpackers. We looked like something the cat dragged in with our backpacks covered in mud and road grease as we checked into a very fancy room at a gorgeous Singapore hotel but they let us in regardless.

We shopped, wined and dined ourselves through the next few days but mostly spent some quality time with Elaine and Geoff who we haven’t seen for a couple of years. Singapore has a beautiful city centre with a mix of modern high-rises and charming colonial architecture, clean wide streets and polite non-polluting traffic, a stark contrast to the rest of Asia we’ve visited.

click here to see where we found the best food

Singapore is the place for cheap bike parts in South East Asia and Rich purchased a new rear tyre which we’ve decided to carry a while rather than import one into Indonesia when we need it in a few thousand miles. Like Malaysia, it is also excellent for women’s shoes and clothes so I had to balance the bags otherwise the bike would tip over, right?

We celebrated our anniversary of one year on the road in style. High Tea at Raffles Hotel with Elaine and Geoff. Very civilized and a complete contrast to what we’ve been through over the past year.

click here to see Singapore river

All too soon our sojourn in Singapore drew to an end and we returned to Johor Bharu to collect the bike and continue our travels.

click here to see Melaka town square

We rode up the coast to Melaka, a trading port with a wealth of history having been controlled at various stages by sultans, the Portuguese, Dutch, English and Japanese before Malaysia gained its independence in 1957. We spent a couple of days here checking out the town, its Portuguese egg tarts and dim sum and its range of architecture that matches its history and arranged shipping the bike across to Indonesia. Melaka has a fascinating Chinatown where we stumbled across a shop whose family has for many generations made shoes for women with bound feet. They claim to be the only shop left in the world still making them and they have a woman with bound feet, now in her nineties who is a loyal customer.

click here to see sticky riceballs

There are no vehicle ferries crossing the Straits of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia so we had to find a shipping agent for the bike. We had the names of a couple that other people have used in the past but could not locate their offices anywhere. It transpired that a year or so ago the local authorities moved all cargo shipping up the coast as an active port was not part of their tourist vision for Melaka. We rode north and spent a couple of hours being pointed in various directions from would be helpful locals and eventually found an old blue container that serves as the offices for Jalinan Muara sitting on a piece of wasteland next to the river. We were able to book a place on an onion boat in a few days time but first needed to go to Kuala Lumpur for our Indonesian visas.

Indonesia grants a one month visa at the border but for longer you must apply at one of the selected consulates that can grant up to 2 months. For us to island hop through to East Timor it was vital that we get more than one month. We didn’t want to go to KL, another dirty big city but were forced to, spending far more than we wanted on accommodation so that we could get safe parking for the bike. Actually it wasn’t all bad, we did a little sight seeing and took advantage of cheap pirate goods in China town.

click here to see modern KL architecture

We were declined our request for a 3 month visa but they gave us 2 months and we were off, heading south to leave the bike to the onion boat and us to board a passenger ferry.