Distance: 54.01 km
Max Speed: 32.7 km/h
Average while moving: 20.0 km/h
I have two maps - one with a little more detail than the other. Both are often slightly contradictory so I do ask locals for directions too. Good thing I did for there is indeed a shorter route from Pantai Remis to Taiping. One of the maps indicates a minor road, but it really was a very decent trunk road with a fair volume of traffic.
As I discovered later, it cut 10 km or more off the route so I got in to Taiping with little bother.
It seems I have this thing for Perak towns - I first visited Taiping in 2001 and loved it for its old buildings, genial air and great complexion. Hey, it's a well known fact that Taiping girls have the best complexion of any in Malaysia. Various theories have been espoused including a high concentrate of limestone in the water. Whatever, when I first visited, alabaster skinned girls were certainly in greater abundance in Taiping than anywhere else I had been...
This stay would not, however, reinforce or dispel any of my previous impressions. Call it a state of weariness, but as I rolled in just before lunch, I just had no desire to explore. I decided to take things easy, and so I did. I had lunch out and tea and dinner in the Hotel Panorama.
The hotel is an old one, but had great service from smiling staff, and offered Wi-Fi in the lobby and coffee house. They let me plug in my laptop when my battery went flat so I was really quite a happy cookie.
I did get the usual comment that they're more accustomed to seeing Caucasian cyclists though. You already know my response to that...
My stay in Taiping thus passed in an air-conditioned blur of laptop screen and my book. I've now just about finished 4 books while on this trip. When you spend nights on your own in hotel rooms, what else is there to do after your nightly chat with your wife on the phone? I tried the TV once and found the noise abhorrent after the more immediate and intimate pleasures of a bike ride through the country. In the Hotel Panorama, I got through 5 minutes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and then got fed up.
One thing to note now is that my average speed is picking up - I've noticed it and am pleased.
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