Day 2 Kukup to Pontian Kechil

Avg Speed: 17.7 km/h
Distance: 25.77 km
Max: 24.5 km/h
Headwind for much of the way

I made a mistake today - one which I will learn from.

I decided to wander the streets of Kukup again, this time in daylight. Whereas the night had lent a mysterious, almost primitive air to Kampung Air Masin, daytime brought an atmosphere of normality. The daylight revealed what the nightime had shrouded. And what I saw, even in the early morning, was a bustling little village.

People were out and about, raising the shutters on their shops - surprisingly, many homes did not appear to be locked. Not last night nor this morning. Their gates and doors were almost without exception open and unbarred. Oliver had said it was safe, and yet my instincts found it unnatural...

I came across some gunny sacks laid out to dry and wondered what they were for. The answer came a few metres up the road - prawns and some kind of pink or magenta mix were being spread out in the sun to dry.

I went back to town and stopped at a little coffee shop to have a bowl of laksa. A couple of shops up the road were packed full of people hanging on to their passports. Kukup is a staging point to some Indonesian islands I suppose.

While packing, I chatted for awhile with Oliver. His place comprises the bungalow I stayed in, another one with 3 or 4 rooms and a longhouse, all of which combined can accommodate over 200 people. He also arranges tours etc.

Oliver used to be a teacher and was born in Pekan Nanas. He stayed in KL for 5 years until just after 1969 then returned to Pekan Nanas. Moved to Kukup over 30 years ago with his wife who was born here. They have two kids, one of whom works in Benut, my planned stop after Pontian. Oliver told me there is nowhere to stay in Benut as it's a small town.

I said my goodbyes with more than a seed of certainty I would return. I think my kids will like Kukup - and not just for the novelty of living in a house on stilts, nor the fact that everything - and I mean everything - simply gets washed into the ground beneath, waiting for the tides to clear it. There was enough to see and do for a short holiday, and the people I'd met, apart from the inept staff at King's were generally friendly and pleasant.

I dropped by to see Lili one last time. She gave me a Johor guidebook with hotels listed and that confirmed there was nothing in Benut. So I now faced a 70+ km ride on only my third day...

All these activities on the morning meant I left Kukup sometime mid-morning. And here was the first part of my lesson - it is not advisable to cycle around noon. Well, I learnt it the hard way.

The first few km out of Kukup was very easy going. I was astonished at how many people would smile or wave at me. Not just people standing by the road, but truck drivers on the other side would horn at me and wave encouragement as they went past. Kids would scream and wave excitedly. A passenger in a car going past actually wound down his window to clap encouragement. It made me feel extremely motivated. So early in this trip and I'd met some very nice people in Johor National Parks, Oliver and now so many others along the way.

I needed it...

I was still going at about 12:30 when any sane person would be in shade having lunch. It got so hot I had to stop a couple of times. The headwind I struggled against for much of the way I later discovered to be the likely result of the heat rising off the tarmac. Whatever, when I finally reached Pontian just past 1pm, I was hot, bothered, and more than a little red in the face and on my exposed arms.

I found two hotels - both on the upper floors of 3-storey shophouses. As if the hot ride in wasn't enough... I eventually settled on the Campbell, a.k.a. Kim Heng Hotel. I look up despairingly at the long staircase up and spied a lady walking across the first floor landing. She confirmed they had rooms and that I could bring the bike up.

This entailed taking the bags off, then locking the bike up against a railing, carting my things up, then going back down for the bike. I think I have to get used to this! Fortunately this time it was only the first floor I had to go up.

The Kim Heng Hotel seemed to be run by a set of geriatric Malay ladies with beaming smiles. My room was spartan and continued the happy trend of having both air-conditioning and a hot water heater. My nose was getting stuffed up - probably caught a chill at Oliver's but I had a nice hot shower, rested a little and eventually wandered off to look for a late lunch.

Pontian is bland and featureless which explains why I hardly took any pictures. The rows and rows of shophouses featured a multitude of mobile phone shops, but not a single internet cafe. Uploading this had to wait.

There is a bus stop across the main road and buses and taxis take passengers all over Johor and the rest of the peninsular. There is also a predominantly Malay hawker centre next to that. And that's about all I can think of that would even have a sniff of a chance of being entered into a tourism brochure I'm afraid.

Still, the people were polite and pleasant. I had a late evening coffee at one of those new-old coffeeshops. Someone explain why these invariably sport a maroon paint scheme and have copies of historic pictures adorning one wall and a large black and white historic photo as a mural on the other side? They serve coffee in old-style coffee cups and this place was no different. I sat in a booth and had a cup of Kopi-C (I think they define 'C' as 'Condensed Milk because it was both thick and sweet) while continuing my reading of Peter Moore's 'Wrong Way Home' which details his 8-month voyage by bus, train and other land and sea transport from London to Sydney.

Dinner was a plate of fried rice with salted fish at the open air restaurant across the road. Old decor again, but this time the genuine stuff: stone tables painted red. Food was nice and the owner and the waitresses were attentive and friendly.

After my mid-afternoon roaming of the town, I had no more urge to do any more exploring and tried to have an early night in anticipation of a long ride tomorrow. Gan was going to meet me near Batu Pahat so I reckoned a 7am start would be good.

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Day 1 Tanjung Piai to Kukup Part 3

Oliver's nickname is 'Gemuk' but it is not a deserved one. He is a slim man in his late 50s or early 60s and had a warm and ready smile. He showed me to my room which he normally lets out to families for RM150, but as I was recommended by Lili, would only be RM50 for the night.

It was a decent-sized room with a queen-sized bed, a bunk bed for two, and a spare mattress on the floor below that. A dressing table and wardrobe completed the furnishings. It opened into the living room which had a large TV complete with karaoke machine. On the other side of the living room were two more rooms. They were not occupied and I had the run of the place. A kitchen adjoined the living room and the toilet and bath were at one end of this. I was very happy to note the hot water heater. I had earlier made fun of the Tanjung Piai resort for having air-conditioners but no water heaters so was glad Oliver's place was much more complete.

The living room was bounded on two sides by a verandah and a walkway leading on to a number of other house was just beside this, separated by an open fence and a gate. Oliver gave me the gate key and said my bike would be safe. He declared Kukup to be safe and free from crime but I still chained my bike to the balustrades just in case.

After I unpacked we chatted for awhile. Oliver was full of positives about Kukup saying the people were nice, that the various races mixed freely - even the orang laut (the indigenous sea people) and it was generally a very nice place to live.

He told me I could get dinner until about 10pm or so and that the fishermen would likely go out about midnight when the tide was in. I made a mental note to try to go out then, but was not sure I could, considering the late night the night before.

I took a walk just before dinner time and wandered around Kukup town. I couldn't understand the need for a spanking new double-storey hawker centre in the middle of town - all the shutters were down and the stalls seemed unoccupied. Facing this was a series of well-patronised restaurants. I walked off in the direction of the bus station, past the imposing Immigration office and discovered some new development going on just behind the bus station.

I walked down a side-street, and realised there were a number of rows of brand new 3-storey shophouses. All the units had their shutters down too and looked as unoccupied as the hawker centre. Facing them on one side, and still behind hoardings upon which creepers were clambering up, was another slab-like row of uncompleted shophouses looking decidedly abandoned.

The whole development, like the hawker centre, seemed out of place.

I walked in to King's restaurant (can't quite remember the actual name, I'm sorry) for dinner but after sitting down for 5 minutes amongst other patrons, no one had come to take my order despite my attempts to attract attention. So I walked out and back to the lunch place - Causeway/Coastway. Here I was the only patron and paid RM20 for rice, a fried pork specialty dish, mixed vege and a can of Carlsberg.

After dinner, I wandered around the Kampung Air Masin - it's big! Everything is built on stilts of course and running through the centre of town is a large concrete 'road' on which plies human and bicycle and motorcycle traffic. Leading off the main road are numerous side streets, some short ones leading up to individual houses and others, like the one running along Oliver's, leading past rows of houses.

The place was busy with people everywhere. Kids zoomed up and down on bicycles, some of them merrily and fearlessly texting on their mobile phones. I discovered there were a number of other 'resorts'. There were also a number of very large houses which were as removed from the charm of the half concrete and wood single storey structures as was possible.

I noticed a few people pushing large carts about. Most carts were empty and I never found out what they were for. Rubbish collection, perhaps.

About 1 km in, there was a fork in the road and the left lead to a large school. I decided to turn around and headed back.

Oliver had given me the key so I let myself in an went to bed.

Day 1 Tanjung Piai - Kukup Part 2

Distance: 11.37 km
Average Speed: 19.2 km/h

I had decided it was necessary to start the ride from Tanjung Piai - everywhere we looked we were reminded of our geographical position vis-a-vis the Asian continent, and I figured it made sense to traverse the length of the peninsular from south to north. So back we went to the resort. It isn't really a resort - more a collection of chalets over the sea.

We stopped the car under the shade of a tree and started unloading. Assembling and preparing the bike, I felt a little nervous. 3 weeks before we were married, Mei and I sat on the beach at East Coast in Singapore, taking a break on our usual weekend bike ride. I took a video then and we joked and laughed about how, in 3 week's time, she would be 'Mrs Cheong'. Well, I joked I would be 'Mr Lam'... At that point, I recall now how 3 weeks still seemed such an eternity.

Putting on my cycling shoes, I had a flashback to my dinner conversation with Andrew Wilson shortly after I'd heard of Bill MacDannell's walk and after the Lasobans had thought it would be a great idea to travel through the country like he was doing in America. Andrew had encouraged me and his question that swung things around was 'how would you feel, 5 years from now, if you did not do this?' There was only one path to choose from that point on.

I remembered going home and talking to Mei about it and the poor girl, just half a year into the marriage, had suddenly to deal with her husband cycling off into the boondocks for weeks and weeks. That seemed so long ago.

And now, here I was. The intervening 3 months had flown by and this was it. I'd hardly cycled more than 20 kms a week in the last 25 years, and until I started training for this ride, was a few kilos in weight and a couple of inches around the waist too much for physical efficiency on a bike.

Nervous, yes. Excited too. And more than a bit sad. In the two years I've known Mei, my life has never been fuller nor more complete. We've hardly spent more than a working day's hours apart, and I knew that contrasting my resolve to do this ride was the feeling of not having Mei by my side at the start and end of each day.

I got on the bike - having never ridden it with a full load before (call me stupid, call me foolish...). I couldn't get the back wheel pumped up to the desired 45psi and later discovered it was indeed possible to do that, if you pumped when the bike WASN'T fully laden. Call me stupid...

All set, a great big hug from Mei and heartfelt 'I love you' and 'take care' and off I went. Having so much weight at the back made the front lighter than I've been used to but I settled in. Good thing I insisted on a very short first ride.

Through Kampung Serkat, past the UMNO Hari Raya bash, and people were smiling and waving at me. It felt good - the cycling was easy and the mood was great. A few minutes into the ride and I began to wonder where Gan and Mei were. I couldn't see them in my mirror and then I panicked and started patting my pockets thinking maybe I'd hung on to the car keys by mistake...

The silver shape of my car eventually appeared and with a horn, some last shouts of encouragement and smiles, they were off.

I got in to Kukup with no difficulty at all - 11 kms is nothing of course. Lili had given me the number of 'Kukup Floating Chalet' and I'd contacted Oliver Lee earlier. I rang him when I arrived and found his place not far from the main road, off the main Kampung Air Masin road.