Today is the third time we “leave” Kuala Lumpur. All jokes aside, it will very likely also be the last time we set off. We left Sonja and once again all we had to give was an inadequate ‘thank you’. We receive so many acts of kindness. People go out of their way to help us, often as if it were the only logical thing to do. We say ‘thank you’, take a photo and move on, but without all this kindness, we would have provably given up a while ago. This is what keeps us going and is, for a big part, also why we are on the trip in the first place.

Frankly, Nina and I talk often about how we will repay this life debt. Not in the sense of to “repay” everyone we meet, but in general. What can we do to give others this immense warmth?

Did not realize how much of our gear is in coprate colours

To follow right up in the same vein: I wisely gave Tony Lim a call after breakfast. He is the Malaysian importer for Touratech and had a shop in Penang, where we will arrive in a couple of days’ time. Or so I thought. I found out just in time that the info on the Touratech website is outdated and he moved shop to a suburb of Kuala Lumpur. Unfortunately, I also learned that the two pieces of Touratech kit I was hoping to replace were out of stock, but after a brief discussion we decided to pay them a visit nonetheless. After all, our bike is so kitted out with their stuff that we once were asked what kind of motorcycle brand Touratech be. 🙂

It turned out that Tony and his staff are incredibly kind and hospitable people. After a last ditch attempt to at least find one pannier-carrying handle to replace ours (which has a broken buckle) we got invited to lunch! At our pick, we went to this lovely Malay place. There were even all sorts of desserts thrown in for us to try out. I liked the rice with palm sugar water steamed in tapioca leaves.

Nina’s comment: It didn’t stop with a simple invitation for lunch. No, Tony made dead sure I had enough vegetarian food available and, in the end, even got me a take-away bag with rice crackers because I grew to like the crunchy addition to lunch a lot!

Everyone sports the Touratech logo but we are the ones with the most yellow 😉

Before the mandatory good bye photo session, Tony loaded me up with contacts for Georgetown and Bangkok as well as some Touratech merch to replace some of our wearing wardrobe.

We took the motorway north all the way to the turn off for the Cameron Highlands. The ride was once again blissfully smooth, the one brief gust of rain not withstanding. At least this gave us a chance to experience another cool feature of Malaysian road infrastructure. Here, motorcyclist are not left “standing in the rain” or ducking precariously under bridges but rather every bridge is upgraded as a proper rain shelter. With little ramps leading on and off to get out of the way of the trucks. Even on stretches without bridges, there are little shelters set out in good intervals.

The moth it was eating was bigger than most spiders I know …

Turning off the motorway we got the last bit of shopping done to be prepared for our first night camping. Or so I thought … As we arrived at the designated campground / nature park we first were a bit unsure because it was almost fully abandoned. No money collected at the entrance booth, the cafes all closed up and locked down. That alone would probably not have stopped us, but walking around to check out the site we found something that surely did: Two massive spiders, as big as my hand sitting in nets spanning 2 meters across one of the paths. Right next to the designated camp sites. Nina pulled her veto card – for what I think was the first time on the trip. We explored the site for a little while longer, enjoyed the also enormous Raja Brooke butterflies and then headed off further up towards the Cameron Highlands.

We ended up booking into the Twin Pines hostel. Back to slightly moldy rooms and shared bathrooms it was, but at least at $16 NZ the price tag was good 🙂