Category Archives: posted by Florian

These are the posts Florian has written

Day 169 – Run for the sun

Again on the "old" bridge ... it was just shorter

Again on the “old” bridge … it was just shorter

We could not find any more destinations or activities in Malaysia that were able to re-kindle the fire and joy that has been missing for a couple of days. Nina and I talked a lot about how we feel about the trip, what we thought were the reasons and what we might do with it. One decision that came out of this was to call it for Malaysia and head over to Thailand, today. There was still doubt, though. Are we missing out? We also did not want to do Malaysia dis-justice, when we were so hyped up about exploring here after coming over from Sumatra.

My last bid for a set of Heidenau K60 in Malaysia fell short as well, so at 10:30 it was time to hit the road for the last 150 km in Malaysia. Since I could not find them in Thailand either, it might come that we need to settle on a different tire soon. There was an importunity to get the promising looking Metzeler Karoo 3, but unfortunately they do not make a front in Rocinante’s size. Continue reading →

Day 166 – Wear and tear

These were the kindest, loveliest, most heart-warming people we met in a while

These were the kindest, loveliest, most heart-warming people we met in a while

There is no doubt about it, this day started way better than it would eventually conclude. We remembered from yesterday that the lovely place we had lunch at also serves breakfast. Since the breakfast at our hotel was underwhelming to say the least, we were more than keen to go there. The owners actually remembered us from yesterday and were super kind once more. We had delicious strawberry pancakes and our usual coffee and tea setup. It’s these encounters that keep us going, honestly.

Rocinante between the two GS DownUnder bikes.

Rocinante between the two GS DownUnder bikes.

Only 200m after packing the bike and hitting the road, I spotted something out of the corner of my eye that had us stop again right away. A pair of overlander bikes, with the unmistakable Touratech panniers were parked on the main street of Tanah Rata. We stopped and had a look around until we found Bjorn and Willemien in the same Indian restaurant we had dinner last night. They have come down overland from the Netherlands. Since we already had breakfast, we kept it to a brief chat, exchanged some contacts and went back on the road.

It was not too far though, and the first disaster of the day was about to strike. We refueled a couple of kilometers north before we intended to tackle Gunung Brinchang (highest public road in mainland Malaysia). But then, Rocinante would not start with what looked like a flat battery. Only that it should not have been flat. A suspicion started to creep up on me while we push started the bike down the hill.

The stupid fall last night when I tried to lubricate the chain on my own? Well, instead of just falling flat on her side, Rocinante hit a massive flower pot that went right into the left rear cover. That panel covers all the really important electronic parts of the bike: Regulator, ABS computer, ECM (Engine management) and fuse box. It did not look too damaged from the outside, though …

Sure enough though, right after the push start the next issue arose. The ABS light was blinking, warning about an issue with the break system. So we stopped on the roadside 100m on and I had a look under the cover with the engine kept running. Luckily, this issue was sorted by forcing the plug of the ABS unit back in properly.

A little boulder had come down a while ago...

A little boulder had come down a while ago…

The road up to Gunung Brinchang was sealed all the way, all though a bit worse for wear. The only mild worry were all the big land-cruisers zipping about with loads of tourists on board. With the road pretty steep and narrow, Nina got a bit worried that one of these cattle haulers might come flying and knock us off the road. Gladly, none of the sort happened. Only that reaching the top was a bit of a let down in the end. The clouds were hanging so low that there was nothing to see here. Oh well, at least Rocinante started without issues or warning lights this time …

And then, the world disappeared

And then, the world disappeared

Next stop, Ipoh! The mountain road was nice, until the clouds drew darker and darker. This time, we missed our 30 second window to stop and decided to put on wet weather gear, and so we got drenched through when the first bit of rain hit. The rain here is really an all or nothing affair.

We decided against another detour with minor sights around Ipoh and headed for the center of town instead for some lunch. At first we could not find the restaurant from the Lonely Planet we wanted, then found another recorded one which would turn us away again at the mention of Nina’s vegetarianism. Hot and frustrated we got back onto the bike, when real disaster struck. A push of the starter button did not produce the reliable humm of the starter motor but instead “crashed” the electronics of the bike. Rocinante would not start, and for the first time ever I did not know the cause right there and then.

We pushed her one street over to where the restaurant was that we were initially looking for, only to find out that it was closed. Defeated we dropped into the first forgettable eatery we saw and considered our options. Just in case I checked in with one of our contacts for workshops in Ipoh.

I was able to get the bike started again, after some tinkering with the electronics under the side cowl. Less exciting was the fact that the issue seemed to be related to the Engine Control Module, a prohibitively expensive black box type computer controlling engine operation. Well, once started, she seemed to be running fine …

The 150 km to Penang flew by in no time on the motorway. For no particular reason, we took the “old” bridge over onto the Island. Impressive as it is, the new 27 km long motorway over the sea seems impressive to say the least. This is the only time that even motorbikes need to pay the toll in Malaysia. We could not find any place to pay our RM1.40 in cash. Just when we were about to fork over RM20 for a toll card, someone handed us his wave & go card and payed for us to get through. Since toll is only payed getting onto the island, we were sorted! Nice.

In town, the day wound down with another minor series of catastrophes. The road to our intended hotel was closed for a movie shoot, the hotel was full and a fat white man got randomly prissy with us. Then we got ping ponged between three of the many Red Inns of George Town’s Love Lane.

Night food market near our hostel

Night food market near our hostel

As often, the day concluded in a great positive encounter with a local contact. Through Tony from Touratech we got hooked up with BK. He has just come back from a 6 month trip on Honda Waves to London and is somewhat of a local legend. We went out to an amazing food court, talked about traveling and everything else and went home with a contact number for Jonathan, the local motorcycle electronics wizard!

 

Day 164 – Once more with feeling

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

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 ;)

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 ...

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 🙂

Day 162 – Hostage in Melaka

Uncertain about what to do in Melaka we booked into our hostel for two nights last night. After our first round of sightseeing though, we felt like this would be a bit excessive. Turns out, canceling one night was harder than we thought though, so we ended up staying to not waste those $20.

Coffee, tea, muesli, toast and jam...it had everything that we wanted

Coffee, tea, muesli, toast and jam…it had everything that we wanted

It was not all bad though, since this gave us a chance to finally fully catch up with the blog and get some postcards sorted. Not before a good long breakfast, though. Unfortunately, the 3 year old Lonely Planet turned out to be useless once again. No Chinese breakfast treats for us then. Instead we found a cute and cozy western style cafe. The prices were steep, comparatively, but the food and coffee were excellent.

We made up for the expensive breakfast a while later, when we re-emerged from our hotel to have lunch in a nice Chinese Vegetarian restaurant. For about a third of the price of our breakfast. We also found our Malaysian go-to drink in the form of lemon iced tea (That is tea on ice with lemon juice). Cheap as and so refreshing.

 

View along the river towards our guest house

View along the river towards our guest house

After lunch, we walked once again to A’Famosa and the area with all the attractions to get stamps from the post office. On our way back, we took the scenic route along the river. It is very pretty, a bit reminiscent of Amsterdam, but would be improved dramatically if it were not for the smell. We got rewarded though by spotting a pretty large reptile swimming in the river.

By this point I almost dread going into detail for another meal, but for us the last attraction of the day was going to an Indian banana leaf restaurant. Banana leaf, because instead of a plate, you get a large piece of banana leaf put on the table in front of you, a bit like a place mat. On that the waiters put the rice and a couple of veggie / stew things plus some curry over the rice. it was, once again, delicious. After that, we rewarded ourselves with a coffee and chai – Nina remarked that it was almost as good as dessert 😉

Yeah, Melaka, lot’s of food 🙂

Day 160 – Confluence of Mud

Not much is left of the namesake mud that gave the city its little complementing name, nor of the tin upon which the early success was founded. There was plenty to discover of the people that came here for that reason and many others, though. From European colonial era buildings to the Indian and Chinese quarters – Kuala Lumpur really feels like the melting pot it has been for so long.

Sultan Abdul Samad Building, one of the landmarks

Sultan Abdul Samad Building, one of the landmarks

We wanted to use the last day in KL to do some more proper sight seeing. So we headed out a bit before lunch to go for a long walk in the city. For a city with millions of inhabitants and teeming with glittering high-rises, KL is surprisingly walk-able. We took a taxi to Merdeka Square to start our walk. The square is surrounded by colonial era buildings with some modern museums thrown into the gaps and feels like a huge contrast to all the skyscrapers all around.

From here, it was a short walk to our lunch spot, an all vegetarian restaurant in Little India. All the food was amazing, but we had it especially for the plain naan bread. Fluffy, smoky and perfect to lap up that butter paneer sauce. An observation I made was that there was a surprising variety in what a main dish consists of. Until now, most Indian restaurants we have been still stuck to the western formula of rice – sauce – maybe bread. Whereas here, I got a tray with something between a naan and a pizza in the middle and 4 pots of sauces around it plus a cup with either a soup or a sauce. Without anyone around to mimic, it can be surprisingly hard to find out how you are supposed to eat your food 😉

Red lanterns mark the whole quarter

Red lanterns mark the whole quarter

With a short walk we crossed half a continent and went from Little India to Chinatown. There are a couple of roofed streets providing much needed shade in the searing afternoon heat. We used that for a stroll over the street markets here, amusing ourselves with knock off handbags and the politely pushy hawkers.

A three dollar cab ride later, we were right at the foot of today’s main attraction: The KL Tower, or Menara Kuala Lumpur. Since we did not get up the Petronas Towers we went all in here and got tickets for the highest (open air) platform for RM210. This one is higher anyway with its 421m on a 90m hill.

We  spotted a Hard Rock Cafe nearby from up top and thought it be a cool way to end the foray with a drink there. Unfortunately it was A: further than it looked from up top and B: we realized too late that we had run out of cash. At least we could pay our overpriced but nice drinks by credit card.

It took us almost an hour to find the nearest ATM in the next mall to be able to pay the taxi home – just in time for Nina’s family call to Germany.

The day was rounded off by another lovely home cooked dinner and wine, compliments of Sonja.

 

Day 157 – Cool head(s)

Back on Lombok we got a tip from Oliver about a particular bike shop in Kuala Lumpur that was supposed to be extremely friendly to overlanders. Since it has been more than 8000 km since Rocinante’s last service in Darwin, I was intend to find out for myself. I have not been disappointed!

bless you, you are amazing!

bless you, you are amazing!

I showed up and hesitantly asked if I could work on my bike in their workshop and maybe have some help with the more difficult bits later on. Within 15 minutes, I got a work space cleared for me by lead mechanic Jing Sheng and his two fellows. Everyone was extremely helpful and I got started at stripping down Rocinante according to the manual on my phone.

The entire shop is just amazing. They have all the cool imported parts that an adventure rider could ever want and the workshop is just something else. All day, riders were coming and going. Some to get their bike worked on, some just for a chat. People are allowed in the workshop and you constantly meet interesting people. The shop was filled to equal parts with adventure bikes (mostly shiny 1200GSs) and performance bikes. Plus, everyone really knows what they are talking about.

My mission for the day was to prepare the bike to get the clearance of the valves checked and, if need be, adjusted. Last time I payed 400 € for the procedure, so I was determined to do as much as possible myself this time around. The issue here for my bike is not the actual procedure, that is really straight forward, but getting to the things in the first place. To reach the eight valves to check, the cylinder head cover needs to come off. Which, for my bike means digging through 4 1/2 layers of stuff. That is what I paid for last time, but it is also relatively easy to do, just laborious. It is also a good opportunity to check all the parts removed for wear or damage.

Almost there ... faring, tank, air box and throttle body are off ...

Almost there … faring, tank, air box and throttle body are off …

It took me 5 hours to get to the point where the cylinder head covers were ready to come off and another hour of cussing, wiggling and loosening extra parts to get this done. It may be because the collective consensus was not to follow the workshop manual and take the whole exhaust off as well to get a heat shield out of the way (not before I broke one of the rusted exhaust shells, though). Still the rear cylinder head cover was so tightly wedged in under the frame that we had to rotate the crank manually half way through to get the rocker arms out of the way. Jing Sheng told me that it was worse on the older V-twins and you had to tilt the entire engine slightly for a routine maintenance job.

There they are. They were only off by .025 mm, and only the intake valves.

There they are. They were only off by .025 mm, and only the intake valves.

In the end I even got to do the adjustment myself, with confidence inducing guidance from Jing Sheng. The guys are just amazing. I learned more about my bike in one day than ever before in Germany.

Even though it was late and I should come home for dinner, I got encouraged to re-assemble and test the same night. I did manage to put enough of it back together to get Rocinante started smoothly and get back to Mont Kiara before everyone everyone else had to starve. I even got a quick shower to get most of the grease off me 🙂 In the mean time, Nina gave me an update on her progress regarding our list, which included finally getting her boots to a cobbler for re-soling.

That night we went to a wonderful northern Indian restaurant. I must say, the food is one thing for sure I am looking forward to going to India.