12/12: Bike into KL city

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Yesterday we trained into KL from Shah Alam to make "arrangements" aka fix guesthouse for coming days in KL, train tickets back to KL from Singapore end of the month, guesthouse for last days in malaysia, interneting for making the bikeroute to get us into KL city etc. Lots of that stuff that kept us busy all afternoon, but all was fixed by the time we went back to shah alam.

So today we biked from shah alam into KL city, what was surprisingly pleasant?!? You can follow a dedicated motosikal/bike lane almost all along highway 2 to the centre of town where it then dissappears at some point so you "merge" with the rest of the traffic...The traffic condition itself seems a lot better than Bangkok though. Not soo many cars/busses/motorcycles and the traffic seems more organised (which is still really not compared to our standards however). So we made it to our guesthouse fine & waited for andries who took a detour to a bikeshop to have his bike prepared for the flight back home.

Bikeshop was closed (sunday, obviously) so he struggled to get the bike 1) On the train, 2) On a taxi so finally he convinced a guy in a foodstall to keep it in his place for the night so he can go back and arrange all tomorrow...Will it still be there?? We all ask ourselves :-))

Rest of the afternoon walked around KL city petronas tower park) & went to see Rapunzel 3D movie in the evening. Now tired and ready for bed.

10/12: Shah Alam

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Kuala Selangor to Shah Alam went smoothly. Left at around 9am and arrived around 1pm. The road gets more busy as we near to Kuala Lumpur though, sometimes it felt like biking through highway traffic. It doesn't feel dangerous as most drivers are used to slow bikes/motorcycles on the side of the road, but it certainly feels a bit akward for us. You do get used to it fast (like there is an option ;-))

At some point the expressway 2 (toll highway) to kuala lumpur had a seperate motosikal/bike path lining the highway. This stretch has probably been the most relaxed bike since now (motosikals do still rush by at their maximum speeds). We are hoping this continues all the way into KL, but maybe thats just wishfull thinking.

Anyway, Shah Alam. The old capitol of Malaysia, its the muslim "center" of the country. It has the biggest dome mosque in Asia & some bigass towers, the blue mosque (just look at the pics to understand). We had a short, but nice, tour from somebody (even on friday which normally is closed for non-muslims, since friday is most important prayday). He was a verse singer for the mosque & surely could sing nicely. We had got a small bigdome-echo chanting just for us.

After the visit we quitly biked away over the mosque parking where andries decided it was time to get dangerous & do a frontflip while on his bike. Imagine a soccerfield sized empty, totally flat parking with 3 bikers with 1 suddenly going over his steering wheel & slamming onto the ground?!? Strange, the guards/supervisor there couldn't understand what happened either...andries tried biking & grabbing his phone at the same time...not a good idea. A big scratch, but he's fine! Oef.

Some restaurant also caught my eyes along the road..."Restoran, Bah Kut Teh"...yeah, who needs kut thee?
We only took 1 pic, but many advertise it this way...if they only knew dutch.

09/12: Kuala Selangor-monkeys and fire flies

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We finally had a good night sleep!
It had been a couple of nights since we slept trough the night, so it was a delight waking up at 9 am.
Opened the curtains and saw a monkey climbing over the electric wire across the street and straight up our hotel.
We only got out of our hotelroom at 11 am, before that we all took a good long shower, read a book, checked our e-mails...

After that we ate something at our hotel and went for a walk nearby to the lighthouse.
Up the hill there were a bunch of monkeys.
Immediatly a guy asked us if we wanted to buy some beans to feed the monkey.
"No thanks" we thought, but when we saw the other people feeding this cute monkeys we couldn't resist and bought a bunch of those beans after all.
It was really fun.

After that we went back to the hotel and Ardan en Andries got ready to go to the nearby nature park.
I was tired so I stayed in our hotelroom.

After that a meal somewhere and of to the fireflies.
A guy on a little wooden boat lead us along the very dirty river.
Luckely we didn't pay a lot of attention to that 'cause our eyes were to busy following the little lights in the trees along the river.
Beautiful sight it was: a living christmas tree.

08/12: Kuala Selangor

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Kuala Selangor, the sometimes 1000's of fire-flies along the river is what gets people here; Fire fly in malay are called "kelip-kelip" referring to the sound they make. We plan to do some spotting tomorrow night, lets hope for a dry evening.

Basically rest of today was biking & finding a place to sleep and do our laundry...some clothes where becoming really dirty (& smelly :-)) Anyway, we even found a place with good internet connection so we relaxed a bit, reading in our books and updating blog/site/pics.

We also already booked our flight to Cambodja 2 Jan 2011 from KUL. So new-year's eve in KL & Christmas in Singapore is the plan. Already booked a guesthouse in KL for end of year (fearing potential full bookings if we wait too long) & the guesthouse even has an NY party for the guests who are "home away from home". Now looking if we can't find a couchsurfer in singapore who wants to take care of 2 extra heads around the christmas table...? If anybody has friends in singapore...?...give us a shout!

07/12:Teluk Intan to Sungai Besar

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Had a toastbread & peanutbutter (chocolat rice crisps) breakfast in front of the "giant" mall. Andries went straight into McDonanlds for some fruit juice and water, cause the mall was opening only 15min later...he just couldn't wait.

Then headed back on the 5 towards Sungai Besar where we wanted to overnight, as it was about 55km away & we didn't feel like a long bikeday. Biking was as normal...hot (although luckily it was clouded so a lot better than yesterday), couple of pitstops for some food & drinks. Finally biked into Sungai Besar, but we seemed to have missed the town a bit, cause we were back on the main 5 before we knew it...kept on biking figuring we would find another place to stay.

Saw some sign for a "Homestay" at some point and we decided to follow it since we had 60km on the counter already.
After some riding through paddy fields we found the homestay place, which only had a elderly couple that couldn't speak a word of english...a younger girl showed up after a while and we got a room. It's basic, but we can sleep for the night. This is rural country indeed (as a guy in petronas fuel station told, warned, us about).

Ow yeah, bought some sunflower seeds for snacking, according to the package they should "Bring you the happiness of delicious feeling"...sweet, translation skills aren't important, that's for sure.We a lso got some taste of highway-wildlife by spotting a huge (+-2m) lizard on the road trying to cross over before being hit by a car...shook up he crossed all the way back to side he came from...not too bright most animals.