31/12: Takin' care of business again

No route, no pics. Today we spent the last day of the year preparing for our departure from Malaysia to Cambodja. The bikes were packed by KSH bikes (nicely it seems) so it is easy to get them to the airport & on the plane. Lets hope this time it goes a lot!! smoother than the last time (*no 2w delay, no broken front forks (or any part for that matter))

Spent some Xmas cash buying a lonely planet Cambodja, thank you for the gift family Migerode. So we have some more info on the country to prepare and help us on the road. Some more shopping at watsons for sunblock, bandaids & shampoo.

Finish it off with a new years dinner at the hotel & 2 chang beers (expensivvvvvvv!) and we are about ready to call it a day :-) It's only 22:30pm...we are so going to miss new years eve :-O

30/12: Back to KL

Route with pics
Picasa Album

We had to get on the train at 8 am to Kuala Lumpur, but we we're 23 km away from the trainstation. Our alarmclock woke us up at 5am so we would be on our bikes at 5.45am. We wanted to be at the trainstation at 7am, 'cause you never know...
The trainmaster then asked us for an additional 15 SGP dollars/bike! Paying extra for your bike is normal, but that was way to much, so we said we didn't want to pay that and bargend a bit (By now we realise that most things don't have a fixed price around here). We finally still payed 10 SGP dollar per bike, but at least we saved 10$, right? The trainride was cold (again, airco is always working maximum it seems).

Once in KL we biked straight to the bikeshop where Andries packed his bike to take it back home. We asked the man at the bikeshop how much he wanted for the packing of one bike; 50rm he replied. Ardan started to laugh a bit (because we knew Andries only payed 40rm) and said: "No no, our friend came here two weeks ago and it only cost him 30rm". The man waited for a minute and then agreed. So you see: almost nothing had a fixed price...we even got it for 10rm less then Andries did :p. (he didn't bargain!) We finally got to our hotel at 6.30pm (the most expensive we've been in so far, but okay, it's for new years eve), took a shower, went for a bite and did the usual "blogthing". The two coming days in KL we will plan Cambodja a bit, read in our books and enjoy our last luxury in probably the next few months.

29/12: Mc Ritchie Reservoir

Route with pics
Picasa Album

We visited & went for a good walk through Mc Ritchie reservoir today. It's a part of the last remaining forest in the centre of singapore. It's actually never so 'remote' since you have a bunch of people enjoying the outdoors & there are military trainings all over the place (the 'troops' more looked like boy scouts tripping in the woods) although we did hear a fair amount of tnt being blasted around in some part of the forest so some of it is maybe serious ;-) Still have some doubts about that since according to all the singaporean men we talked to, the most find the idea of forced service a pain-in-the-ass & the 2y!! service is nothing more than boyscouts out for picnic. Probably it's all somewhere in the middle...

For the rest the route included a nice treetop walkway from which we had a good view over the forest up north almost all the way to malaysia, a couple of monkeys. 1 wrong turn later (which showed us a nice military gate making us track back) we got a lift from a local passing by to the bus station in the end. We also needed & got some help (from very nice lady, mary ong *note to self: send her a postcard when we are back home) to get the right bus to reach it in the first place. Once of the bike we are so damn helpless :-) Like fish on dry land.

28/12: Bikework, move, housing estate & chinatown

Route with pics
Picasa Album

Today we took things easy. (again?) Nah, we've earned some relaxing, right? So sleep out (especially compared to our host who gets up at 5am for work) go out for breakfast (& get some fresh bananacake from host his mother :-)) and afterwards work on the bikes. They needed a good cleaning & some fresh oil after almost 1500km. Then it was time to move host, a small 10km more up north to Yann (through warmshowers.org). A real friendly guy who just loves riding his bike & is planning a long worldtrip one of these days...his target for leaving up through malaysia is June...it should take him about 2y before he reaches us back in belgium to redo him the favor of hosting.

He joined us for another trip downtown trying to exchange some books (which didn't work unless we wanted to be ripped off, 2 books + 8$ for a used book!...do we look stupid to you?), some chinatown food court dinner, a stroll along the quay & a final drink. He lives in a government block (about 3000 person/block) they call the 'cookoosnests'. He has block nr 470 in his area, so start making the count...btw it is not possible to buy a house in sgp, you can lease an appartement from the government for 99y...mmmm, shady mechanism...+it prevents the really rich from owning all of sgp -property can never be an investement...always ups & downs. The area is opened up by an LRT (rollercoaster bus on rail) running through it to get everybody to work & back every day. The funny thing is that it runs close to peoples homes & to guard privacy, the windows on the bus automatically go shady at certain points...very scifi ride.

27/12: Eastcoast park, Night Safari

Route with pics
Picasa Album

To make sure we could get our bikes on the train back to Kuala Lumpur the first stop of the day was central station.
The answer from the ladie at the informationdesk was that we should check with the 'trainmaster' once we're on the train. Yeah well, that means we're not going to pack our bikes in a box in Singapore but in Kuala Lumpur and we'll see what the trainmaster says. There may be some persuading involved but we think it should be okay (or hope ;) ).

After that we went to the eastcoast. There was no one swimming, so we didn't either and just took a nap on the beach. At around 3pm we set off to the zoo. The first challenge was to find a bus stop. Then it started to rain, very hard but luckely only for 20 minutes. So we waited for it to stop and then took of again to look for a busstop. Finally we found one, but the busdrives on each side of the road sent us to the other side. After ten minutes walking back and fort, and because of that missing several busses, we finally got on the right one. The ride to the zoo took us 2 hours! (bus, metro, metro, metro, walking, bus), so we were to late for the zoo (it closes at 6pm). We decided just to do the nightsafari and therefore use the money we got as a christmas gift from my family. Thank you! We enjoyed it very much!
Note: the nightsafari isn't a real safari like you'll find in Africa, it's just a zoo, but you'll get close to the animals which are mostly not in cages and it's at night when these animals are more vivid.

Back home we ate the chocomousse together with Chou who was waiting to taste this strange dessert: he liked it :)