MALAYSIA - back into Muslim world

After having cycled 1900km and 42 days spent in Thailand, we finally entered our 21st country: Malaysia! We will miss this cycling paradise and all the Buddhist temples we could easily crash for the night. In Malaysia, the Muslim decor, last seen in Kyrgyzstan, is back. New culture, new money, new SIM card, new rules. Luckily, two last days in Southern Thailand gave us a vision of how Malaysia will look like. Already from the Pattani region, we started to see a lot of veiled and fully covered women, slightly different faces, domination of mosques over temples, more and more rotis on the road, and the cheapest food we’ve ever seen.

The border crossing went very smoothly. Taking a ferry boat cruising from one side to another on the most Eastern border. It didn’t feel like we were in a different country, thanks to these progressive changes along the way.

The plan for Malaysia was to cross it fast, by following only the less developed East coast all the way down to Singapore. No detours, to give a little “rest” to our legs before mountainous Indonesia. Well, It was far from rest! It turned out that Malaysian roads are narrow and drivers are from “Fast and Furious” all the time. There is no line for bicycles and the road conditions are nothing compared to those in Thailand. No more 7-Eleven, nor Amazon coffee where we could stop for an Aircon break. No more Buddhist temples. Pricy and bad quality accommodation. Cycling paradise was over. The first night in Malaysia we spent in the cheapest hotel in the city, where in the middle of the night, a huge cockroach fall off from the ceiling straight on Roxy’s head. That was a nice Malaysian welcome.

In total, we spent 14 days in Malaysia, mostly cycled on the main road, and sleeping often at local’s places or public beaches. The highlights of this crossing for us, were the wild camping on the beaches. Most of them offered showers, toilets and little huts which were perfect shelters from the rain. The Malaysian people were the second highlight. One of the encounters which particularly marked us and will remain in our hearts for a long time was the one with Dee and her husband in the town of Dungun. We had Dees contact from her friend (another amazing girl: Nurul met prior, who let us stay at her guesthouse). Dee was waiting for us at her dental clinic, invited us for dinner and gave us the keys to her modern house « You can stay as long as you want » - she said thrilled. Totally bluffed by her hospitality we spent two nights at her place discovering the Muslim culture and sharing our values.

Further on the coast, we bumped into turtles' Mecca with hundreds of hatcheries along the way and we were there just in time to witness baby turtles running into the sea! Priceless experience.