Dear Readers,
After our bike ride we woke up the next morning and checked out of our hotel (Did we mention that it was crap?). We then cycled into Georgetown to the bus station, to try and work out the next stage of our journey.We knew that we wanted to go to Taman Negara, Malaysia's biggest national park, and that it wasn't really possible by bike - as there aren't enough places to stop and we don't have a tent. We therefore also had to get a bus that allowed us to take our bikes.
We ended up buying a ticket for the 10:30pm bus from Butterworth to Temerloh - a town in the centre of Malaysia. As it was REALLY hot, we then locked up our bikes and spent a few hours in a huge air-conditioned asian mall, using the internet in Starbucks and eating. Tough times. At sunset, we rode around Georgetown on our bikes. This was really cool, there was hardly any traffic and we could take in all the sights much quicker than by foot. We then got the ferry back to Butterworth.
Our bus was late, but the driver more than made up for it in speed, which was terrifying and we didn't sleep much, despite it being the most comfortable coach ever. We arrived at Temerloh in the dark at 5am, and waited until it was light to cycle the 11km to the nearest train station, where we had to wait until 11:30am until the train to our next destination - Jerantut. At the station we met a nice man, who told us he had spent 8 months in London, and directed us towards a stand that sold some really horrible chinese noodles for breakfast. I'm sure he meant well.
Once we got off the train, we were met at the station by a man who told us we could leave our bikes in his hotel and get the bus+boat to Taman Negara straight away. We thought we would have to wait a day before we could go and we had planned to take our bikes, but we thought about it and decided to go for it - there wasn't much point in taking our bikes with us to a forest, and we could lock them up safely in his hotel (which also had a good review in the guidebook). So our mega journey continued, with a half an hour bus ride and a 3 hour boat ride. The scenery was amazing, and we forgot our tiredness and hunger. We hadn't reserved a room, but we managed to find an extremely average one, at an ok price, so we took it. We had dinner in a floating restaurant on the river, and then we slept like babies after our 20 hour journey....
No comments:
Post a Comment