TnT's Workout Blog

People start moving around 6am. when it is still dark, and still raining --- it has rained the whole night, quite heavily at times. There is a huge line in lady's room already, about 20 girls waiting to bath or change: the squat toilets, five cubicles altogether, are also used as showers and changing rooms.

After the group photo is taken at 7:50am. we start climbing. The summit is 880 meters above the sea level and the ETA to the top is something from two to two and half hours, we are told. The first third of the climb is quite challenging: most of the time we are going on all fours on a rocky trail covered with roots and tree trunks. The roots and trunks make good steps, but sometimes we need to use trees or ropes installed by the trail to pull us up.

In the midsection, the trail levels a bit, but then steepens again toward the summit. We reach the top in an hour and twenty minutes. In the last meters we notice that the sole of Tei's left hiking boot is falling apart. There are still some more ladders to climb to the top of the boulders on the mountain top to get a better view around, but Tei decides to skip the climb in hope of saving her boots for the descent.

It is getting chilly up there because of the wind (we are almost one kilometer above the sea level) We cook chili con carne, a vintage camping food purchased for our previous trips years back but not yet expired, for lunch, and have a couple of mugs of instant cafe latte before starting our way back down.

Since there has been a lot more trafic on the trail since we came up (for instance, those school kids) the trail is much muddier now. The descend is quite hard, like making thousands of lunges after lunges. However, we also take frequent breaks to give way to the groups coming up; some kids also want to take pictures with us! There are some other interesting creatures on our way, like scorpions and beetles, and frogs and cicadas are making quite a noise but we don't really see them.

We make it down in an hour and twenty minutes. In the last few hundreds of meters the outer sole of Tei's left boot totally falls off and the other one is about to do the same. Those Montrail boots get dumped as soon as we get to the shelter. We get some drinks from the nearby stall and spend some precious time in the shower when there is no one else from the shelter or the campground to share them. It is only a little after noon. The sun comes out, and it is starting to get really hot.

We stop at Tequila Blue for quick beers, and continue to Tapas Tree for dinner. We order some tapas items and try to find an interesting wine to accompany them. First they seem to have only one Spanish red available, and not too good one (quite weird for a place that advertizes itself as a wine bar), but eventually they find their secret hide-out of Chivite Gran Reserva (1996) from Navarra. Not bad.

From Tapas Tree we continue to the other side of Changi Village Road. There we meet a line of bars with tinted windows, and patio tables full of young girls sitting and chatting without drinks. Hmmmm .... we return to the other side of the street for one more glass of wine.

Next morning we are a bit too late in the ferry harbor and pass the immigration in a hassle. When the ferry leaves it starts raining and by the time we reach Tanjung Belungkor in Malaysia a major thunderstorm hits us. We are freezing in the rain and the wind that blows horizontally on us when walking our bikes from the ferry to the terminal. The rain takes a short break when we start riding but soon it is on again.

Zillions of not so environmentally friendly trucks speed by us, leaving a murky black cloud behind. The landscape is rolling hills covered by palm tree plantations, and huge deforested areas. At 1pm we are at Desaru. After lunch we plunge in the Southern China Sea's not so gentle waves. Any attempt to swim too close to the beach fails, since the waves just throw us onto the beach and then draw us back. As a result, our swimwear is full of sand, which is hard to get rid of.

Next morning we are back on the road at 10am. We ride the first few kilometers in quite a stench. We are a bit worried that'll be something we need to bear all the way to Singapore, but it goes away as we pass a landfill. Thereafter, we pass some occasional roadkills, which emit equally disgusting smell. Actually, it is not unusual that restaurants and other food establishments smell like landfills because of the fermented fish sauce or tiny dried fish that are widely used as flavoring in soups.

Once we are out of the palm plantations we meet the headwind: it is not quite as frustrating as in Iceland, but bad enough to take a bit of fun out of riding. We stop at the town of Sungai Rengit to buy some more water, which we have already consumed in huge quantities. We also taste the local specialty: pisang goreng --- battered and deep-fried banana (for one dollar we get several pieces). It provides us enough energy to ride to the ferry terminal at Tanjung Pengelih, where we take a bumboat to Changi Point in Singapore. Just before the town we are "escorted" by tens motorbikes carrying one to three guys leaving the nearby factory when the shift changes. They give us some strange looks, somewhat scary, but not really hostile.

Then we only have 40 more kilometers to go across Singapore, the route being complicated by a variety of factors from erratic pedestrians and bicycle riders in the East Coast Park to steep stairs by the expressway. At 6pm we are home after 5 hours of riding --- that was a long day!