Today will be our last morning in Thailand and we are heading back to Singapore in 2 days' time, staying a night in Kuala Lumpur. It had been a fulfilling and eye opening trip so far and been kinda reluctant to go back to the urban jungle of Singapore. What to do, reality....
We pumped our last tank of Gasohol 95 at the last PTT petrol kiosk at the outskirts of Hat Yai as well as having our breakfast there. We enjoyed our last cold towels available at the Thailand 7-11 outlets while AKG enjoyed his last Espresso DIY coffee (kinda his fav coffee from Thai 7-11). AKG had a short chat with a local who happened to be a military officer before we move on to the border.
Once we reached the border post, we returned our vehicle declaration forms (a MUST when you leave Thailand by your own vehicle), got our passports stamped and rode over to the Malaysian Customs. From there, we saw familiar wordings (melayu/english) on the signboards and we proceed down to the North-South highway for Kuala Lumpur. Just a short distance from the Customs, we encountered a roadblock, a first since the beginning of our trip. I could more or less guess that these people will be stopping us for speeding or something similiar and slap us with a fine. But when we told them that we came from North Thailand, the guys seems impressed and let us off. Guess they figured that we are tired and broke, lucky us LOL.
The road down is just.... road down. Nothing spectacular about the scenery along the road except the mountain highway at Ipoh. However, weather is not really that good as we get on-off rain several times before we rest at the first R&R in Malaysia. Despite the lousy weather, our riding pace is fantastic and we cleared half the journey in shorter time than we anticipated.
As we closed in to KL, we stopped by the Toll Plaza and told AKG that I will use the GPS on my N95 to guide us to the hotel we usually stay, Hotal Nova. This time, Nokia Maps failed me. It directed me to a wrong turn on the highway, causing us to split into wrong entrances, as AKG realised that signboard on the other entrance showed the correct direction. I had to make a U-turn, ride into the right entrance, waited for AKG in case he U-turn back to look for me. Waited for a considerable amount of time until I received a call from him that he had reached the hotel. With a sigh of relief, I slowly rode towards the city centre and found the hotel. Learnt a new malay word which will guide me to my regular hotel in future: Pusat Bandaraya, which means City Center.
Once we checked into the hotel, we went to Times Square to check out the stores (nothing much actually, much like the shopping centres in Singapore) then proceed to have our dinner.
The next day, we check out at noon, knowing that we can cover the remaining distance to home in less than 4 hours. As we moved out, we intended to have our lunch at Ayer Keroh. As I have not eaten/drank anything while AKG had not eaten, we rode like we are rushing for time LOL. When we reached Ayer Keroh R&R, we realised that the place is closed and we have no choice but to go to another R&R for our lunch. The next available R&R with food will be at Pagoh. Again, I was riding as fast as we can and AKG commented that we covered 180km in less than 90 mins LOL.
Stopover at Pagoh R&R
Once we are done with the lunch, we move on straight to Gelang Petah R&R for our last refuel before heading home.
Total distance travelled:
That concludes the Road Trip of Xgrind and AngKuGuay. Thanks to those who had sent us off and sent us well wishes.
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