West Malaysia loop ride

Riding long distances over a continuous stretch can be tiring. That is the reason why we were in the Cameron Highlands for two nights. The place we were putting up at was the Eight Mentigi Guest House located at Jalan Mentigi in Tanah Rata. It is a pleasant and clean place with a lot of space for chatting, watching television, reading and other social activities.

We agreed to meet for breakfast at 9am since we would be in the highlands for the entire day. So we all (well, almost all) gathered at the front porch and started walking out. The weather was perfect for walking. It felt like the entire place had air conditioning! The air was crisp and clean…and the sun was shining brightly. I noticed a peculiarly painted Land Rover parked along the way and could not resist taking some pictures.

I don’t know about you but when I take pictures, I explore quite a number of angles before settling on one. Unfortunately, this exploration of angles can result in some rather un-glam postures…and my “Horse Stance” was captured for posterity!

The place where we had dinner looked very different in the day, especially against that beautiful blue sky background.

We took a leisurely stroll along the shops with no real idea of what to have for breakfast…but it was great fun still. Eventually, we found a place with a nice and cozy table for four at the corner that was not cramped…and that looked and felt clean…

so we sat down and thought about our orders.

The fella who took our orders (standing behind LPG on the left of this picture) was rather patient with all our questions and never ending changes. We eventually ordered…and then our orders came. At first our drinks were a little wrong (cos Alex and I wanted our tea with less sugar but they came with the full treatment) but our waiter managed to correct the situation quickly. Yeah!!! See our food!!!

I thought this was just the right amount of food and felt really good about this breakfast…until our waiter brought another two HUGE plates of roti with egg and onion to the table! Guess who ordered those!!???

A group of bikers, riding what looked to be Harleys, rode pass as we were having breakfast. I could not resist taking a picture of this particular fella as he had such high handlebars…and a flag flying at the rear of his bike! Alex thought it might be a good idea to fly a flag for the WMLR too…except his idea of a flag was with swimming trunks! Hahahaha!!!

We continued our stroll along the shops after breakfast and chanced upon the old post office at Tanah Rata. They still had this post box outside! How quaint!!!

What intrigued me even more were the extremely small and old fashioned PO boxes that they still had…I wonder if people still used these!

It was really interesting because each step we took threw out a new experience of nostalgia…we chanced upon this really old bug which captured our imagination…dig that plate too!

No stop at a tourist spot would be complete without souvenirs…so we stopped at a number of shops looking for some…this shop sold lots of interesting touristy stuff…

Then we noticed this bakery…which was rather outstanding because they called themselves the best bakery…but I think they may have gotten the wrong idea of what a bakery deals with…

…because all we could find were stuff made from plastic…rubber…and metal…like these…

We headed back to the guest house after getting these as it was almost time for lunch and Karl must be itching for some food. It was just the right timing too as he was walking out just as we were walking in! So we agreed to leave for lunch together and then head out to Gunung Brinchang!

Our ride today will be a relatively short round trip of less than 30km. We will be riding up to Gunung Brinchang…and back…probably stopping by a strawberry farm for SA’s benefit. So it would, hopefully, make for a relaxing day. We were also planning to have tea at the Boh Tea Plantation at the foot of Gunung Brinchang on our way down.

One nice thing about the Eight Mentigi Guest House was that we could park our bikes within the enclosed parking area. This made for better security and easier access to our bikes!

The ride up to Brinchang town was a relaxing one as everyone had more sleep the night before, and a leisurely morning to start off the day. The air was nice and cool even though the sun was shining brightly. This made for almost perfect riding conditions! I spotted a place at Brinchang town that looked like a good lunch spot so we parked our bikes outside…and EVERYBODY looked…as usual. By this time we were so used to the stares…hahaha!!!

In case you were wondering…our lunch spot was the shop on the right…You Hoo!!! Hahahaha!!!

I ordered five dishes for lunch…but I only have pictures of four of them…because the fifth dish…well…they served us the wrong thing…hahaha!!! This was the first dish…Fish Head Curry!

Interesting that they cut up the fish head before cooking…made for much easier eating!

The second dish was a chicken dish…I did not want to order the usual and boring Lemon Chicken…or Thai Style Chicken…so I opted for Sesame Chicken…hahaha!!! It is sounding a lot more usual and boring now than it did when I did the ordering! Hahaha!!!

The third dish was a specialty of the restaurant…I was told it was the “Special Tofu”…I am still unclear what was so special about them…except that they were deliciously cooked with these dried shrimp sauce that got me addicted!

The fourth dish was a vegetable dish…I was told it was a local asparagus dish and was looking forward to it…but everybody who tasted it said it was beans…oh well…whatever it was…it was yummy!!!

The fifth and final dish was a wild mushroom dish. I thought it was a deep fried mushroom dish as that was what they brought to the table at first. Tasted great too! However, it turned out it was the wrong dish. The one that I ordered was a wild mushroom stir-fry…which was also yummy…but I had already put my camera aside by this time…so no picture! Hahaha!!!

It goes without saying, I suppose, that we were all stuffed after lunch. We polished off ALL the dishes…and I was beginning to wonder if it was a good idea to head up Gunung Brinchang immediately after lunch! But a plan is a plan and so we hit the road and rode towards our destination! The ride up to the turn off for Gunung Brinchang turned out to be rather interesting because there was a terrible traffic jam about one kilometer after Brinchang Town. It seems someone was stopped at the side of a rather busy and narrow street waiting for a friend to get some stuff from one of the many shops there…and caused this massive jam which snaked up slowly for about half a kilometer! We did eventually clear it and made it to the turn off soon after that! Thank goodness we were on our bikes!!!

As with every riding day, no matter how leisurely and easy, something would go wrong. And so it was that LPG missed the turn off…I think we should give him a new name since he missed a couple of turn offs by now! Hehehe…but he was a real sport and turned around very quickly. And we were making our way through the very narrow and winding roads through the Boh Tea Plantation…towards the base of Gunung Brinchang. I was riding up front. The gang, unfortunately, were stuck behind a very slow moving small car. I thought that the car would speed up since I was riding in front and clearing the way…but no…he was determined to go slow. Maybe he was a new driver?

The roads here were getting really narrow and the turns were sharp…many of which were blind turns which meant we had to sound our horns to warn the folks coming the other way. It was all rather uneventful until we were two turns away from the base of Gunung Brinchang. You see…a lady driving a white MPV was “stuck” at a turn because there was another car trying to go the other way. While there was quite a lot of room on her left…she refused to move until I started indicating with my arms that she had room to spare. She did eventually move though…thankfully…which cleared the way for everybody else. So while the rest continued onwards towards the Boh Tea Plantation Visitor Centre, we made a left turn and started ascending Gunung Brinchang. Not long after this…there was a fork on the road. The one to the right had a sign so I headed that way…time to go uphill…woohoo!!!

Now I have been up to Gunung Brinchang before when I was younger. OK…when I was MUCH younger. I remembered that we went up with my uncle in his Mazda 323 back then…it was in the 1980s and it was great fun! What felt strange to me this time round was how much worse off the roads were…in fact…the road got so bad that I was worried if the cruisers and the scooter could make it through! Thank goodness they did…and thank goodness too that I ended up in a kind of a dead end. There were some folks working in the fields there and they told me that the way up to Gunung Brinchang was a different road. It seems I made a wrong turn a little earlier. I should have taken the left fork instead of the right! So we backtracked and went up the correct route this time round. The road was WAY better in this route…much closer to how I remembered them to be…so we must have been on the right track!

Heading up a mountain was generally not a problem for our bikes. In this case, it turned out to be quite a piece of cake. Sure. There were some places where the incline was steeper and required a change to first gear, and some other places where the road was a little more spotty and required me to stand up a little. Still…it was a relatively simple and straightforward climb. We eventually made it to a clearing with a gazebo and there were some folks there with music blasting away…nice music too…and so we stopped our bikes and explored it a little. It turned out that we were at the place where we could climb up to the top of Gunung Irau…one of the highest peaks at the Cameron Highlands! And so climb we did and eventually made it to the little rest stops.

I took this picture about 30 minutes after arriving at the stop. I was actually resting at another little gazebo talking to a fella who was there earlier. Fauzi was from Kuala Lumpur and was up at the Cameron Highlands with his family. We had a good conversation going there in a mixture of Malay and English. I was pleasantly surprised that we could speak for such a long time with my spotty and extremely broken Malay. It was really nice meeting him up here in the middle of nowhere!

After a good rest at Gunung Irau, it was time to head back to the bikes and continue our journey up to Gunung Brinchang. The way down to the bikes involved negotiating a boardwalk with very steep steps. For some reason, it was a lot easier to get up these steep steps than to get down. What made it worse was that some of the planks were wobbly…and others were broken altogether. Hahaha!!!

After gearing ourselves up and getting onto the bikes, we headed towards our intended destination: Gunung Brinchang. We biked on for a few minutes and found that the road ended…all very suddenly…and way sooner than expected…we were at the top of Gunung Brinchang! Hahaha!!!

So we made it to the top of the highest peak accessible by road in West Malaysia! All 6666ft or it! We spent a good amount of time on this peak just talking, chatting and playing around. It was a fantastic day…sunny and cool at the same time! We also saw Fauzi and his family here and I took some pictures of them.

They sure looked like they were having a fun time!

After what felt like forever, we decided it was time to head down for our tea! I thought it would be a good idea to head down slowly…in first or second gear…given the steep inclines. So that was what we did…head on slowly. However, somewhere in the middle of the descent, one of the riders decided it was too slow and decided to boldly overtake two bikes (including mine) at a brisk pace…I remember thinking to myself that it was such a brave move, to overtake at such a brisk pace at such a steep decline…until I saw that the rider rode off the corner…onto a very long and narrow path…and only managed to come to a complete stop right at the very end! It seems that the rider’s brakes were overworked and were fading! Thank goodness there was no accident!!!

We took our time here to give the brakes time to cool down and to, hopefully, recover before going the rest of the way down. Unfortunately, I stopped at a place where I could neither put my side stand down, nor reverse my bike, nor move it forward to a better spot. So while the rest could walk around…I had to sit on my bike the entire time. That made this stop a little less pleasant than it could have been. I did wish at that time that I was riding Marley instead!!!

We eventually started going down again. This time round, we switched orders so the bike with the faded brakes could go up front and pick the speed and lines. It was one of the most worrying downhill rides I have ever had actually. I was constantly worried if the bike would hold up. Fortunately, it held up really well and we all got the the base of Gunung Brinchang without further incident. Oh well…except that both LPG and Karl were stuck behind a car and I got worried for them. Hahahaha!!!

Unfortunately, we got down a little too late for tea as the Boh Tea Plantation Visitor Center closed at 4:30pm and it was after 5pm by the time we got down. So we headed off to a strawberry farm instead. We were accosted by a lady farmer at the entrance of the farm with her “honey corn”. It seems you could eat the corn raw and it was sweet and juicy like a fruit should be. So I tried a little and was really impressed with how juicy and sweet and crunchy the corn really was! I was amazed that it was raw too!!! It was just like biting into an apple! So I decided I would get a bag and we could have it for dessert that night. Hehehe…I am such a sucker!

What do you do at a strawberry farm? Why…you have some strawberries of course! And so we did. We had strawberries with sugar, strawberries with sugar and cream, strawberries with sugar and cream and chocolate…geez…it was CRAZY!!! I only managed to take one picture because I was busy sampling the wares and my fingers were all grubby after that. Hahaha!

So after stuffing our faces with all that strawberries…and sugar…and cream…and chocolate…we headed back to the guest house to rest before dinner. I don’t know how we could have even though of dinner after so much food…but we did! Hahaha!!! Maybe it was the temperature???

We decided to walk out to the Pasar Malam (night market) for our dinner tonight instead of eating in a restaurant. We caught sight of these fantastic bikes again on our way there…I could not resist getting another picture!

Don’t you agree that these bikes are just SO COOL??? I really dig them!!!

So anyway, we got to the Pasar Malam soon enough and started looking around for food. I found a stall that offered fried chicken and Fried Kway Teow…Malay style…and ordered some. Actually, I ordered A LOT!!! Like 15 pieces of chicken!!! And one packet of Fried Kway Teow. Then I ordered some Goreng Pisang (Deep Fried Banana Fritter) and Goreng Ubi Keledek (Deep Fried Sweet Potato Fritter) for dessert. Karl ordered some Apam Balek (Overturned Pancake with Peanut and Corn), and then I ordered some Ramlee Burgers! It was starting to sound like another feast!!! Alex helped to take some photographs while I was ordering food…I thought he did a fantastic job capturing the atmosphere of the Pasar Malam!

I was more interested to capture the process for preparing Apam Balek though…this is the stall that we got the Apam Balek from…

The first step is to fill the pan with the batter…spoon it into the middle of the pan and spread it out evenly at the right consistency…

As the pancake starts to cook…toss in a nice even coat of sugar…

When the pancake is bubbling nicely…it is time for the peanuts, corn and butter…

Then it is time to take them out and slice them…pack them…and most importantly…eat them…HAHAHA!!!

I also ordered some Ramlee Burgers for us to share for dinner. Some of you who have never tried a Ramlee Burger may be wondering what the big deal might be. Well, to me, there are a few key things that distinguishes a good Ramlee Burger from the usual McDonald’s and Burger King fare. They are a Ramlee beef pattie, the kicap manis (sweet black sauce) that they use for seasoning, and the way they wrap the beef pattie up with the egg…

…and finally…the way you pack it all up with coleslaw and that sweet and spicy red chili sauce in the bun!

After getting all that food, we proceeded to get some drinks before hading back to the guest house for our feast. It was funny that the cashier at the store was so busy with a big screen and all…and the queue was so long too! Don’t get me wrong…he was pretty productive and efficient…I was just amused that he had this big screen that he checks every few seconds…and then I took a closer look…and found out that he was looking at his Facebook page!!! Hahaha!!!

So with all our food in hand, we headed back to the guest house…and planted ourselves in front of the television…picked a channel which was airing an episode of the Guinness Book of World Record attempts from China…and had our little feast! It was strangely satisfying…sharing all this greasy and simple food…enjoying the drinks and the company…watching the rather cheesy…though entertaining television program…all in the cold of the night. This made for the perfect Cameronian adventure!