River Cruise In Kota Bharu Anyone?

Well not exactly a cruise, but somewhere near it if you can overlook the absence of a purposely built luxury vessel with captains in smart uniforms at the helm. River cruises are the hall marks of cities sited near large bodies of water, it comes to the mind  of idling on the boats along the great rivers of the western countries such as the Thames and the Seine. Kota Bharu is smacked on the Kelantan river near the estuary and if wants to qualify as a modern city it ought to take advantage of its position as a riverine settlement. Sadly the people here do not love their god given watery asset very much. What should have been esplanades are now hideous looking buildings that completely blot out the river view and also restrict the access of the public to the water edge. There used to be a public padang overlooking the bank called Padang Lido where one used to stroll waiting for the sunset but it was turned into a private use  and a structure of a distinctly ugly proportion is occupying the spot. There was no defence of the taking away of the open space, the people not objecting even when the reason given by the powers that was, was that the space was used by courting couples and thus an affront to morality, the quicker it is shut down the better for the prospect of entering heaven in  after life. 

Coming back to the title of this posting, one hot blazing day I felt a cool breeze coming from the river. I stopped at the new clock tower near the Sultan's Pier, an old land mark, and saw a kind of vessel chugging lazily under power on the river and it came to dock at a platform discharging people. I am surprised these river taxis still exist. River traffic was in its heyday before the construction of the bridge, when there was a lively use of the river as the only mean of getting across was by use of vessels.  The rail station for Kota Bharu was on the opposite side of the bank  at Palekbang and rail passengers and goods were transported by special ferries. After the  bridge opened, the river traffic grew less and less and as a specimen of transport it is in the danger of extinction.

So before the whole thing wraps up you can still catch the vestiges of a dying mode of transportation besides really enjoying the secret of the the town that had been hidden from public view. When you arrive at the Clock Tower on the river bank on the left of the Sultan's Pier, there is a staircase on the left side which leads to the edge of the water. You will see two floating platform, there are no sign boards but you cannot miss this platform as the other one is a marine police docking station which is closed to the public. There is a rickety bridge connecting the platform to the bank and you get down through the bridge onto the platform and purchase the ticket from a man, there is no ticket counter but you cannot miss the man because as soon as you step on the platform he will be asking whether you are going across. The fare is cheap, RM1 one way. You can buy return so that you do not have to make another purchase when when coming back.

The boat is powered by diesel engine which sits in the middle partitioning the cabin into two. The ride is slow and sluggish but the breeze is constant as the boat makes its way to the opposite bank to a riverside village of Kampong Laut which is well known for sending out its people to seek employment in other parts of Malaysia, the most famous is claimed to be the previous chief minister of Sarawak. On reaching the village the boat stops for half an hour and you can have a short tour of the village enterprise which is mainly shredded beef production before returning to the boat again for another ride back to Kota Bharu. Bring along a camera as the shot possibilities are endless.

A magnificent view of the newly constructed clock tower on the bank of Kelantan River taken from the boat.

Inside the cool deck of the boat, pretty ladies commuting from town to their home village at Kampong Laut

We pass  another boat of similar trade mid river

Faris trying to start the diesel engine by hand crank. Its a hard job he tells us.

We are really enjoying the boat ride, pretending its a luxury cruise

The hull is so low you can dip your hand in the river

Weekend In Port Dickson

The Route Shah Alam - Port Dickson 125 km One Way

View PD Tour in a larger map

This should be not a hard one. It is within reach of an average cyclist, with or without stamina issues. To those who are first timers in extended ride, start planning to do this stretch as it will boost your confidence in tackling future tours, to the experienced it is a good way to remove the kinks in your system. The total distance from my house in Shah Alam to Port Dickson is 125 kilometers, but it's not the distance that matters. To a cyclist empowering his muscles to move forward, it is profile, profile and profile; as the mantra goes, flat is good hill is bad. What makes this stretch attractive is that until the town of Sepang, for a distance of about 90 kilometers, the road is flat, so flat that even a fixie can handle it. Only after  crossing the border into Negeri Sembilan will you find a series of hills to climb, quite an effort to overcome especially after being lulled by the flat ride but nothing dramatic to be a serious challenge if you have the correct gearings. So it is a good mix of long flat with short hills, an ideal combination which would please both the enthusiast and the beginner.

Thursday 8th. December

There are more than one way to get to Banting, the navigation marker, from Shah Alam. The usual way is via the Kesas Highway, which is quite safe as there is a dedicated motor cyclist lane or as I did, through the secondary road passing through Jalan Kebun. Secondary roads are normally called so because they are less busy but also may be narrower. On the morning of my departure, traffic was quite sparse but when they came they came as heavy lorries. I felt very unsafe when overtaken by them as there were only inches to spare. 

Reaching the settlement of Jenjarom around 10.00 am after an hour of cycling, rain began to fall and I took shelter in a food stall.  It was quite a long wait and I took the opportunity to have my first meal of the day. It was banana pancake with black coffee. The pancake tasted strange and I barely finished it. There were a number of other customers milling around and they were curious about my intended trip, asking questions about my bike and journey, like they were in awe of what I was doing. Oh come on guys, it is only a  bike ride, not like I am going to slay a dragon. There were also a few mountain bike cyclists but surprisingly we did not  connect, as though we were of unrelated tribes. It could be they were hard on speeches because normally from cyclist to cyclist, we could never have the last words.

The morning rain was monsoonal and it was a two hour wait, passing my time reading the old newspaper. Around 12 noon the rain eased and I restarted my journey. The rain may have eased but he road was water logged and I sloshed through the puddles which were collecting along the edges of the road. Occasionally I got splashed by an overtaking vehicles and sometimes heavy lorries left a blinding spray in their wake. The end result was I was completely soaked by the time I reach Kuala Langat when it began to rain again. This time I stopped at a Mamak stall and while waiting had roti canai and black coffee for lunch.

The rain lightened and soon I was cycling again. When the drizzle got too heavy I stopped by the road side shelters. I passed the town of Banting after a short climb over the bridge spanning the Langat river. At Morib there were still light rain falling. The sky was overcast but I had no complain of this weather, I very much prefer being wet to scorching rides under the tropical sun. In a short time around 2.00 pm, I reached Batu Laut where I saw young sailors bringing in their sailing dinghies from the sea. I stopped for a chat with them as I am very much interested in sailing. Once I had a sail boat of my own in Kelantan, a Laser which was a 16 footer I purchased on line from the UK. I had a good time swapping sailing tales with these people. 

By 4.00 pm I reached Bagan Lalang. To get to the settlement, you had to take a detour off the main road for a distance of 6 km. There were a few accommodation available and I made two enquiries but was turned off by the price quoted which to me was surprisingly high for such low quality hotels. I asked for a cheaper hotel and was shown a chalet for RM65.00. I had late lunch of soup and rice with iced which I wolfed down hastily as coming into the last stretch I was beginning to feel the bonk because due to the cool weather I forgot to hydrate myself regularly. There was not much to see here, the man at the counter told me that the day before, 2 cyclists had taken up the rooms on their way north. An international standard chalets over water was the main attraction, asides from that I would not want to get off my route and come here again.

Friday 9th. December

I woke up at 7.00 am after a sound sleep and by 7.30 I was ready to go out again on the road. First item in he morning was to have breakfast of roti canai and coffee at a stall nearby. Morning traffic was negligible and I enjoyed having the road almost all to my self. I cycled past the towns of Sungei Pelek where the road took a turn northerly easterly and as a result I had the morning sun in the face all the way. At Sepang I had the view of overhead aircrafts in their final to Kuala Lumpur International Airports and they were very low, may be not more than 1000 feet high. I stopped on the road side to enjoy the show as I still cannot get over the boyish delight of being close to flying aircrafts. I remember in Kota Bharu, back then in the 1980's, we gathered in the evening at the edge of the run way just to see planes landing and taking off at the Pengkalan Chepa airports. We were so close that sometimes we could wave to the pilots taxing their machines.

Immediately after Sepang the road turned southerly again and now the terrain took a sudden transformation. Where it had been flat since Shah Alam it was now rolling and there were a few climbs and downhills. Some of the climbs were quite stiff but my newly installed triple crank took out all their stings. On one of my free wheeling the downhill I came across a loaded cyclist panting his way up but I knew that his touring bike had more than enough gear ratios to tackle slopes like this. As cyclist to cyclist  we thumbed each other up and I was always glad to meet another fellow cyclist on the road. 

By 10.30 am I reached Lukut and took my bike up the hill to the  old Lukut Fort, a historical sight. On the way up I saw a jungle hen with her chicken in tow and they surprisingly did not flee even when I was just 10 feet away, but the moment I dismounted they disappeared into the secondary bushes. It reminded me of the National Geography in African Safari where the cameras on the jeeps could get very close the animals. Perhaps it is their instincts that for the past thousands of years, only humans on feet are dangerous predators, if you are on wheel, they are still unable to decipher the danger.  I tried to cycle to the top but the path was of loose stones and my thin tyres could not cope and I kept sliding backwards. To reach the top I had to push my bikes. I stopped to take a rest at the hut on top of the hill and absorbed the beautiful scenery surrounding the hill.

Port Dickson was just half an hour ride from Lukut. I cycled into the town and started looking for a place to stay. There was none and I had to cycle back on the main road and 6 km away at 1.00 pm I checked in at PD Motel at Saujana beach It cost RM50.00 with shared toilet and without air conditioning. After a hard day's ride we cyclists are always more than happy to find a bed and shower, never mind the extras that I would expect when not cycling.

I took my lunch at the restaurant downstairs and for the rest of the day I hanged around beach across the road. I did not feel very good but I knew that the second day is always the worst point in touring. The body is new to the situation and tries to register as much protest as possible by conspiring with the muscles to exhibit newly found pain and weariness. If you ignore the signs, like a spoilt child denied the attention, they will soon go away quietly.

I saw the sun set over the Straits but it was not particularly spectacular because to the west is the giant island of Sumatra and the land mass tends to disturb the atmosphere and together with a lot of low clouds on the horizon the glow and brilliance of the setting sun were not there. 

I had an early dinner of a strange combination which was tomyam soup and durian and sooner than later, turned to bed trying to get an early sleep, but the room was hot and stuffy. There was not much to do and I chose to lie down in the lounge reading old copies of Reader's Digest, one of the worst magazine ever published even if it was an item that had once fascinated me in my younger days. True enough they were so boring that I quickly turned drowsy and in spite if the heat dozed of  on the sofa.

Saturday 10th. December

It was still dark at 6.30 am when I left the motel to return home. Safety lights were turned on to make my presence on the road visible to other road users. The town was still asleep and the roads still quiet. By 7.30am it had fully awakened and by then I was already at Lukut for a short stop for breakfast of roti canai and iced milo. Next it was into the climb of Bukit Pelanduk and by 8.30 am I reached the town of Sepang and stopped for a five minute rest at a bus stop. Then came the flat rides again and after 2 hours of non stop pedaling in the cool morning sun I reached Morib at 10.30 am. For unknown reasons I became sleepy and had a short nap on the beach preceded by 2 glasses of fresh orange juice. One hour later I woke up feeling refreshened and continued the journey until by 12.30 pm at Banting I started feeling hungry and stopped at an Indian restaurant for a meal of briyani rice. The meal made me felt heavy and to lighten I stopped at Teluk Panglima Garang for something bubbly and invigorating. By 2.30 pm with the afternoon sun burning overhead I reached home.

Well the coming back was just a reverse version of the going out and was therefore less exciting, so there was not much to report. Anyway I hope by now I have touched your inner desire to start a plan of weekend cycling and the next thing to do is pack and just go.

Road repair in Jalan Kebun

Ripening Rambutans beside a road

Dead Palm Oil Tree

I meet this Javanese at the stop in Jenjarom

A public reminder "women is the root of evil" in the town of  Kuala Langat

Cows vying for traffic space near Tanjong Sepat

Sailors in Batu Laut

Look at the straight and flat road, with a motor cyclist lane to boot.

Cattle country

Road kill, this is a dead owl. A pity.

My chalet in Bagan Lalang

The chalets on the sea at Bagan Lalang

My break fast stall in Bagan Lalang

Bricks stacked ready for sale.

Into the final over Sepang

Lukut police station

My bike resting at the top of the Lukut Fort

View from the Lukut Fort of the surrounding country side

Sepang town at 8.00 am

Morib Beach

Dahon Folding Bike

On a whim, with touring on my mind, I made a purchase of a folding bike on line from a web site. It is a Dahon and I paid RM1, 300.00 for it, hoping that one day I will fix a cargo rack and add the panniers and take it with me to a foreign city as my company and transport. For the moment the plan is postponed and in the mean time I take the bike for a spin on the beach of Morib. I think I like the striking red more than the ride.

Another Jack

Pottering around the beautiful beaches of Bachok I came across Jack a solo cyclist who had been on the road for quite sometimes, so long that he had acquired the mean and tanned look with not an ounce of fat   around his belly. I envy his cycling philosophy of not rushing but taking things in long easy strides, if he thinks something caught his fancy he would stay put as long as he likes. Tomorrow, there is no target to be reached. This is how he ends up taking a beach chalet here for the past one month.

When he is on the road he pulls a yellow trailer in replacement of panniers, which is quite a drag as I found out. His bike is not the fancy type but a very ordinary one which he bought in Thailand for only RM650.00, a price for the middling model which goes to prove a point that its not what you ride but what is riding you that decides whether you are merely a fair weather rider or that you belong to the cycling Nirvana. Go Jack, go.

The eye catching yellow trailer

Jack and his bike

I saw this antique at a petrol station.

Strange Journeys

There used to be certain countries that do not welcome tourists. One is reminded of the former Soviet Union, North Korea and Communist China. Soviet Union is now history and we now hear people are trickling in slowly to see the sights of Moscow and Leningrad. China has opened up and is trying hard to catch up for the lost time. North Korea remain closed, although there are selected few lucky enough to get inside the country, but large scale tourism is still unknown.

Saudi Arabia is somewhere between the two extremes - there are countless umrah agents who at the drop of your hat would whisk you to the holy lands for the purposes of fulfilling the rites of the pilgrimages. You would be herded in a group and taken under escort to the two holy places, Medina and Makkah and nowhere else as the conditions of your visa strictly confine you to these cities.  On the other hand the Arabian peninsula is a huge place with ancient histories and there are other areas one wishes to see and experience but unfortunately unlike other Middle Eastern countries which would grant a visitor  a visa on arrival for a small fee, a visa need to be applied for before flying in and they are very selective in granting one, like no unchaperoned female is allowed and non Muslim are prohibited unless on business or working purpose.

I was therefore understandably excited when the umrah package I had booked for, included visits to two places that had never been seen by pilgrims from our country, that is, Al - Ula which is an ancient settlement is north of Medina and Taif a hill country east of Makkah, also full of historical background. It must be borne in mind that history in Saudi Arabia is treated differently compared to other countries. There is a plethora of archaeological sites dotting the country, but tragically the current authorities are trying their best to erase all the records as according to their belief, the only matters that counts in this life are the words of God and the Prophet. What before the prophet came was Jahiliah ( time of ignorance ) which is not worth preserving and what after was Bidaah ( unlawful innovations ) and should not be allowed to remain. With this simplistic view, when the Saud came to power after WW 1, all the man made structures that had existed and had been object of veneration such as tombs, mosques, dwellings and cemeteries were ordered to be leveled. Most of all they were hostile to tombs and graveyards. With a single swoop the famous Baqi' cemetery in Medina, where the wives of the prophet and his Sahabats were buried and Maala in Makkah the resting place of Khadija were transformed into  empty lots with all the markings on the graves obliterated. The Saud have only been in power for less than 100 years, but already many aspects of Arabian history, thousands of years old, are now gone forever.  In the name of the desire to return to the religion of Islam to its purest form, the old architecture of the desert is irrevocably displaced to make way for a stark and bleak landscape.  Even today we are hear the Prophet's tomb in Medina is not to be spared in their grand plan of purifying the land from contamination of irreligious edifice which in their minds are but obstacles in the steep and thorny way to heaven.

When we started early in the morning from Madinah, a number of pilgrims from our group declined to board the bus. Surprisingly there were people who were not curious of discovering what the journey could offer, instead they were concerned that their stay in the holy city would not harvest enough credits for their use in the after life. Communal prayers and supplications in the Prophet's Mosque were promised with bonuses and extra points. "Rugi" they said while shaking their heads at us meaning not profitable, as though heavens were for those with astute business sense.

When we arrived at Al Ula,  astride an ancient trade route from Southern Arabia to  Syria, we were met by Muhammad, an Arab tourist guide who informed us in his quaint heavily accented English that the "bibel of Betra had berished brior to the bresent bobulation who came later". Substitute the "b" with the "p" and you will break the code to understand the sentence. Well on the comical side he reminded me of John Malkovich as  Pascal Sauvage in Johnny English with his French accent. Surrounding the town we saw  remnants of ancient dwellings and  in the nearby oasis were date plantation which had been cultivated and had existed continuously for thousands of years.

We were bussed to the to an interesting geological site. Here we took photos of the red sandstone mountain carved by winds resulting in fantastic shapes, one resembled the head of an elephant and the place was called as such.

Next  was the tombstones of  Nabatean.  The place was once inhabited by the people of the same name and they had left behind structures carved into the soft rocks which remain standing until today. It is a famous archaeological remains and had been given recognition as one of UNESCO's heritage site. It is also a place where God sent down destruction on the people of  Thamud, as mentioned in the holy Koran for their cruelty to a female camel. The story is that after disobeying a prophet by ham stringing a camel, the whole community was punished by the earth shaking and crumbling leaving every one dead. Call it an over reaction by God, even how much the SPCA would have approved of it. Now we know that earthquakes are not caused by divine displeasures over man's actions but are just  one of the many natural events that shape our earth and had preceded man and will remain in activity, long after man is gone.

We also had our ustaz on board with us who guided us with supplications on starting of a journey, on reaching a new place and also a commentary on the place from an Islamic history point of view. It was said the Prophet once stopped here on the way to battle in the north. He did not like the place very much and urged his followers to clear away as soon as possible, like there was evil harbinger enveloping the area. It was to be avoided although there was no clear reason to do so and since the Prophet had expressed his dislike we too were asked to do the same. But the evening air was refreshing,  the sand felt cool in between my toes, the night sky was sparkling and the meals provided at the hotel was fantastic, that I could not hold any grudge against this poor town. I conclude that the story must had been apocryphal.

Medina to Al Ula, about 400 km

View Medina in a larger map

On the way to Al Ula, volcanic rocks dominates..

...which soon changes to red coloured softer sandstone

Fantastic shape like an elephant head and trunk  carved by wind

The ancient date groves in the valley of the red mountain

An ancient settlement which still survives and under rehabilitation.

A swimming pool which is empty of water, the plan would have been made outside Arabia. Desert people are not natural swimmers due to the lack of a large body of water to swim , hence the apathy in the pool maintenance.

The tomb of the Thamud people

Taif

The first time I came across Taif was when reading the elementary Sirrah of the Prophet. It was a place the Prophet went to during his first part of the Dakwah ( before the Hegira to Medina ) to spread the words of Islam. He was not welcomed, in fact was chased and hounded by the inhabitants and during the flight to escape, he rested near an orchard and a slave boy by the name of Addas offered him fresh grapes to eat. Obviously there must had been vine yards in the vicinity to produce the fruits, although there are no more traces of them left today to be seen. It was proof that the place was fertile and well watered unlike the stony desert of Makkah and as such vineyards were able to thrive. Today there is not much orchards left although the climate is still agreeable as we found out when we encountered misty and cool weather when we first arrived after traveling for more than 100 km from the Holy City. Taif is in the highland and we had to climb through the brand new mountain highway to reach the place.

There was not much to see in Taif. Asides from the religious historical back ground there remained nothing worthwhile, except may be the museum where we were taken to for a short tour and a memorable Arabic style lunch.  There were no old buildings to capture on cameras, no archaeological  sites to explore, only newly built mosques to pray in and even that the toilets were unbearably stinking. A short stay was sufficient, if it was just to tell that we had been to any where outside Mekkah and after a three hour journey we were back in the hot lowlands. It had been an unsatisfactory trip as Taif was a strategic fort and a summer retreat of the Ottoman Turks when the empire was once in control  of the holy sites of Mekah and Medinah before they were over thrown by the Sauds.  I had expected to see some of their relics as I had seen in Istanbul, their capital, but there was none to see in Taif as they had all been demolished and eagerly forgotten.

Makkah to Taif, about 100 km

View Makkah - Taif in a larger map

Old Beetle in the museum

Baboon frolicking in the sparse vegetation

Stark landscape which is almost surreal

One of the non religious attraction of Makah is the food, huge freshly baked rotis dipped in mutton curry with hairs and hooves of goats visibly swimming in the gravy

Triplets, very cute and sadly abused for begging

Miqdad The Bald

Well, well, another addition to the collection of grand children, this time another charming baldy. Meet the apple of the grandpa's eye and small brother to Qisya, Miqdad Ammar Mokhtar who came in a bit too early at 35 weeks, causing a  mad and anxious rush to the maternity hospital and some apprehension waiting by the incubator room until he was strong enough to be touched and fussed by family members.

Mr. Yusof, The Calligraphy Artist

It is the season of rain. It rains every day and the afternoon ride that I used to enjoy is now shelved temporarily. It got so bad that one day when I saw a window of sunshine opening up I took out my bike for a spin along the KESAS Highway from Kemuning to Bukit Jalil but was caught in a storm that was fearful and threatening to my safety. It first started to drizzle steadily after the Puchong Junction and I took shelter under an under pass. But I thought it was not the way to spend a cycling afternoon cooped in a narrow space, so I braved the rain and continued the cycling. At Bukit Jalil I made a U turn towards home and on reaching the Summit Junction all hell broke loose. It was the mother of all thunderstorm. As it was getting dark I did not stop but instead sloshed through the deluge and the wind. Needless to say getting soaked to the skin was an under statement. I learnt the lesson and the days following were spent on the static cycling on the trainer below. It is my saviour during this uncertain inclement weather, finding a rain free afternoon is now rare, and the next best option is cycling in one place under a roof. 

My trainer

It was during one rainy afternoon that I found my self at the PKNS Shah Alam and meeting with Hj Yusof a Hui Chinese, who was an artist in Islamic calligraphy. For a small price you can have one of his creation, done right in front of you, which you can frame and hang as decoration in your house. An added attraction was that the calligraphy was done in Chinese style, something you don't find common in this country. I would shamelessly promote this man and his art and urge those who are able, to patronise his works and support his effort by bringing home his art to your living room.

Hj Yusof in his studio