- Fri 8 - Pekan - old Royal town
- The hotels in SL were closed for CNY so I came back to Kuantan
I decided to visit the royal town 40 Km south called Pekan as it's supposed to have a good hostel and big museum.
- 1. I could only found 2 rundown hotels.
- 2. When I arrived at the museum there was this sign.
- The sign of course it says it's closed
- So I walked around past the polo ground, airport like palace etc. and met some interesting people etc
| Sat 9- Sun 10 - Cherating
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- In the morning I went to a large Saturday morning market and bought some tapei. On the way back up the coast to stay at Cherating beach, I stopped off at the museum in Kuantan. Of course it was all closed I hung around for half an hour and the guard came back from his lunch and opened up. As ever the museum was mostly about the old sultan how great a bloke he was, how great a golfer he was rather than the history of local people. There was nothing about local industry or Sungei Lembing, but maybe the feeling was anti-foreigner as there was a large display in Malay about various local "heroes" who took part in insurgency to disrupt and get rid of the British.
- I didn't want to get bogged down trying to travel in the public holiday traffic so I decided to hangout in Cherating at least Saturday and Sunday until Monday. It was however a pity the sea wasn't there at the same time ... usually I could see it about 700m out. I found a wooden chalet to stay for only 20Rm. Everywhere was full cos the holiday had started. It's one of those travellers places which could have a good atmosphere like those places where as you move from caf?to caf?you meet the same people, but the place being full of holiday crowds none of the cafes had a particularly good atmosphere. And for such a rustic place some of the bars were expensive at $4 plus a beer.
- Saturday the beach was very busy with Malay people
- Strangely the beach wasn't very busy on Sunday. I walked over to the next beach and was the only person there. Then I walked 2Km around by road to the turtle sanctuary and Club Med Resort.
- The turtles lay their eggs on the beach and then to conserve them the rangers dig up the eggs and replant them in the sanctuary. This time of year the last eggs have just about hatched out. At night I went to the cafe with 2 French guys I had met in Pekan. Since Cherating was only OK not a great atmosphere I decided to set off back towards KL on Monday.
| They should Flippin label things properly
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- 1 I went to the supermarket and bought some chicken, but when I opened the tin I found it was full
sardines ... it definitely said Ayam on the tin.
- 2 Then I bought some beer - it said Tiger on the packet, but when I open it I found it wasn't beer .. it was flippin biscuits
There are other things they don't label properly
- 3 There is thing that looks like a car called a Proton, but when you drive it you find it's not a proper car after all ! .... (It's only a joke you happy proton drivers)
- 4 There is a party called the United Malays National Organisation, but then surely there are opposition Malay parties so surely that means the Malays are not united ?
- 5 How come they one thing they surely don't grow in Holland is Durian Belanda ?
- seriously how come all the cheaper foods from condensed milk to tinned mackerel have palm oil on their list of ingredients ?
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- Mon 11- Maran
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- I had deliberately waited until the holiday crowds had gone back to work, before travelling on. I went back down to Kuantan and picked up a bus to Maran - At Maran looking for Chinese food rather than Malay food I found a very nice place to eat
| THE MARAN HOME TOWN CAFE
just behind the banks on the main road
Western and Chinese Food
09-477-3426, 019-913-9899
Humidity made my camera out of focus.
- As I sat eating I was treated to a free show as the very talented owner Peter sat a his drum kit in front of me playing out various tunes on various instruments, flute, Chinese instruments etc. It was quite a surprise that this Chinese guy has learnt all these Traditional English and folk music by ear.
MP3 of Peter playing His Chinese songs were very good he can play everything.
| Hindu - Temple|
The reason I stopped in Maran was that Selva said I should stop off at Indian Temple. I hitched 20Km along the main road, but I couldn't find it. Turns out it's actually 26Km north of Maran on the road into The Taman Negara National Park. I hitched back to Maran and then was lucky to get a ride with a young guy on his way back to his town of Kuala Lipis.
- To me the temple was not so exciting. - It turns out the original temple was nice 100 years ago, but since then the original sacred tree has gone and they keep redeveloping the temple, in fact they've just done some redevelopment and there was large crane moving statues about. I guess when there is a festival happening there's more to see. - By then it was getting late and I managed to get a ride back to Maran and then a ride from J the friendly trucker who lives in Shah Alam. He was kind enough to drop me right in the centre of Temerloh
| Monday night : Temerloh
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- This is another of these Chinese trading towns on a river, which could look quaint, but just looks rundown.
| - I stayed at the worst hotel ever- I've come across this a lot recently in Malaysia. I don't want to waste money and I don't like aircon, so I look for a basic hotel so I keep finding myself in this kind of place. Actually I don't mean worst ever altogether as this one like the others was clean, it's just the state of the room and fittings,' like they have not spent a cent on them for 25 years. No painting, bathroom door half rotted, toilet flush no longer working, showerhead broken etc . When something breaks they don't fix it. In this type of hotel it's normal to find a small pane of glass missing, but this room, which is above the town's main street is supposed to have 4- large 2m by 1m window sections , but one was completely missing. I might aswell have been sleeping outside. I broke up 2 large carboard boxes to engineer a door to keep the noise and mosquitoes out. The room was not even supercheap it was the same price as a simple business hotel in Thailand $6 US.
| Tue 12 - Mentakab, Bentong, hot springs, KL
- I took a bus to the sistertown of Mentakab. It has the train into the jungle whereas Temerloh has the river into the jungle. Not much really, another one of those boring provincial trading towns. Strange how the railway and station are quite separate from the town. So after a coffeee I took the bus to Bentong.
- Bentong was more of the same I guess. Being 90 mins from KL it's almost like a suburb buses run in every 30 mins, but they all use the highway. Bentong has waterfalls 5Km away, but they were on the other side I decided to hitch along the old KL road to the hotsprings 8Km away. In fact my ride was with 2 engineers who were installing a 1MW mini-hydro project at the waterfalls. They said the historic hydro-plant at Hulu Langat was set to re-open.
- The springs were OK, certainly very hot, but just 2 large concrete ponds.
- Then I got a ride with Sensei (Chinese traditional rheumatism doctor who brought me back into the traffic chaos of KL. pity I lost his card.)
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