If anyone partied the previous night, it didn’t show. Everyone was checked out of the hotel and ready to ride at 6:30 a.m.
Most of the route from Hat Yai to Padang Besar is due south. I think I selected the wrong course on my Garmin to navigate. The map took us north out of Hat Yai along the same roads to Songkhla Lake. The detour added 12 km to our route. We lost more time because I had a flat tyre 21 km into the ride. Thank goodness we had a time buffer.
It was a relief to get onto Route 4 heading in the right direction. As we have come to expect of Southern Thailand, the roads are good. With the occasional Wat along the way.
In this case, the Wat Hua Thanon near Sadao.
It wasn’t as hot as the previous days. It was ‘only’ 30ºC but still very humid. We were all sweating a lot. We stopped at a Seven-11 to refill bottles and let the support vehicles catch up with us. We had lost them in the detour around Hat Yai.
We needed another stop with 13 km to go to the Thailand-Malaysia border. It was 34ºC and shade was limited.
It was an up-and-down 13 km with 125 metres of elevation to the border. A little sting in the tail of our four-day ride.
All that was left was the queue at Malaysian Immigration, where we had to tell the locals not to cut in front of us.
Despite the 12 km detour, we all arrived at the homestay in time for a shower before being driven to the KTM station by L and P.
We needn’t have rushed. Our train left Padang Besar fifty minutes late. Problems with the onboard signalling system caused the delay.
This message hit my mobile at 3:38 p.m. Late too, and ultimately wrong.
We arrived at Sentral Station at 9:10 p.m. Two hours and forty minutes late.
B and K arrived in Klang with our bikes two hours later. They got caught in heavy rain. As did S on his motorcycle after riding to Penang with TH. They got to Penang at around 5:00 p.m. We were all glad to hear that S got to Klang safely at 10:00 p.m.
All that was left to do was to deliver the four KL guys’ bicycles to Pegasus Cycles. Which N did on Tuesday morning.
That wrapped up our four-day adventure in Southern Thailand. 291 km in all.
Thank you, H and J, for arranging the travel and accommodation, and for the jerseys. Thank you, B, K and K, for the support throughout the four days. Thank you to all the cyclists for the camaraderie and the laughs.
Old Roots, New Routes 