Tag Archives: Bidor

Kuala Lumpur to Penang: Day 1

Posted on October 16, 2019 by alchemyrider

Planning for a three-day ride from KL to Penang started in August. Culminating with a last meeting over roti canai and thosai. And a loaf of home-baked sourdough bread courtesy of AiLin.

Lay, Marvin, Amy, Pai and I were ready to go at 5:15. Mark isn’t in this photograph because he was the cameraman. Martin isn’t in the photo either because he was slightly late (he had to finish the breakfast his wife made for him before he was allowed out of the house).

The first leg for the day was from Taman Tun Dr Ismail to the KTM station in Kuang. It had rained during the night so the roads were wet. Our freshly-washed bicycles didn’t stay clean for long.

Staying true to the R@SKL raison d’etre there were two themes to this adventure. Riding and eating. Our first food stop was at a coffee shop across the road from Kuang station. Three of us fuelled up with plates of noodles for the train ride to Tanjung Malim.

The 7:27 am train was on time so we didn’t spend much time striking poses on the platform.

We had most of the carriage to ourselves. Once settled in our seats the first order of business was checking mobile phones. We did speak to each other during the one hour journey to Tanjung Malim. And one not-to-be-named person took a nap.

Amy provided her truck as a support vehicle. That was very helpful because we could put bags in the truck instead of riding with saddle packs. Mark was the driver on the first day because Daddy duties prevented him from riding with us at 5:15 am.

We met Mark at a roadside stall about a kilometre from Tanjung Malim station. We had only ridden 30km / 19mi but were already into our second meal of the day. Roti canai for those who hadn’t eaten in Kuang. If you ever find yourself on Jalan Ketoyang, north of Tanjung Malim station, stop at Restoran Al Kassim Maju. Their roti is the bomb.

The riding then started in earnest. Our final destination for Day 1 was Kampar. 88km / 55mi north on Federal Route 1. Mark would drive ahead of us and park on the side of the road. After we went past him he would leapfrog us again.

After ninety minutes we stopped for a break at Kampung Gajah, which is just south of Sungkai. Drinks only for all of us except for Martin, who had burned through his home-cooked breakfast and was hungry.

We were riding under clear blue skies. The temperature was rising steadily. It was 25º C / 77º F when we left Taman Tun. It was 38º C / 97º F when we rolled into Bidor at noon.

We had plenty of time to cover the 30km to Kampar. There was no point getting there before we could check in to the hotel. We spent ninety minutes consuming cold drinks and kai chai pang (chicken biscuits) under a fan at Restoran Mee Wah. Why the name “chicken biscuits” is a mystery because they do not contain any chicken.

Soon after we got going again clouds rolled in and we got drizzled on for a while. No one complained because the cooler temperature was appreciated by all.

10km / 6mi from Kampar the sky to the east got dark and the wind started to blow. A thunderstorm was on the way. We picked up the pace and got to the Kampar Boutique Hotel just ahead of a burst of rain.

After a shower and a short nap, we headed out to look for snacks. We found cendol, ais kacang and noodles.

It started to rain again, this time heavily, as we sat drinking and eating. We were trapped on the wrong side of the road from our hotel. After twenty minutes we gave up waiting for the deluge to stop and ran across the road through the rain.

Mark, Marvin and Pai were stuck on the hotel side of the road because of the rain, and couldn’t join us for cendol. Instead they went to Restoran Yin Phun Low, which is next door to the hotel. The rest of us joined them for dinner and beers. The food was so-so. I don’t recommend this restaurant.

The highlight of our time in that restaurant was deciding who would drive the truck the next day. In the week before the ride, everyone expressed a desire to drive. There was the talk of taking turns through the day as a way of getting some time off the saddle.

By the end of Day 1, that sentiment had changed. We had ridden at a relaxed pace. No one needed a break from riding. And Mark made it clear that the stop and start driving was no fun. There were no volunteers to drive the next day.

So Mark held out a fan of one ringgit notes and we each took one. Pai drew the note with the lowest last digit in the serial number. To the relief of the rest of us!

You would have thought that dinner would be the end of eating for the day. You would have been wrong. Kampar is noted for its Claypot Chicken Rice. A couple of the guys ventured out later that night for some.

The rest of us called it a night. We had another early start planned for Day 2.

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Posted in Cycling in Malaysia and tagged Bidor, Kampar, KTM Komuter, Kuala Lumpur, Kuang, Penang, R@SKL. Bookmark the permalink.

Road and Rail Back to Kepong

Posted on July 25, 2018 by alchemyrider

Day 2 Mini Bus

We were a bit slow to get going in the morning. There was some not-necessarily joking about taking the bus or train all the way back to Kuala Lumpur or getting a ride with someone.

We did make the walk to Hollywood at 7.30am. Plates of prawn chee cheong fun, char kway teow, and lor bak, washed down with glasses of leng chee kang (lotus seed drink) perked everyone up.

Photograph courtesy of Danial Marzuki

Photograph courtesy of Danial Marzuki

At 9.0am we were packed and ready to roll. Danial’s friend Eric rode with us to Gopeng before turning around and heading back home.

Photograph courtesy of Eric

We made a quick stop at the 7-Eleven in the same row of shophouses as the Ampang Cycle House. Our first proper stop was at a Petron station in Gopeng. The breakfast drinks had made their way through our bodily systems by then.

The day had started out cooler than it had been the previous day. Everyone was pleased about that.

Photograph courtesy of Danial Marzuki

37km / 23mi into our ride we were in Kampar. A Petron station was a convenient place to stop for ten minutes.

At 12.30pm were in Tapah. The KFC there was a lot less appealing as a lunch venue than it had been the day before. After some scouting around, we ended up at . . .

Photograph courtesy of Ozairi Othman

Pizza Hut! That was an underwhelming experience. The pizzas were smaller than we had expected, there was no ice for our drinks, and the air conditioning wasn’t working very well. Nevertheless, between us, we polished off three regular pizzas and four 1.5 litre bottles of Pepsi Cola.

The cool of the early morning had given way to full-on heat. It was 35° C / 95° F outside. The plan had been to spend an hour in Pizza Hut. The ineffective air conditioning while we were eating made that seem unlikely. By the time we were finished eating the air conditioning had upped its game and we finally began to cool off. And so we stayed there for seventy minutes.

We then spent fifteen minutes at the Petronas station 200 metres down the road eating ice cream for dessert.

Thirty-five minutes later we were in Bidor. The iced mango and other fresh fruit at the Sakinah stall, where we had stopped on the way to Ipoh, were calling our names. That was another fifteen-minute break.

Photograph courtesy of Ozairi Othman

It was past 2.30pm. The temperature would stay in the mid to low 30s° C / low 90s° F for the next three hours. We would be stopping a lot. So no change from the MO of the day before.

Photograph courtesy of Danial Marzuki

One of the benefits of riding on what used to be the main trunk road linking Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh is that you pass through lots of small towns. Towns which have at least one petrol station with an air-conditioned convenience store where we could stop and rest.

Sungkai was the next of these towns. We spent twenty minutes in the BHP station there. We were not in a rush. The first non-peak train leaves Tanjung Malim at 7.00pm on weekends. We had about 45km / 28mi to go, and more than four hours to cover that distance.

It is 22km / 14mi from Sungkai to Slim River. Just a bit too far to do all in one go, given the temperature and the rolling terrain. There isn’t much between Sungkai and Slim River, so we stopped in some shade beside the road at the junction to Trolak.

We spent forty minutes at the Petronas station in Slim River. More ice cream and cold drinks. That was the good news.

Day 2 Cursing

The bad news was that I dropped my mobile phone and broke the screen.

25km / 16mi to Tanjung Malim. It was 5.30pm when we left Slim River. The temperature had dropped to 29° C / 84° F. Enough of the cutting edge had been taken off the heat that we were able to cover those last kilometres to Tanjung Malim in one go. We stopped at a Petronas station a couple of kilometres from the Komuter station to regroup and get a drink.

Photograph courtesy of Halim Zin

We then rode to the KTM station to get tickets for the 8.00pm train to Kepong. We planned to have dinner during the hour or so before that train departed. We got to the KTM station at 6.50pm and were told that we could board the 7.00pm train with our bikes. The train was already at the station. We quickly hauled our bikes up and across the overpass to the platform on the other side of the tracks and hopped onto the train.

Photograph courtesy of Danial Martzuki

Once again we had the entire carriage to ourselves.

It was dark when we pulled into the KTM Kepong station. There had been talk about getting dinner before riding home, but by the time we wheeled our bikes off the train at 8.30pm the gloss had worn off that idea. It had been a long and hot weekend, and everyone just wanted to get home. Which we all accomplished safely.

This was my first ride to Ipoh. It was a lot of fun (double pinch flats and broken phone screen aside). I would do it again. Any town with its own Hollywood-style sign is worth another visit.

Photograph courtesy of The Malaysian Times

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Posted in Cycling in Malaysia and tagged Bidor, Gopeng, Hollywood, Ipoh, Kepong, KTM Komuter, Slim River, Sungkai, Tanjung Malim, Tapah. Bookmark the permalink.

Rail and Road to Ipoh

Posted on July 25, 2018 by alchemyrider

Vegas and Hollywood were two of the highlights of our weekend trip to Ipoh. More on that later.

Canning Garden in Ipoh, where we spent the night, is just over 200km / 124mi from Kuala Lumpur. Which is just a bit further than we wanted to cycle.

So we went by train for part of the way. Tanjung Malim is as far as you can go northwards on the KTM Komuter train. The KTM Electric Train Service (ETS) goes beyond Tanjung Malim to Ipoh and onwards to the Thai border, but full-sized bicycles are not allowed on board the ETS trains.

Early on Saturday morning six of us met up at various points along the way to the Kepong Komuter station. We would normally have boarded the train in Kuala Lumpur. Track upgrading work means that there is temporarily no service between Kuala Lumpur and Kepong.

Photograph courtesy of Danial Marzuki

Danial, Halim, Choo Chian, Safwan, Ozzy and I caught the 7.10am train ride from Kepong to Tanjung Malim. That was the last weekend non-peak hours train until 8.00pm. Bicycles are allowed on Komuter trains during non-peak hours only. The train ride took about 75 minutes. We had the last carriage almost entirely to ourselves. At 9.00am we were scouting the area around the Tanjung Malim station for a place to have breakfast.

The stop at Restoran Hijas was the first of many.

By 9.45am we were on the road northwards to Ipoh. We cycled along Federal Route 1, which as the name implies is the first and oldest federal road in Malaysia. Federal Route 1 was the backbone of the road system in the western states of Peninsular Malaysia before being supplanted by the North–South Expressway (E1 and E2).

Photograph courtesy of Ozairi Othman

Our next stop was at the Shell station in Slim River. So named for a Captain Slim, who in the nineteenth century sailed up the river, mistaking it for the larger Perak River, which was the main waterway at that time.

We were trundling along at a relatively relaxed pace. We were all carrying clothes, toiletries etc. in our saddle packs. Some of us had handlebar bags as well. Danial was on a Marin touring bike. We weren’t set up for speed.

So it was two and a half hours before we got to Restoran Shakir in Sungkai, where we had drinks and topped up our bottles with ice.

A word about the state of the road is appropriate here. The entire length of the ride was about 125km / 78mi. There were some badly rutted and patched sections, but in the main, the road surface was reasonable to good. However, there was enough debris on the road that you had to keep your eyes glued to the road ahead.

3km after leaving Restoran Shakir I got distracted by a motorcyclist pulling off the road to my left and clanged straight over a substantial lump of stone. The noise that made was loud enough to make me think that I had damaged a rim. Not the case as it turned out, but I had pinch-flatted both my tires.

Thank goodness for riding with friends whom I could borrow an inner tube from.

Photograph courtesy of Ozairi Othman

Danial and Ozzy rode on while my three assistants and I fixed two flat tires. We caught up with them about 10km / 6mi later at a row of fresh fruit stalls in Bidor. It was 1.00pm and 33° C / 91° F by then. Iced mango slices hit the spot.

We got to Tapah about thirty minutes later. A good time to stop for lunch.

Photograph courtesy of Safwan Siddiq

The KFC in Tapah was packed but we went in any way. The air conditioning was the main attraction.

My lunch was pretty good too.

70km / 43mi done. 55km / 31mi to go.

After forty-five minutes in the cool of the KFC, we headed out into the sun again. Not for long though. It was 35° C / 95° F. Twenty minutes later we stopped at the Shell station in Temoh for ice cream and drinks.

Thirty minutes after that we were inside a Petron station at Kampar. I told you we stopped a lot.

The next ice cream and drinks stop was at a Shell station in Gopeng. It was 4.30pm, and we had 18km / 11mi to go. But we had two more stops to make before w got to Canning Garden.

All the Way from Tanjung Malim we had ridden past a multitude of roadside stalls, some quite makeshift, selling durians. Durians are regarded by many in Southeast Asia as the “king of fruits.”

Photograph courtesy of The Star Online

Durians are a seasonal fruit, and prices have soared in recent years as more and more of the local crop is exported to places like China. But this year, a combination of unusually hot weather and heavy rainfall resulted in a long durian season. This has produced an oversupply that has pushed down prices.

Danial could not resist the temptation. We stopped in Simpang Pulai for a mini durian feast. While the others were delving into durians, I noticed, set back from the road, the ruins of this mansion.

Day 1 Ruin Closeup

In its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s, Ipoh was the epicentre of a tin mining boom. Newly minted millionaires built mansions like this one. Following the depletion of its tin deposits and the collapse of tin prices in the 1970s, Ipoh suffered decades of decline and neglect. Epitomised by these remains of what was once a stately home.

Our last stop was at the Ampang Cycle House, where I bought inner tubes and CO² cartridges to replace what I had borrowed.

4km / 2.5mi away from the bike shop is this terraced house which was our home for the night. Choo Chian booked it online for us. Very comfortable and well-equipped it was too.

Day 1 Home Stay

So why Vegas and Hollywood? They are the names of famous eating places in Canning Garden. Both are coffee shops housing a collection of food stalls, so there is a variety of dishes on offer.

It was 6.30pm when we arrived at Canning Garden. After storing our bikes in the house, we walked, in our cycling kits, to dinner at Vegas. Vegas is open at night but not in the morning. Hollywood, 100 metres away in the next block of shophouses, is closed at night and open in the morning. We would be at Hollywood for breakfast.

There are no dinner food photographs to show, but I assure you the food was good.

Photograph courtesy of Danial Marzuki

After dinner, we washed ourselves and our cycling kits, and lounged in the sitting room for a while. Some of the guys went back out at about 10.00pm for a teh tarik. It was lights out time for Halim and I.

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Posted in Cycling in Malaysia and tagged Bidor, Canning Garden, Gopeng, Hollywood, Ipoh, Kampar, KTM Komuter, Simpang Pulai, Sungkai, Tanjung Malim, Tapah, Vegas. Bookmark the permalink.

Janamanjung Fellowship Ride 2014

Posted on April 30, 2014 by alchemyrider

My riding buddies and I, now collectively known as team Flipside, have signed up for a number of 100 km or longer rides this year. The first was the Janamanjung Fellowship ride. This ride has been on the cycling event calendar since 2008. The ride starts and ends on the grounds of the Sultan Azlan Shah power plant, a 2,100MW facility that will bring a fourth 1,000MW unit on stream in 2015.

The power plant is on the Perak coast, 250 km from Kuala Lumpur. We convoyed to the town of Manjung on Saturday morning. As is always the case, the drive was punctuated by stops for food. Marco, Keat and I are enjoying a mid-morning snack of wanton mee in the town of Bidor.

Photograph courtesy of Mark Lim

On the way back to his truck, Keat gave in to temptation and bought some jambu air, or rose apples.

Our next stop was at a well-known tourist spot in the town of Teluk Intan. The Leaning Tower.

We didn’t stay very long as it was an exceptionally hot day. At least 33° C.

The power plant was our next destination. We collected our ride numbers, and collectively hoped that it would be cooler the next day.

We met up with Shahfiq and his wife at the power plant. Shahfiq is from Manjung, so we depended on him to take us to a good place for lunch. Which he did.

We had dessert at an institution in Perak. James cendol. This roadside stall opened for business in 1974. Since then it has spawned a host of imitators around the country, but I wager that none are the equal of the original. The stall operator is resplendent in an ever-present red bow tie. The large photograph in the background is of this lady’s husband, with the Sultan of Perak seated on the right.

The reputation is well-deserved. The cendol is old-school good. Thick coconut milk, slightly salty pandan-flavoured noodles, palm sugar, and shaved ice. No other ingredients required. There is nothing better on a hot afternoon than an ice-cold bowl of cendol. Except two bowls of ice-cold cendol.

The plan was to go for a bike ride in the evening, but the hot weather deterred everyone. We were probably better off napping in our air-conditioned rooms.

Other Flipsiders arrived throughout the afternoon. The three in a VW combi had a scare when their van decided to take an unanticipated rest.

Photograph courtesy of Jason Chan

Fortunately the combi got going again once it had cooled down. So we had the whole group carbo-loading together that evening.

Photograph courtesy of Mark Lim

Our hotel was 5 km from the power station, so we all rode to the start. There were sixteen of us in our brand-new Flipside kit.

Photograph courtesy of Shahfiq Abdul Manap

About 1,380 of us rode under this arch, through the power plant gates, and out onto the route.

The route was a clock-wise 115 km loop. The power plant sits on an artificial island, which explains why the map shows the route extending out to sea.

The organization for this ride was excellent. Especially the marshalling along the route. There was a large group of marshalls on motorbikes to keep the riders safe through intersections and on the open roads.

We got going a little bit late, which would translate into spending more time in the heat of midday. The early going was relatively comfortable. This is one of the nicest cycling event photographs that I have ever been in. Along with Cedric at the front, and Jason.

Photograph courtesy of Cycling Malaysia magazine

The three stops along the route were well stocked with chilled bottles of water and cans of 100PLUS isotonic drink. Which made for a happy group of Flipsiders.

Not long after that first break we had an unscheduled stop. I made the schoolboy error of taking my eyes off the rider in front of me as we were slowing down for some reason. I went from 31.5 kph to 20 kph over 60 metres. Then very rapidly to 0 kph.

I have the good fortune to ride with a great group of guys. They all pitched in to free the jammed chain, and straighten the bar, right shifter and front derailleur on my bike, while a couple of marshals patched me up. I’ll do a full crash post in a day or so.

Photograph courtesy of Keat Wong

Thanks to the efforts of the Flipsiders I got going again. By then we were the very last of the riders on the road. Accompanied by some marshals who must have wondered if we would finish in a reasonable time.

By the second water stop at 70 km we had caught up with some riders. We were well within the pack by the third stop. Fortunately there was plenty of chilled water at that third stop. It was not as hot as the day before, but the mercury was nonetheless pushing 30° C when we arrived at the stop.

We were all very very pleased to see a fire truck sending out a steady spray of cool water at the finish. We need this at all our organized rides.

Every Flipsider rode under the finishing arch. We all had a good time, despite the heat, and the cramps, and in my case scrapes and bruises.

We all left Manjung with one of these.

And more than a few of us started the trip home with a bowl or two of James’ cendol in our bellies.

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Posted in Cycling in Malaysia and tagged Bidor, Flipside, James cendol, Janamanjung Fellowship Ride 2014, Leaning Tower, Manjung, Sultan Azlan Shah power plant, Teluk Intan, Wanton Noodles. Bookmark the permalink.

Old Roots, New Routes

Tag Archives: Bidor

Kuala Lumpur to Penang: Day 1

Road and Rail Back to Kepong

Rail and Road to Ipoh

Janamanjung Fellowship Ride 2014

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