Woke up on Saturday thinking of a ride up Cameron Highlands on Sunday, buzzed Husref about the idea only to be countered by a "why don't we go today and overnight instead?" So I told him let me check my schedule, which took all of 2 seconds and said, let's go.
So how do you plan for a trip without planning? You just pack up your toothbrush and go la. As most trips with vehicles go, we met up in Shell for our go juice.
Since there's no fixed itinerary we decided to hit the highway all the way to Ipoh for lunch at the famous Nasi Ganja. There's even an
fb group dedicated to it. All the way down we seem to outrun the rain as there were dark clouds constantly chasing us.
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| Outside Yong Suan, after our fill of nasi ganja. |
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| More go juice in Ipoh |
We proceeded to go up Cameron's from Simpang Pulai via Kg Raja. Now the last time I was up in Cameron was a good 8 years ago and never on a bike. I've been told that the highway through Sg.Pulai is nice and scenic and I would have to say...I'm not disappointed. In fact I thought the road is brilliant! It's got a nice mix of sweeping and slightly tight corners without ever being too challenging for noob like me. Managed to scrape my boots on a couple of occasion, which naturally caused an involuntary reaction in my pants, and not of the pleasant variety mind you....haha.
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| Check out that sweep. |
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| Not kidding when i said dark clouds chased us all the way. |
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| More corners to come... |
The road doesn't have much traffic, it's wide with a good run off area should you overshoot. There's a bit of construction going on at the early part, so bikers may want to be careful of sand, but other than that it's all good. Our original planless plan was to ride back down the same way the next day, and herein lies the beauty of adventure and flexibility coz we took a different route down. I'll go into that later.
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| In case i forgot my name. |
In started to drizzle a bit when we reached Brinchang, and our progress is further hampered by the Pasar Malam going on there. There was actually a bit of a traffic jam just to get through with tourist buses parked along the road.
Our destination was Father's Guesthouse in Tanah Rata as Husref went there a couple years back and he was giving me this bit of history about Father's being the first guesthouse in Malaysia and all, and we can stay in the army barracks just next to where Japanese soldiers use to behead people. Since we were so gung-ho, we didn't make any reservations, and we were unfortunately (or fortunately once i thought about the Japanese soldiers) rewarded by a "sorry no rooms available". The army barracks was also gone as it was on Church land and they're taking it back. Luckily they didn't throw a "what the hell were you guys thinking coming up here on a Saturday with no booking", instead they directed us to another guesthouse, Eight Mentigi which was just nearby. The whole accommodation experience was so good that I'm gonna have a separate post on it, in the mean time onwards with the journey.
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| Teaser pic of where we ended up for the nite. |
After a quick bite, we came back to chill and Gerard from Father's came for a drink and chit chat. Now this is when our plan to go back down through Sg.Pulai took a different turn. Gerard was telling us about the highway to Raub via Sg.Koyan that just piqued our curiosity and in the spirit of adventure, we were like, let's do it.
We said our goodbyes after breakfast, well more like brunch actually coz why would we want to wake up early on a Sunday? and hit the road to Sg. Koyan. Now if I had thought the road up from Sg. Pulai was good, this road is fucking awesome. In fact, it's one of those roads that as i ride I'm actually screaming "this is fucking awesome!!" in my helmet....oh ya, the battery for my ipod died, which also explains the shouting to myself. Well i hope it does explain anyways......
Bumped into big groups of bikers both ways, so we're definitely late to the party. This road will definitely appeal to all motorheads, as it's well paved, sweeping corners, even on my motor tong i was averaging 100 to 140km/h.
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| The money shot.... |
There's a small unpaved road diversion of about 50 metres and that's about the only downside of this road, but it's no show stopper. This time around something on the bike scraped in the bends but i was enjoying it too much to care.
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| Off Road action! |
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| This time, we chased the rain |
We stopped at Sg.Koyan for lunch while raving about the excellent road that we just came from. Husref went to the toilet and I wanted to go in after he was done and that's when a black cobra came slithering out...woohoo..talk about more adventure on this trip. Sometimes, nature comes to you, and when it does, you run like a bitch ok.
Sg.Koyan to Raub was when the heavens literally opened up, so this is actually a good opportunity to test out my gear's waterproof abilities. I'm happy to report it's all good with the exception of my boots. Though it's waterproof, the fact that it's low cut allows water to dribble in from my pant's cuff, and somehow only on my left feet. I'm gonna use my tall boots for the Kuala Tahan trip to see how it fares.
It's a good thing also that this stretch of road is pretty much straight with hardly any bends, so even in the pouring rain, our progress was not hampered. Another quick fuel up in Raub, we made our way to Bentong, where Husref mentioned he was recently taken to a famous ice cream place there. Again it's proven to be a fortuitous trip as when we reached Bentong it was hot again.
He's not kidding that the place is famous, coz it was full when we got there, and to think they only serve dessert.
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| Kow Po! |
We had their special which is the Kow Po ABC, while Mr.Tan was telling us his story. The man is very proud of of his product telling us it took his dad and him 30 years to perfect the recipe. He used to make the ice cream in the shop, but not anymore as he said people were actually stealing the recipe. There you go, there's even drama in homemade ice cream.
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| The main man! |
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| Kow Po ABC - imagine this on a hot day. |
What we did not expect was being treated by Mr.Tan to a scoop of ice cream each after we were done with the ABC. Since were on the subject of desserts i guess this is the icing on our Cameron adventure cake.
From Bentong, we hit Karak highway back to KL.
This is one trip that I'd highly recommend to anyone looking for a quick and cool getaway, driving or riding is easy with good roads and plenty of stops should you choose to. Highly rewarding regardless of what you do while on the trip. Total mileage was 546km.
