2012/2013 Indochina Tour - Day 8 (Phnom Penh part 1)

Phnom Penh. Well unlike the last time where I kinda breezed through the place, we have a couple of days to spare in this city.

We're staying at Salita Hotel and for US25/night it's actually very decent. It's only a few months old when we got there so it's still clean and fresh. There's no underground parking for the bikes but we're happy enough with the 24hr security provided.

Malaysia......you welcome also!

Our security.....good enough.

One thing about Cambodia is that the people are pretty proficient in English, which is a great relief but it also worked against me in the sense that I didn't bother to pick up basic Khmer other than "Akun" which means thank you. Usually I'd make an effort to at least ask "where is the toilet?"(very important hokayyyy) in the local language, but this time around even this I failed.

We found the city to be quite easy to navigate as it's made up of square blocks with the "happening" riverside to the East as your marker. It is also a flat city, coz just as with the previous hotel I stayed in, the hotel's restaurant is on the top floor, which in Salita's case, is on the 10th. Just look at the pictures and you have an idea of how flat the city is.

10th floor where you get a bird's eyeview of the city

Pretty flat I'd say

You would think Husref is taking my picture right?

Well think again

Though the hotel is a little bit far from the riverside it is actually near to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum or S21. I think it was just 500 metres so we walked there. It's my first time there and after that visit, I can safely say it's my last. The sun was shining and this being a former school it is both open and airy, yet with what transpired here through Cambodia's dark Khmer Rouge rule the place gave out a grisly unnerving chill.

What you see on the left is the gallow where prisoners were tortured and hanged

This fella wouldn't last 5 minutes back then.

Chum Mey...1 of the 7 known survivors of S21

Add caption

It is disturbing to be looking at rows and rows of photographs of inmates knowing very well that those eyes staring back at you met with a terrible and gruesome end, even kids are not spared. I'm just glad that they did not display pictures of those being tortured. I'm not generally squeamish but I don't think I'll be able to hack it if it is too much in your face. I'm left to my imaginings and in it I softened the blow by conjuring a less painful and traumatic end to the eyes that are looking back at me.

I ask myself, how is it possible for someone to torture and kill their fellow man (woman and child) en masse, just because you don't share the same idelogy, or religion, or ethnic group. It is silly, it is stupid and you would think that places such as S21 serves as a stark reminder of what can happen when you allow emotions and fear to rule. I can't help to be reminded by what is happening in our current political scene where the race card is being played by both sides much to the detriment of the greater good.

I left Toul Sleng feeling empty and drained and not recalling the steps back to the hotel, for all I wanted to do is to wash this feeling off and fully clothed, I stood under the showers.

Kuala Terengganu - 8 years still the same.

The last time I was here was 8 years ago for work. Those were the days of dialup and I remember going online for *cough cough* work and getting whacked RM800 for it, my room was only RM200, so you can imagine the amount of explaining i had to do back at the office. Yes, I found the town lacking chutzpah and stayed at the hotel most of the time. My perception of KT town still hasn't changed. I still don't like it. Basically me and KT town........not friend.

So what brings my ass here then you might ask, riding solo for 7 hours from Kuala Tahan, braving the rain and storm, with winds so strong it pushed me from one lane to the other. It took me an hour just to navigate the last 20km due to the storm. Have I gone bonkers? then again that's a foregone conclusion, i believe even my mum who only thinks the best of her son, as all mothers do, is worried that I'm off my rockers..haha. 

I'm gonna say that I'm practicing long solo riding, adding mileage to condition myself, getting the handle of the bike in all sorts of weather condition and bla bla bla, but what really brought me out here was the fact that I won a 2 nights stay in Ri-Yaz Heritage Marina Resort and Spa worth RM4,000 and it's expiring soon. What?! you went through crap for 4k you might ask. To that, I say, I'm actually quite cheap.....i'd do the the same for less. In fact actually I did, coz off season the room is about 700 bucks/night.

True meaning of superstar parking

Right in front of the room.

I went to Pasar Payang and have my lunch there at the food court. Now this place is a landmark in KT where even the tourism site would promote it if you wanna get hold of batik, handicraft and all sorts of local fare. The moment I stepped in there I didn't have a good feeling, the place was dark and musky, and because it had rained earlier water collected everywhere giving it an even more dodgy look to it. As for the food court, it looked to be in such a dilapidated state that to be honest, I'd rather eat in my hotel toilet.

Like how?

To be fair, the weather did hamper my plans to explore the town and look for redeeming qualities but an incident kinda made me laugh to myself and sealed the town's fate. I was having lunch(elsewhere obviously) and messing about with my Garmin, and thought let's look at what this place has by way of entertainment. So I just tapped entertainment and the nearest it could come up with was 100km away. Yup....i was screwed....and the Garmin confirmed it.

Entertainment - only 100km away

Not all is bad though, I must say the room they gave me was really awesome. I'm pretty sure it's bigger than my apartment in KL. You can have a party in the bathroom and still have space. So after 700km of riding in 3 days, it did give me the rest that I need. It also gave the the time to wash my clothes and dry wet riding gear.

Living Room

Bedroom

I did get to move around a bit to capture some shots, but as mentioned, the threat of rain was always there.

Fishermen mending their net

Floating mosque

How the resort looks like from across the bay

I know someone's gonna say, dude....pretty sure if you get a hot chick from KT it'll change your views about the town. I don't know about the change perception thing, but it'll definitely make my mum happy. Till then onwards to more riding adventure as the rider heads off to Kuantan.

Father's Guesthouse, Eight Mentigi Guesthouse, Gerard's Place Guesthouse

This deserves a post all on it's own due to the pleasant experience we had in procuring accommodation in Tanah Rata. We made our way to Father's Guesthouse thinking of spending the night there  only to be told that it was full, though the good people there did not leave us in a lurch and directed us to another guesthouse, Eight Mentigi Guesthouse.

When we got there, straight away I can tell I'm gonna like the place. It's about 500 metres from the main road, yet it's nice and quiet. As a biker, what i liked the most is the fact that we have secure parking. Unlike a car a lot of things are exposed on a bike, so we have to be careful of the itchy finger syndrome.

Superstar parking

The gate is closed at night

Eight Mentigi is the address and also eight being the number of rooms available. You'll be greeted by the friendly caretaker Anne. So often those in the hospitality business are not hospitable, but that's not what we got with Anne who fussed over us like relatives coming to visit. Heck, even i am not that warm towards my relatives...haha(let's hope they're not reading this).

We took the 2 single beds with attached bathroom and there's also hot shower available. The main thing is that it's clean and neat. What you see on their website gallery is what you get. There's also a living area where you can watch TV with Astro available, so for those who cannot miss their dose of sports or AXN, you're covered there.

Rider, Smith and Anne

The shops are just 5 minutes walk away if you don't feel like driving out, and in the nice cool weather of Cameron, you would hardly feel it. The common area is also good as we get to meet other guests for a chit chat. This is so unlike a hotel where you check in and go to your room and just go about your ways.

I can imagine coming over with a group of friends, have a BBQ and a good ole chillout session the next time I'm here.

A hot cuppa before we left.

Gerard also took the trouble of showing us Gerard's Place Guesthouse, which was nearby before we left. Now this place blows me away, i thought the decor was modern yet tasteful. It also has eight rooms available, with attached and also shared bathrooms. Actually I wouldn't mind if my apartment looked like this. You gotta check out the website for the gallery as the pics that i took doesn't do justice.

LCD and Astro beyond in Gerard's

Gerard's well kept 30 year old Land Rover

So there you have it, some options for your next trip to Cameron's that would not blow the budget and have an atmosphere that's as welcoming and comfortable as your own home.

Cameron Highlands - an impromptu yet rewarding trip.

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.

Outside Yong Suan, after our fill of nasi ganja.

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. 

Check out that sweep.

Not kidding when i said dark clouds chased us all the way.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Off Road action!

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. 

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.

The main man!

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.