January 2, 2006
Happy New Year! Kirk and I spent New Year’s Eve in Kuantan since we decided that we needed another day of rest before hitting the road again. We had a nice time there enjoying an internet café, resting, eating yummy Indian food and buying $1 pirated DVD’s.
After our ride on the day we arrived in Kuantan, we decided to follow Lonely Planet’s advice on a place to eat and it led us to an Indian warung. It was on a main road in a strip mall type setting, but without any doors. The front is just open to the outside as most places are here. The small kitchen was on the right as we walked in and was a very basic one that was also not enclosed. We sat down, waived down and asked him how this worked because we only understood a few things on the posted menu on the wall. He asked if we were vegetarians and we said “yes”. The next thing we knew we had a banana leaf in front of us to use as a plate and we had what seemed like a frantic dance of two waiters going on around us. One was filling our “plate” with rice and then they took turns putting different scoops of vegetarian fare around the rice. In no time we had a nice sampler plate in front of us that included a cup of yogurt and some sort of soup. We asked for some naan and a pancake as well and they served those with some yummy sauces. The waiter kept telling us to try this one dish with the naan because it was “very nice….very nice” and he served us some more of the vegetable dish on our plate to eat with the bread. Kirk and I were famished so we ate it all! It was delicious and quite the experience to boot. We love Indian food because it fills us up a little more than the typical Malaysian fare and the flavor is much more appealing to us as well.
We spent some time in an internet café that we found across from a mall. The internet cafes here are so cheap and they tend to have really fast connections. I was also amazed at how many boys are in the internet cafes gaming. I’m guessing this is because they probably don’t have computers at home and it’s a cheap form of entertainment.
After we caught up on emails and blogging we walked across the street to the mall. We both find the malls in these foreign countries fascinating. For some reason it feels like we get a good sense of the people and what they “consume”. It’s also a great place to people watch. We found a couple of stores that sell DVD’s and bought “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Must Love Dogs”. We went back to our room and watched “Must Love Dogs”. I have to say that I loved the talent in that movie, but I just didn’t like the script.
The next day was New Year’s Eve. I slept in late while Kirk was out on the river walk taking pictures. Our hotel was next to the river so we had a nice view from our room minus the old rundown guesthouse behind our hotel that had a pool filled with dirty rainwater. Apparently tourism here in Malaysia has fallen off and a lot of places have gone bankrupt. It’s pretty sad because I could have seen Kirk and I staying there if it was up and running as opposed to staying in the hotel.
I finally decided to roll out of bed and we went back to the same street where the Indian warung was but this time we tried a different one that was a couple of doors down. It wasn’t nearly as good, but we still enjoyed our meals nonetheless.
After that we walked down to the mega mall in town because we heard they had a British type grocery store on the lower level. Most malls here tend to have grocery stores in them, which is interesting. We bought more tuna and cheese and treated ourselves to peanut M&M’s, yogurt and muesli. Of course most of what we bought were imported goods so we paid a lot of money for our groceries. We didn’t care so much though because we just wanted some western type food and it was New Year’s Eve after all. I find myself craving protein all the time and I’m just not satisfied with their variations of rice and noodles. Kirk and I don’t eat the pork, chicken, or beef here because we just don’t trust it and want to avoid getting sick. I know Malaysia is probably safe to eat meats, but we figure why start now because when we hit Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, we definitely will not be eating meat after some of the stories we’ve heard. So we’ve discovered that we’re pretty happy for at least one meal a day to fill up on other sources of protein, particularly western sources.
Eventually we headed back to our room to enjoy our dinner and watch “Memoirs of a Geisha”. We couldn’t get it to work on our laptop (what can you expect for a $1 copy) so we watched “The Chronicles of Narnia” instead. I found it to be a little disappointing, but what can you say…not every director can be Peter Jackson. We shared a beer, toasted the New Year and were in bed by 9pm. That was our big New Year’s Eve! Sad but true. I guess holidays just don’t mean as much when we’re away from all of our friends and family. I did wake up at midnight to a bunch of people on the streets yelling “Happy New Year!” but then I went right back to sleep. I don’t think Kirk even moved.
New Year’s Day we got up and rode about 50km to Cherating. During the ride we were both chugging along in silence when we heard a noise that sounded like a muffled “hello” coming from the other side of the road. Kirk yelled “hello” back and I looked over to see that he was yelling at a goat! I laughed for about the next mile as I thought that was so hilarious! We’re so accustomed to people yelling to us from the road that now we’re even responding to farm animals.
We arrived in Cherating feeling hot, but not exhausted for once. It was nice to have a shorter ride that didn’t sap our energy completely. Cherating is a little touristy beach town that is a nice change from the city scene and what we’ve been looking for since arriving in Malaysia. We rode into town just as people were packing up to check out from the holiday weekend. So we pulled up a chair at a restaurant that is part of a resort (Well, what they call a resort is a little different than our definition. A resort here is just accommodation on or near the beach which range from scary to adequate...sometimes with their own restaurant and sometimes not.) and waited in the shade until after 1pm for all the people to check out so we could check in. We have a little cabin type room off the main street and across from the beach access. It was the cheapest room we could find with A/C so we took it.
After settling in we went to a seafood restaurant for a late lunch and enjoyed $2 stuffed crabs. They were pretty good! (Thanks for the tip Andrea. I would have never looked for that here if you hadn’t mentioned it.) As we ate there was a torrential downpour. We were glad to be off the road and watching it from a sheltered restaurant. When the rains died down to a trickle we walked down to the beach to check it out. The beach is pretty nice here and pretty quiet. There were people playing soccer, a few surfers, and a few swimmers. We even saw a few other white folks. After feeling the warm ocean water and taking in the fresh ocean breeze we walked back to the main road to see what it had to offer. The main road offers several types of accommodation depending on your budget, outdoor restaurants, warungs, a couple of small convenience stores, touristy stores selling trinkets and that’s about it.
After passing a few outdoor restaurants, we found a nice little library (a shack with a bunch of used books) that also had an internet café. The Muslim woman running it spoke very good English and didn’t have an accent at all. In fact she sounded Western. She was very friendly and we talked to her for a while and she told us she is originally from Hawaii. I didn’t get the chance to ask her about her story and I wasn’t sure if it would be rude or not. I’m curious to know why she chose to give up her western comforts to live as a Muslim here in Malaysia. I suspect she met someone here and married since she had a little boy that was running around the library. We’ll probably go back there today so hopefully I’ll get the chance to find out her story. While we were sitting there these monkeys were running around on the roof and peeking over the edge just above us. Kirk and I were both praying they wouldn’t jump down and thankfully they didn’t. The woman told us they look at monkeys like rats. They are basically a nuisance to them, but you don’t want to antagonize them because they will remember you and could come after you if they see you alone. Double yikes!
We came back to our room and had a little happy hour of peanuts beer. You can’t buy beer here except at Chinese restaurants…interesting little fact. Then Kirk turned on our short-wave radio to listen to the news. We both fell asleep within a matter of minutes and were out until 9pm. We awoke and realized that it was too late for dinner and we were too tired to be bothered with it so we went back to sleep and didn’t get up until late this morning.
It rained for a good portion of the night and it’s been raining off and on all morning. We’ve been pretty fortunate so far and haven’t really had much rain to deal with even though we’re here in the monsoon season. This is the most rain that we’ve seen so far and we’re hoping that the rains don’t continue to increase as we work our way North. Our timing actually seems to be pretty good because we heard they had some flooding up this way a couple of weeks ago. Since then it’s subsided and we were told that we shouldn’t have any problems on our way through.
We will probably stay here in Cherating another day just to get some more needed rest before tackling the long stretches of road ahead. We’re also enjoying the food here as it caters to our Western diet. This morning we found a restaurant that had cheese omelettes, pineapple pancakes (which were actually crepes), and a killer cup of coffee served with sweetened condensed milk. Yummo! I’m totally a breakfast person so this just made my morning. Kirk and I have had a hard time adjusting to eating lunch for breakfast here. They usually serve some type of fried noodles or rice and occasionally we can get white toast and eggs. I never thought I was such a picky eater but I find myself sticking my nose up to a lot of food here. Signs of a spoiled tourist! J
During our breakfast we were able to catch a little world news as the restaurant had a TV tuned to CNN. We relaxed there for a long time discussing current events and listening to the rains. When the rain let up we walked back to our room and decided to deal with our laundry. Kirk’s currently out on the porch doing our laundry and cussing while he’s being eaten alive. Our cabin has a little pond out front which is appealing to the eye, but it’s a nasty little mosquito breeding ground. I’m inside our room writing this blog and hiding out from those little monsters. I have enough welts on my body as it is!
I think today will be a lazy day. I’m quite happy with that. Bike touring is a great way to get exercise, but it sure whips me after a few days of it and I need the down time to recover. Cherating seems like a good place to do that.
After our ride on the day we arrived in Kuantan, we decided to follow Lonely Planet’s advice on a place to eat and it led us to an Indian warung. It was on a main road in a strip mall type setting, but without any doors. The front is just open to the outside as most places are here. The small kitchen was on the right as we walked in and was a very basic one that was also not enclosed. We sat down, waived down and asked him how this worked because we only understood a few things on the posted menu on the wall. He asked if we were vegetarians and we said “yes”. The next thing we knew we had a banana leaf in front of us to use as a plate and we had what seemed like a frantic dance of two waiters going on around us. One was filling our “plate” with rice and then they took turns putting different scoops of vegetarian fare around the rice. In no time we had a nice sampler plate in front of us that included a cup of yogurt and some sort of soup. We asked for some naan and a pancake as well and they served those with some yummy sauces. The waiter kept telling us to try this one dish with the naan because it was “very nice….very nice” and he served us some more of the vegetable dish on our plate to eat with the bread. Kirk and I were famished so we ate it all! It was delicious and quite the experience to boot. We love Indian food because it fills us up a little more than the typical Malaysian fare and the flavor is much more appealing to us as well.
We spent some time in an internet café that we found across from a mall. The internet cafes here are so cheap and they tend to have really fast connections. I was also amazed at how many boys are in the internet cafes gaming. I’m guessing this is because they probably don’t have computers at home and it’s a cheap form of entertainment.
After we caught up on emails and blogging we walked across the street to the mall. We both find the malls in these foreign countries fascinating. For some reason it feels like we get a good sense of the people and what they “consume”. It’s also a great place to people watch. We found a couple of stores that sell DVD’s and bought “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Must Love Dogs”. We went back to our room and watched “Must Love Dogs”. I have to say that I loved the talent in that movie, but I just didn’t like the script.
The next day was New Year’s Eve. I slept in late while Kirk was out on the river walk taking pictures. Our hotel was next to the river so we had a nice view from our room minus the old rundown guesthouse behind our hotel that had a pool filled with dirty rainwater. Apparently tourism here in Malaysia has fallen off and a lot of places have gone bankrupt. It’s pretty sad because I could have seen Kirk and I staying there if it was up and running as opposed to staying in the hotel.
I finally decided to roll out of bed and we went back to the same street where the Indian warung was but this time we tried a different one that was a couple of doors down. It wasn’t nearly as good, but we still enjoyed our meals nonetheless.
After that we walked down to the mega mall in town because we heard they had a British type grocery store on the lower level. Most malls here tend to have grocery stores in them, which is interesting. We bought more tuna and cheese and treated ourselves to peanut M&M’s, yogurt and muesli. Of course most of what we bought were imported goods so we paid a lot of money for our groceries. We didn’t care so much though because we just wanted some western type food and it was New Year’s Eve after all. I find myself craving protein all the time and I’m just not satisfied with their variations of rice and noodles. Kirk and I don’t eat the pork, chicken, or beef here because we just don’t trust it and want to avoid getting sick. I know Malaysia is probably safe to eat meats, but we figure why start now because when we hit Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, we definitely will not be eating meat after some of the stories we’ve heard. So we’ve discovered that we’re pretty happy for at least one meal a day to fill up on other sources of protein, particularly western sources.
Eventually we headed back to our room to enjoy our dinner and watch “Memoirs of a Geisha”. We couldn’t get it to work on our laptop (what can you expect for a $1 copy) so we watched “The Chronicles of Narnia” instead. I found it to be a little disappointing, but what can you say…not every director can be Peter Jackson. We shared a beer, toasted the New Year and were in bed by 9pm. That was our big New Year’s Eve! Sad but true. I guess holidays just don’t mean as much when we’re away from all of our friends and family. I did wake up at midnight to a bunch of people on the streets yelling “Happy New Year!” but then I went right back to sleep. I don’t think Kirk even moved.
New Year’s Day we got up and rode about 50km to Cherating. During the ride we were both chugging along in silence when we heard a noise that sounded like a muffled “hello” coming from the other side of the road. Kirk yelled “hello” back and I looked over to see that he was yelling at a goat! I laughed for about the next mile as I thought that was so hilarious! We’re so accustomed to people yelling to us from the road that now we’re even responding to farm animals.
We arrived in Cherating feeling hot, but not exhausted for once. It was nice to have a shorter ride that didn’t sap our energy completely. Cherating is a little touristy beach town that is a nice change from the city scene and what we’ve been looking for since arriving in Malaysia. We rode into town just as people were packing up to check out from the holiday weekend. So we pulled up a chair at a restaurant that is part of a resort (Well, what they call a resort is a little different than our definition. A resort here is just accommodation on or near the beach which range from scary to adequate...sometimes with their own restaurant and sometimes not.) and waited in the shade until after 1pm for all the people to check out so we could check in. We have a little cabin type room off the main street and across from the beach access. It was the cheapest room we could find with A/C so we took it.
After settling in we went to a seafood restaurant for a late lunch and enjoyed $2 stuffed crabs. They were pretty good! (Thanks for the tip Andrea. I would have never looked for that here if you hadn’t mentioned it.) As we ate there was a torrential downpour. We were glad to be off the road and watching it from a sheltered restaurant. When the rains died down to a trickle we walked down to the beach to check it out. The beach is pretty nice here and pretty quiet. There were people playing soccer, a few surfers, and a few swimmers. We even saw a few other white folks. After feeling the warm ocean water and taking in the fresh ocean breeze we walked back to the main road to see what it had to offer. The main road offers several types of accommodation depending on your budget, outdoor restaurants, warungs, a couple of small convenience stores, touristy stores selling trinkets and that’s about it.
After passing a few outdoor restaurants, we found a nice little library (a shack with a bunch of used books) that also had an internet café. The Muslim woman running it spoke very good English and didn’t have an accent at all. In fact she sounded Western. She was very friendly and we talked to her for a while and she told us she is originally from Hawaii. I didn’t get the chance to ask her about her story and I wasn’t sure if it would be rude or not. I’m curious to know why she chose to give up her western comforts to live as a Muslim here in Malaysia. I suspect she met someone here and married since she had a little boy that was running around the library. We’ll probably go back there today so hopefully I’ll get the chance to find out her story. While we were sitting there these monkeys were running around on the roof and peeking over the edge just above us. Kirk and I were both praying they wouldn’t jump down and thankfully they didn’t. The woman told us they look at monkeys like rats. They are basically a nuisance to them, but you don’t want to antagonize them because they will remember you and could come after you if they see you alone. Double yikes!
We came back to our room and had a little happy hour of peanuts beer. You can’t buy beer here except at Chinese restaurants…interesting little fact. Then Kirk turned on our short-wave radio to listen to the news. We both fell asleep within a matter of minutes and were out until 9pm. We awoke and realized that it was too late for dinner and we were too tired to be bothered with it so we went back to sleep and didn’t get up until late this morning.
It rained for a good portion of the night and it’s been raining off and on all morning. We’ve been pretty fortunate so far and haven’t really had much rain to deal with even though we’re here in the monsoon season. This is the most rain that we’ve seen so far and we’re hoping that the rains don’t continue to increase as we work our way North. Our timing actually seems to be pretty good because we heard they had some flooding up this way a couple of weeks ago. Since then it’s subsided and we were told that we shouldn’t have any problems on our way through.
We will probably stay here in Cherating another day just to get some more needed rest before tackling the long stretches of road ahead. We’re also enjoying the food here as it caters to our Western diet. This morning we found a restaurant that had cheese omelettes, pineapple pancakes (which were actually crepes), and a killer cup of coffee served with sweetened condensed milk. Yummo! I’m totally a breakfast person so this just made my morning. Kirk and I have had a hard time adjusting to eating lunch for breakfast here. They usually serve some type of fried noodles or rice and occasionally we can get white toast and eggs. I never thought I was such a picky eater but I find myself sticking my nose up to a lot of food here. Signs of a spoiled tourist! J
During our breakfast we were able to catch a little world news as the restaurant had a TV tuned to CNN. We relaxed there for a long time discussing current events and listening to the rains. When the rain let up we walked back to our room and decided to deal with our laundry. Kirk’s currently out on the porch doing our laundry and cussing while he’s being eaten alive. Our cabin has a little pond out front which is appealing to the eye, but it’s a nasty little mosquito breeding ground. I’m inside our room writing this blog and hiding out from those little monsters. I have enough welts on my body as it is!
I think today will be a lazy day. I’m quite happy with that. Bike touring is a great way to get exercise, but it sure whips me after a few days of it and I need the down time to recover. Cherating seems like a good place to do that.
posted by Kirk & Jodi Roberts at 11:57 PM
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