"Couple on a cycling mission" - like the title but the rest?

The Star Newspaper (no - not the UK tabloid - this is a Malay Newspaper) published an article on us today. As usual it's bland, inaccurate and plain wrong about several things. It's also completely slapdash and I don't have time to relate why.

How come it's practically impossible for journalists to provide a true, precise story?

Couple on a cycling mission

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Mid Autumn Moon Festival at Teluk Chempedak, Kuantan

The Chinese Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is celebrated on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunisolar month and this year it fell on Saturday the 3rd of October.

The Mid-Autumn Festival has a mere history of 2000 years. During these 2000 years many Mid-Autumn traditions have emerged but the main one's are: appreciating the moon, eating moon cakes and making Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival lanterns.

Well, we didn't get to eat any moon-cakes but we'd already got the chance to practise this part of the celebration when we'd stayed in Jerantut with the family of a Couchsurfing member. He'd also invited us to a BBQ (yep we didn't get to eat too much!) where a pre Mid-Autumn Festival was held and I got to light a lantern that night (I lit the candle and opened the accordion lantern - admittedly it doesn't quite qualify as making one.)

But tonight we did get to appreciate the moon (though that too was a close one as the evening had started off with vicious black clouds rolling in and not a star in sight) which eventually peeked out of the clouds and chased them away.

We even got to see some Hung Ming lanterns floating into the sky (They fly because the burning candles heat the air in the lantern and the lantern rises with the heated air) though these were helped slightly by being attached to a few balloons.

Fireworks of course, firecrackers OF COURSE! And masses of neon bracelets, neon frisbees and various other neon contraputions - many with that awful synthesized sounds so beloved by young kids.

Alor Star Bicycle Shop - Vee Rubber

When we arrived in Alor Star totally drenched and worn out, Richard slipped into a ditch and smashed his mud guard.

So today he went off to find somewhere it could be repaired and luckily, where we're staying, about 6kms south of the centre of Alor Star, is adjacent to lots of workshops, so he was hopeful of getting it repaired.

Although he didn't actually have any success doing that, he did manage to find some metal parts and spent much of the day doing the repairs himself (he's always been a rather marvellous little McGuyver!)

While he was trawling the workshops he found a bike shop. Surprised that it was in the area and more importantly, delighted. We'd seen a copy of the new Malaysian cycling magazine http://www.cyclingmalaysia.com/ (it's only now the first issue & the website is nothing more than a page with a picture of the front cover at the moment but it hopefully it'll get a bit more interesting in the future) and they had a list in the back of what at first glance seemed to be all the bike shops in Malaysia. Then we noticed that while there were 4 bike shops mentioned in the state of Perlis, Kedah wasn't even in the list. According to the literature given out by the

Malaysian tourist board Kedah has a population of 25 million. The city of Alor Star itself has a population of a little over 200,000 - roughly the same population as the whole state of Perlis. So why no bike shops in Kedah? Even the most important bicycle race of Malaysia; The Tour of Langkawi; is held in the state of Kedah. Seemed strange that there would be no bicycle shops listed.

Well clearly Cycling Malaysia still has a bit more homework to do as Richard discovered the Vee Rubber Malaysia SDN BHD bike shop (yes strange name - guess all those initials mean something to the average Malay though) just around the corner from where we were staying.

They specialise in tyres and having a look at his front tyre (the one kindly donated by the Thai Cycling Club in Bangkok) they immediately offered to give him a sample. Vee is apparently a Thai company but we've got to admit we've never heard of it.

I went back later with Richard and met Kleng - the Marketing Executive of Vee Rubber and he told us a bit about the tyres they could get here and what was considered good quality. We advised him to get some schwalbe for all the cycle tourers who are always desperately hunting for the Marathon XR as they are certainly unavailable in Thailand what with the 40% import tax.

On seeing my front tyre they had the front wheel off in moments and were changing it for another Cross Country Vee. They certainly look good!

For anyone interested in visiting the shop the address is

No.101 & 102, Kawasan Perusahaan Tandop,

05050 Alor Star,

Kedah Darul Aman,

Malaysia

opposite Alor Star Shopping Mall if anyone has difficulties finding it.

News of us in Astv Manager newspaper - Bangkok

The first time we came to Bangkok in March 2009 we spoke to a journalist from the Astv Manager Newspaper.

They've just published the article and of course our Thai's not quite good enough to figure out everything it says (haha!) but we're hoping it's not all bad ;-)

How one finds there's no food left in the fridge

There's many ways to tell your partner that you've run out of something.

This is Richard's favourite way of letting me know...

Want Your Wisdom Tooth Pulled?

When we were in Lopburi and mentioned we'd be staying a couple of weeks in Bangkok so that Richard could get his wisdom teeth pulled we were strongly advised not to have it done in Bangkok "it's soooooooooooo expensive" we heard numerous times from various people.

Well, Richard checked out a number of dentists & basically the price seemed to be somewhere between 2,500 - 6,500 Baht per tooth.

Our friend Tai told us that his friend was a dentist in Lopburi & he'd do it for somewhere between 250 - 350 Baht per tooth. We decided to check that as there had been a lot of confusion over ordinary teeth (which started about 350 in Bangkok) and wisdom teeth (know as tooth extraction here) and when we made ourselves clear the price just shot up. So we took a photo of the 2 treatments in Thai & sent it to our friend asking him to confirm that his friend indeed meant a wisdom tooth rather than a normal tooth. In fact there had been email correspondence for a week going back & forth, us asking our friend to check with his dentist friend the price, the date/time & booking Richard in etc as he didn't want to catch the train all the way there (3 hours from Bangkok) and find the dentist was too busy to see him. Or for that matter for the price to change to the foreigner price (anything from 10% more to 1000% more - we kid you not. The entry for a Thai person to a Khao Yai park for example is 40 Baht -

for a Farang it's 400!)

Come the day Richard got up about 5am to catch the bus to the train station. Arriving in Lopburi he telephoned our friend Tai who

embarrassedingly told him that he couldn't come to pick him from the train station as his housekeeper was ill. But he told Richard where his friend the dentist was and Richard went off to find him.

On arriving to the dentist he found out that the Dentist had no idea who Tai was! Maybe the word "friend" has a far more loose application here. But he was nice enough to see Richard straight away & after several slips of the pliers on the tooth it was out. He only charged 350 baht too!

Richard came back to Bangkok with a blood soaked cloth and a chubby gerbil look and spent the next 10 days consuming food out of a straw (which we were later told was the wrong thing to do!)

In case anyone is interested in having their teeth worked on in Lopburi here's the Dentist's Business card.

Meeting a Thai Hero

When we first started doing long distance cycling I honestly wondered if we'd be the first people to cycle from Alaska to Ushuaia - haha - just goes to show my naivety.

But long distance cyclists were rare in those days and you pretty much got to know of everybody on the road. Over the last 5 years though long distance touring has certainly taken off and we bump into cyclists or hear of someone's mate who cycled from Australia to England (or something along those lines) on practically a daily basis. In fact just last week a friend emailed me about another cycling friend of hers who had been hit 3 times, first by a motorbike, then a car and now a bus. Turned out to be Matt Blake, an English cyclist we'd bumped into several times

while we were in Laos. One of my memories of Matt was sitting in a restaurant in Oudom Xai / Muang Xai / Udom Xai (a mere 3 names that the town is known by) with another British cyclist we'd met there and he told us that he felt special because touring by bicycle was so rare & unique. At the time I was thinking "well 5 years ago maybe but now?".

When we were in Ayuthaya we had the pleasure of meeting one of those original RTW cyclists who really did do it when no practically no one else was.

Mr Preecha Pimpan is the first (and apparently only) Thai to have successfully cycled around the world. He did it in 2 trips, one in the 40's (if I recall correctly) and

the 2nd part in the 60's. I had heard of him before so when we mentioned that our next stop was Ayuthaya to a cycling friend in LopBuri and he informed us that was where Mr Preecha's school was we immediately were resolved to meet him.

Our friend wrote down the name of Mr Preecha's school (Jirasartwittaya) for us and on arriving in Ayuthaya we headed to the tourist office where the delightful and friendly (but to be honest rather useless) staff looked up the telephone number & indicated on our map where the school was.

Luckily for us the school was right bang in the middle of the historical district so within moments we were speeding through the gates of the school, past the security guard who clearly suspected we didn't have any right to be there but didn't fancy embarrassing himself by legging it after us.

Mr Preecha was a gem and treated us as if we were honoured guests and we truly regretted not being able to take him up on his offer of staying there for a week

(though we managed to squeeze 2 nights in). Here's a photo of us with him in front of the glass window exhibit that displays the 2 bikes he toured on the world with, along with his panniers & other stuff he took with him. You only need to glance through the window to know that touring back in those days was a completely different thing to what it is now.