27 - 28  August 2010

The original plan was to ride to Songkla. The preparation was thrown in the bin when I failed to get any hotel reservations at Samila Beach. It was frustrating as I spent hours searching for good hotels via the net. Even the not so well rated motels were fully booked.

The ride to 'anywhere' was initially scrapped with the Bin, Chee Leong and Richard dropping out. Perhaps the hungry ghost month played a factor with many superstitious lot decided to park their bikes at home. After all, the Chinese especially with Taoism belief believes that the hell's gates are opened for one month for the under world souls to roam alongside mortals. 

Anyway, when the biking bug bites, whatever external factors including potential naughty ghosts trying to ruin the day's ride, disappears. Since we did not plan anything other than the cancelled Songkla ride, we decided to head up North to Penang for Hokkian mee aka prawn noodles and the must have Penang famous char-koay-teow. We also planned to stop over in Taiping, Ivan's hometown, for another round of good old small town hawker fare. For once, it would not be a typical Bagsters adventure ride where we would hit silly obscure roads for hours before reaching our destination late into the day. Instead, it would be a quick point to point ride to reach the destination as early as possible to sample the local hawkers' fares.

Our first 'food' was at Ipoh for dim-sum. Phang showed me this restaurant which was actually in Hillcity Hotel during our last 'road to nowhere-Perak edition ride.' I was not sure they would serve dim-sum on weekdays but to my surprise the place was packed with diners on a Friday morning. We had a big sumptuous breakfast before continuing our ride to Penang.

 We rode into Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal in Butterworth which served as the mainland entry/exit point. I never rode my bike into a Penang ferry or any ferry. The ferry service which  started its operation in 1920 remained a very popular attraction despite the much quicker access into Penang Island via the Penang Bridge. We created a mini traffic jam at the motorcycles toll booth as we were not prepared with the RM2 per bike ferry charge. Apparently, our wallets were locked up in the panniers. We invited more stares when we rode our bikes into the ferry. It appeared that the other bikers and motorists alike were not accustomed to see some crazy motorcyclists in some silly full motorcycle suits and gears with the weather blazing hot at near 38C. Frankly, it was uncomfortable to wear such thick clothings and we do looked a bit silly and stupid in them. Then again, protection is important.

We checked into Sandy Bay Paradise Hotel in Tangjung Bungah at noon. I last enjoyed the hospitality of this hotel probably some 12 years ago and frankly I was a little comprehensive about the rooms' furnishing and up keeping. To my surprise, the room looked spanking good. The room has fresh carpet and a new bed or least it felt firm. A nice flat screen tv with ASTRO (hotel) channels provided the in-room entertainment. Bathroom was in a little tired condition but house-keeping did a good job in keeping it very tidy and clean.

We were glad that the old kopitiams along Jalan Fettes were still there despite much modern development around the area. I was very fond of one which I last ate many years ago as the char-koay-teow and hokkien-mee were excellent and cheap. I remembered the last time I was there, I was mistaken for the then chief minister's younger brother. The  stall lady swore I looked so much like the younger Koh.  Anyway, I could barely recognised the old place as it was given a little make-over. It was much cleaner now. Thankfully, the old stalls  were still around. The lady was still there but there was no more mistaken identity .. After a hearty late lunch, we returned back to our hotel for a little R&R.  We cashed-in our welcome drink vouchers at the beach-cafe. Surprisingly, the fruity punch was good as most welcome drinks tasted well tasteless. The beach waves' gentle beats loosen up our usual hectic minds. I guessed it was worthwhile to ride all the way up here.

We were simply too lazy to ride to Georgetown for dinner. The popular Gurney Drive open air hawker center now serves up practically crappy food. It is still popular because tourists love to go there. Anyway, there are tons of good food available elsewhere. We decided to make do at the hawker center near Naza Hotel just about 3 km from our hotel. We adjourned to a chick mamak restaurant just opposite our hotel for teh tariks before calling it a day.

My inner (brain) alarm clock rang at 630am. Our room's balcony offered an excellent view of the seascape but it was too dark to see any thing at the time. I decided to stay up to catch the day's sunrise. Thankfully, I had a good night sleep and I was feeling pretty great. I remembered the air was breezy and fresh. I watched the sky gradually brighten up as the sun slowly awaken from its 'slumber.'  Seriously, I cannot remember when I last seen a beautiful sunrise. 

The room came with complimentary buffet breakfasts. Selection was decent and it was easy to chomp up enough bio-fuel to start the day on a good note.

We decided to do a bit of sight seeing by riding around the older side of Georgetown. Since Georgetown was listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, I could see the inner city aka the old part of Georgetown was given some attention. There were still some old tired looking shoplots but many old colonial buildings and shoplots were given due attention to befit the city's prestigious status. After all, the inner city buildings were mostly built at the turn of 19th century. I could easily spend a few good days walking around with my camera like many foreign tourists do. As our available free time to explore Georgetown was dictated by the hotel's check-out time, we could not do much 'exploration.' We reluctantly rode back to Tg Bungah to pack up to head out of Penang island.

We used the Penang bridge to ride back to mainland. At 13.5 km long, it was always a pleasure to ride on it whilst enjoying the scenery. Interesting enough, the bridge is the only bridge in Malaysia to have its own route number specifically Route E36. 

Our next destination for the day would be Taiping, Ivan's old home-town. To make the usual ride along the North-South expressway less boring , Ivan lead the 2-bikes pack to Bandar Baharu before detouring to Selama and finally to Taiping. The minor detour almost doubled the ride distance to Taiping, a small price to pay for more engaging ride. However, some part of the road from Selama to Taiping were under re-construction and we had to content with a fair bit of dust and rough road surfaces.

We arrived Taiping on schedule at about 2pm. Come to think about it, this was the first ever our estimate-time-of-arrival was spot on. I booked two rooms at Flemington Hotel which was located at Taiping lake garden. Interestingly, Ivan, a former Taiping native, did not know the existence of this hotel. The easy on the pocket room rate at RM128 a night was decent enough for travellers on a budget and that  too came with buffet breakfast for two. Normally, we do not need any fancy rooms as our time spent in the room would be short. Our room was small with enough space for two persons and I don't think it could accommodate  any extra bed should the need arise. So that ruled out any 3-bikers in a room arrangement. The hotel even has a small swimming pool on the open roof top but it was badly maintained .. a shame really as it was a nice pool overlooking the lake garden. I could see algae on the pool's floor and on the stainless steel railings. The biggest turn off was the pool's water quality. I could not bear the though of swimming in it but that did not deter others from having a jolly good time. I guess others have lower cleanliness expectations.

As it was a little late to go out to hunt for an eatery that still serves lunch, we decided to try out the deserted hotel's cafe. The cafe menu offered decent ala-cart selections at KL's shopping malls' food courts prices . We order a plate of Cantonese style koay-teow, a claypot filled with lor-shee-fun and some home-style fried chicken wings. Meanwhile, Anne and Joannie could not resist the ice-kacang offerings. The hot weather influenced us to stay put in our cosy air-conditioned room till dinner time.

We decided to do a bit of casual riding around the town before dinner. One of the most amazing find was a roadside drain adjacent to the Taiping Land office building. It was filled with fresh water weeds and hundreds of wild guppies swimming happily. I do not recalled ever seeing any public road side drain so clean to the extent of supporting aquatic life. Hats off to Taiping municipal. 

Taiping, like Penang, offers good cheap hawker fares and it is not too difficult to hunt for a decent hawker center. We decided to try out the on-the-street hawker center. As the sky did not show any hint of raining, we presumed it was safe to dine there. Interestingly enough, Taiping receives the honour of being the wettest town in Peninsular Malaysia with average annual rainfall at 4,000mm. The country's average is between 2,000-2,500mm per year. Another passion not found in any other towns is the weather prediction betting. The older folks would place bets on anything related to the weather.

As it was still too early to retire to our rooms, we gave the hotel's 3-persons band a try. As expected, the singers were from Philippines. Filipino bands practically monopolised the Malaysian hotels' lobbies and lounges live entertainment scenes. Anyway, the singing was not that good and we were too lazy to go anywhere else. Thankfully, before long, the beers somehow helped in transforming the live entertainment into a more tolerable affair. The girls began to look much prettier too.

The hotel buffet breakfast spread was surprising good. Again, saved for Anne, we got our tummies filled up pretty well. Anne was not feeling too good after the dinner at the street hawker center.

As we had a couple of hours to kill, we had a brief visit to the town's museum. A plaque proudly declared the museum as the country's first museum. I was intrigued with the largest exhibit, an Avan Sabre or popularly known among the Malaysians as the infamous RMAF Tebuan  Jet. The aircraft joined RMAF as the front end fighter jet in 1969 was slowly phased out in the 1970s. The aging planes were finally put out of commission when too many accidents involving the planes occurred. Never less, it was still an awesome sight to see a real jet aircraft plus it made an excellent background photographic object to our parked bikes.

Again, the hotel's check out time stopped short our casual tour of Taiping. We decided to hit to the expressway to head home. Not before we detoured to a home-based bakery that still made the famous Taiping heong-peng or caramel biscuits. The old master lamented that the younger generation was no longer interested to carry on the trade though he was willing to teach his secrets for next to nothing. I guessed it was way too much 'hard work' for the younger ones to sweat under the ovens and huge cooking pans. Freshly baked from the ovens, We picked up as many heong-peng packs our bikes' top boxes could accommodate before heading home.

True to the spirit of riding and eating all the way, we pit-stopped again in Simpang Pulai for late lunch. We were the last customer they served for lunch. One of my favorite restaurant, they served dang delicious Chinese food. We had fish-head curry , fried cray-fish, stew meat with yam, a plateful of char-siew meat and a plate of stir fry Cameron Highland grown veggie .. all for less than Rm50 and that included rice and drinks.