November 28, 2012
After a nice stay in Ipoh and visit to the Cameron Highlands it felt good to get back on the bikes. The hotel staff helped us get the trikes out of the room where they had been secured for the last few days. Ipoh was easy to get out of and we rode through many small towns. Soon after our first juice stop we stopped again to check out the Perak cave temple. As the name suggests this is a Buddhist temple built inside a large cave similar to the Batu Caves outside of Kuala Lumpur. This cave didn't have as many steps into it but had lots of stairs going up into the mountain. It got too steep for me to go all the way up but Kathryn took lots of pictures of monkeys that lived up there. Very nice cave.
The road went around a mountain and the big town of the day was Sungai Siput. We always have reasons to stop and here we stopped for lunch. In these small towns it's like a parade we get so many honks and thumbs up and yells out of 'hello' and 'welcome to Malaysia'. When we stop and park the trikes outside a food stall lots of people ask where we are from. We say AmeriKA and the people yell out Obama's name. Then they turn to people sitting eating and yell out 'Obama, Obama' and then the people in the restaurant yell out 'Obama, Obama'. I can't tell you how many times this has happened. Where ever we go Obama gets lots of love and it makes me proud to be American.
Through out the last few days we have been in contact with a local cyclist we first met outside Port Dickson a couple of weeks ago. He and a friend cycled around the world. Khalib really wanted us to stay with him and we are getting close to his house. His cycling friend who also made it around the world lives in Kuala Kangsar and we were hoping to meet up with Aswad.
Kuala Kangsar is known as a 'Royal Town'. There are 6 or 7 royal towns in Malaysia where the royal family has residences. Kuala Kangsar is very pretty with tree lined streets and majestic buildings. We had many options for hotels and we chose the Kangsar hotel checking in for $29. After getting settled we went to get dinner and got caught in a torrential downpour. We waited it out at an Indian restaurant where we had the guys laughing hysterically with our pronunciation of Malay dishes. At least we were trying. Eventually the rains stopped and we headed back to the hotel and found Aswad waiting for us. What a cutie! I think he waited close to an hour for us to return. His English was very good and we went out for some juice drinks and talked touring for a couple of hours.
In the morning Aswad will return to the hotel and give us a personal bike tour of Kuala Kangsar and then escort us out of town.
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