Slap Me, Harder: Road Trip 10~13/07/2008

Day 3 - 12/7/08

Day 3, the day we checked out from Tasik Kenyir and returned to our beloved van which has been rested on the lakeside for quite some time. We packed up and left in the morning, right after another round of nasty resort breakfast.

Great view from our balcony. (This is Kim)

We came across a lot of beautiful sceneries along the journey to next unknown destination. The winding road towards Gua Musang from here was still closed to public and the road condition was real bad. Now I know why the contractor of the project stated that road user’s on their own risk. As a result, we were like sitting roller coaster all the time. I felt sorry for the van owner. LOL.

We noticed that the van was in half emptied tank fuel since the departure of Tasik Kenyir and the driver decided to try his luck on the closed road. We are getting more and more desperate as the fuel gauge needle is dropping and still no sight of any civilization yet. Luckily we passed by a small hut that we decided to get some lunch. While we were waiting for our orders, one of us asked them about petrol availability nearby. She told us there will be no petrol station around this deserted area and only she has it, in which we believed her undoubtedly. She quoted us RM 3.50 per litre, the most expensive petrol I have ever come across in Malaysia. However, we still have no choice and would rather not risk ourselves of running dry in the sea of palm oil trees. Oh, ya, did I told you that we found a petrol station JUST a stone throw away from the hut? Damn it! Our throats were being cut truly madly deeply.

1 hold, 1 pour, 1 look, and 1 record.

We are somewhere middle of the palm oil jungle.

The hut where we bought petrol at RM3.50 per litre

We somehow reached Gua Musang and got refreshed. By asking the locals we have been told that we will pass by Cameron Highlands in order to reach Ipoh, our next destination.

Suddenly, I remembered that I’ve been told by the van owner to avoid hilly roads as the van may not be able to cope it. And now we are in the middle of nowhere, turning back to tasik kenyir is almost impossible, so we headed the hilly and winding roads towards the highlands.

Not everyone was sleeping in during the journey, we had laughs, arguments, snores, noises, etc. Most of the time the co-driver and driver wake themselves up by arguments. It is actually a very effective way to stay alert throughout the whole trip as your brain thinks harder as you encountered an argument. The whole trip was never short of listening to co-driver shouting the driver as gorilla, monkey, king kong, Michelin, etc. As in return, the driver was screaming trees, ent, tree-man, etc. Definitely all types of foul languages were accompanied and well seated in between the sentences. They were somehow arguing on a new topic about the French language. As we passed by a junction that towards Pos Blau, none of us noticed that would be the critical junction which led us to Cameron Highlands. Both of the co and driver were arguing about the pronunciation of Pos Blau and led us to the end of tar road, somewhere unknown in the middle of peninsular. We had to turn back to the critical junction and wasted so many precious time and the more expensive than V-Power petrol.

Winding road to Cameron Highlands

Top speed.

The road from Pos Blau junction was definitely better surroundings as we are ascending to the highlands. The weather was so nice and made people more calm, especially the co and driver. We traveled from bentong hotspring to salt water beach at East Coast, then to fresh water lake in Tasik Kenyir, and now to highlands.

Things gettings cooler.

The first thing we did in Cameron Highlands was trapped in traffic jam. It’s already 8pm and we were still hungry, no confirmation of accommodation, still stuck in the crazy jam. Eventually the whole jam was caused by the great weekly pasar malam. You cannot believe the hordes of peoples on top of this small hill. We waited like 45 mins to be served for steamboat. Isn’t that steamboat requires no cooking and preparation can be done in advance? What is going wrong?

The next thing we need to do was to look for a place to stay overnight. We drove through the whole three towns and couldn’t get any room at all. It was so full house that until we almost decided to leave for Ipoh. We finally got ourselves a condo unit with 3 rooms. Glad that I have my own proper bed and toilet with lights! The night was not cheap as we were last minute customers, and don’t think they will be kind to our wallet.

Random farm.

Nothing beats the beer after a whole lot of tiring journey.

Steamboat-ing

We got ourselves a bottle of sake while waiting for our dinner to kill the night, and everyone was showing the symptom of fatigue, but still they managed to finish the whole bottle by playing the same old good card game. This is how we ended our night in Cameron Highlands.