The famous 888km journey

Came the date 9th April 2006. It is the day I put my favourite scooter and myself to the test.

Time: 2000hrs and Venue: 2nd Link GP Esso. That night I will start an incredible journey which is approximately 888km long and the estimated time taken for the journey will be about 13hours.

888km might sound quite a child's play to some of you guys but not me, it is my 1st time on such a long trip on just a 250cc puny scooter. my 1st time is to the really child's play Malacca and that is about 2 years ago.

At the time of me writing this blog, i have well forgotten all the exact places that we have went, stopped for breaks and the exact timings of each and every stops too. I just cut it short and brief.

We "lifted off" at 2015hrs and i remembered our 1st stop is pagoh and it is about 120km away. 120km is roughly about the 10 times me riding from my own house at Jurong West to my in-laws at Depot Road. I would have easily complete that distance, I thought to myself. But, I was wrong, my right palm, although with good riding gloves on, still started to feel skin-sore due to the constant twisting of the throttle. My shoulders started to ache as well on the fixed riding position and my teeth is fighting due to the chilly winds that hit me straight, all because my PS250 came to this journey without a windshield and I, being complacent, thought it might be too exaggerated to wear too thick cus anyway, we are not riding anywhere near the poles.

All these situations are happening only after 45mins into the journey where i only have clocked about close to just 100km! and its only my first 100km! This is the 1st time i felt riding is tough.

The max speed I have clocked on the PS250 is a pathethic 115km/h! This disheartening results is all due to this scooter is carrying not only myself but my wife and a considerable big amount of luggage of a 45litres back box full and a big haversack tied to the front.

ok lets go back to the journey...pretty almost the whole of the journey we are travelling in darkness and cold. This terrible ordeal clocked about 3/4 of the whole journey. To add salt to the wound, these unlighted areas are normally at the condition where the roads cutting thru the forest of the hills. Insects in most time crowds these dark highways...resulting some of them splattering themselves on our bikes and helmets visors. Quite an experience but not the cleanest one.

After a few more hundreds kilometers and some cigarette breaks later, I found ourselves passing through some highways which have some spectecular scenaries. There are huge hills (I could not call them mountains cus they are not that big but they are definately bigger then our very own Bukit Timah hill!) Although it is dark and not well lit in most of these areas but the silouettes of these nature wonders are enough to make me forget about the cold and the suicidal insects for a while. I forgotten where are those areas but its definately after KL. To most of the experienced riders, they should know where I was.

The ride carried on until about 12hours later where we reached the landmark that we have been stressing our puny engines the whole night for; The Thailand Malaysia Customs where the Malaysia NS highway ends and we stepped into Sadao, the custom town of Thailand.

The picture above is the 2nd day after reaching Hatyai. We stopped by for a Tim sum breakfast. Everything is cheap cheap cheap.

Well, I would say that riding up to Thailand is an exhausting affair. Especially exhausting when we are on a lower cc machine. Most of us reached Thailand with some "twisted" wrists, cus we really twist the bloody throttle till the max for the whole 13 hours just to reach 120kph!

But, this trip has tickled the tour-bug in me. Now the bug has came alive. I went to get my class 2 licence, so does most of my travel mates. Looking forward to next April and like all my travel mates, looking forward to getting our hands on a more adaptable machine (read: Class 2 tua gu*) that could easier conquer this 888km journey. Oh, by then it shouldnt be just 888km, i am already visualising me and my mates at the Patong beach having seafood and our tua gu park at the road side.

* Tua Gu = (in Hokkien) Big Bull, means a big class 2 bike in this context