March 31st: Mersing to Kota Tinngi – 92.62 km
Day 169
Having a long day ahead of us, we aimed to start the day early. We were packed, our bags loaded, our helmets on, seated in our trikes and ready to set out before 7am. All I needed was my cycle computer, and it was nowhere to be found. I searched all the normal places, asked the guard if anything was turned in and then concluded I left it in the first room we looked at. We moved to the next floor into a bigger better room for the same price. So I banged on this poor stranger’s door at 7 am and he groggily answered. I showed him Cher computers and indicated I had left one. He said no, and didn’t even seem angry. We had a long way to go today, so I wrote it off as lost and we set out.
Riding without my cycle computer is like suddenly missing a sense. I did my best to ignore it but I couldn’t help looking repeatedly at the empty spot where it should be. Normally when we travel over 75 km, we don’t plan on it and the last 25 km doesn’t seem like so much. But when we plan on it you can’t help notice when you reach 25% or 50%, and this makes the day so much longer. However, having no idea how long you’ve gone nor how far you have to go is even worse. I did my best to remain calm, and the possibility of seeing elephants helped.
Many of our climate changes are gradual but sometimes you feel as if you’ve crossed some invisible barrier separating two distinct climates. Gun N’ Roses’ Welcome to the Jungle, playing in my head, welcome to jungle nanananana nee nee! All day we passed signs encouraging you to report Elephant sightings and tall electric fences, presumably to keep elephants off the road or out of the palm oil plantations. We saw some very large reptilian roadkill as thick as my thigh and debated whether it was a snake or a lizard. Then for the first time we saw our first Monitor lizard trying to cross the road. Unperturbed by the cars it advanced and retreated just enough to stay out of traffic. When we approached it ran off, but we were close enough to guess that it was at least a meter long. We also saw troupes of monkeys frolicking in the trees, who stopped to get a good look at the curious 3 wheeled animals before shreaking and scampering off. It was a long hot humid day with very little in the way of food and water along the way, but it was a rewarding day.
A long and slow climb left the mountains behind.
We got a visitor!
We arrived in Kota Tinngi around 2pm, drenched with sweat and argued over where to stay. The heat was getting to my head and I was irritable and irrational. Our communication broke down, and instead of calmly finding a room we argued and gave the locals a show. We found a crappy overpriced room and moved in. Some air-conditioning, a shower and an apology was all it took to make peace. We found some local grub, which included some delicious spicy burgers and braced ourselves for our jump into Indonesia.
