Day 164
Today was a hot short dirty day. Our path veered away from the beach and through an area of heavy construction with trucks tracking a deep red dirt onto the roadway which blown by the wind covered us. We then passed an oil truck that flipped over and spewed its load on the road and into the ditch.
We stopped at what would be a beautiful spot overlooking the sea, except for the litter left by others enjoying this shady spot, to eat our crackers and canned curries. I grumpily admonished a man who came over to chat with “can’t you see I’m eating”. It’s hard to be friendly when you’re dirty, hot, and surrounded by trash.
We arrived in Kuantan after what felt like a long day and began our hotel search. One thing that we’ve realized is that in Malaysia there are not a lot of budget hotels. Hotels mostly fall into 2 categories, horrendous, and nice. We looked at 2 extremely cheap hotels that had the look of a neglected prison, these need a new term instead of budget, maybe destitute. After sleeping in over 100 hotels, we have found very basic hotels that are clean and we are quite satisfied with just a fan, bare concrete walls, and cold showers as long as there are clean sheets. Destitute accommodations have cobwebs, insects and lizard poo on every surface and the moldy walls looked as if a man trapped in solitary confinement had been scratching at them and rubbing his greasy hands on them. Normally the bed is against a wall that has a greasy brown imprint from decades of inmates idling against them. The bathroom has a clean mark on the tile from where people have stepped to use the toilet or shower. Of course some accommodations may have only a few of these characteristics, but we’ve found that one or two is enough for us to rule them out.
With a little persistence we found a brand new hotel with tiny rooms offering a promotional rate of 75 RM. We showered and became a shade lighter as rivulets of oily road grit ran off our arms. Our laundry washed and drying in the room we slipped into all new white sheets and blankets and prepared to sleep like royalty.