The Great Outdoors

Taiping  -  1st Ride.

Beautiful sunrise in Kuala Gula.

It's become a trend for biking event managers to flip flop their event dates as fickle as they want to! Last year, the Penang Merdeka Ride clashed big time with the CFAL ride. I think Biketown is actually going against other biking events and actually very selfishly for their own pockets and not doing for the sake of the riding community. I chose wrongly last year and after that, I want nothing to do with the Merdeka Ride! I didn't even want other riders to know I did registered with their event. In fact, during CFAL I did not even ride as I chose the wrong event.

Fast forward this year, I was interested to ride the 'Taiping Fun Ride'. It is not as easy as the organizers think. We arranged so that there will be someone at home to feed the cats and dogs, my wife has to take leave in advance etc.etc. My son in-law from Singapore took leave so as to accompany my daughter at home when she was alone taking care of the house and the pets. When 'Taiping Fun Ride' was post phoned till the end of the month, I just can't tell him," Hey, don't come. The event is post phoned." I can't do that, can I?

The event organizer for the Merdeka Ride intentionally chose a date to clash with the Taiping Ride. This is off course my opinion and also opinions of many other riders. Anyway, I think I will stop talking about these event managers as I am resolving not to join any major events from here onwards. Not even if they offer Pearl Izumi jerseys, not that I can shove my body into one, hahaha!

In fact, my opinion is Taiping Ride shouldn't have post phoned too, just because most riders are riding up north.

1. The Taiping Lake Gardens.

So, there was only a handful of us riders planning to head for Taiping anyway. All in all we had 9 riders, namely, myself and Lilian, Irene and Freda, Rivern and Kenny, Alex and Julie and Kook Keong. For the first ride, I proposed we do the Kuala Gula to Kuala Kurau first rather than the Taiping Fun Ride course first. We need to drive back to KL after the 2nd ride so it's more easier to ride the further one first.

The ride starts!

We grouped in front of Ai Tee Restaurant in Kuala Gula. Me and Lilian started off early and was there even before sunrise. I drove into the fishing village, took a few snaps and hunt for a place for coffee. I really missed my 'daily Hainanese coffee' after taking a sip! Hehehe. I chatted with the locals, asking them about the place and where abouts are the seafood manufacturing places.

It's about 7.45am when I left the local watering hole and just as I was taking out my foldie, KK arrived. After a while everyone who is supposed to arrive, arrived! We then started off for Kuala Kurau. None of us has been here before but it shouldn't be too hard either. Although it was sunny already, it was still cooling. We rode on leisurely and in no time, we were already going up a slope and this is the bridge over the river. We are already in Kuala Kurau! I have mapped out the route a few days earlier, so with the help of the Garmin, it's quite easy.

Sunny but cool!

We were waiting to regroup after the bridge and the route to the village is just below the bridge. We need to make a U-turn but as there were no shade, we moved opposite to wait for the others. One by one, we rejoined and finally only KK was left. I think he must have been taking scenic photos on the bridge. Then we saw him, coming down from the bridge, then we saw him zooming past despite our hollering to him. We were all laughing out loud as he did not see a whole group of cyclist on the roadside. Irene went after him and Rivern gave him a call on the phone.

KK zooming past us and not noticing us!

After KK rejoined us, we started off into the village. The first turn, we saw rows and rows of salted fish and squids being dried out in the sun. Being city folks like us, we stopped and took photos of it, much to the astonishment of the giggling locals. My destination was a salted egg factory which I read about in the blogs. I have already map it out the location and now it's time to look for it. We did find it and we checked the place out, looking at how the process of producing the salted eggs. Lilian bought a few too.

Rows and rows of salted fish drying in the sun.

Salted eggs everywhere!

After a short rest, having 100 plus we were off and now I was looking for the pedestrian bridge to ride back over the river. We took the main bridge over and there is another bridge mainly for residents. It's only for pedestrian and motorcycles and off course cyclist. The bridge actually leads opposite and also the local dwellings of the Kuala Kurau folks. We rode over it and then saw the local houses of the fisher folks. Most of them live fronting the river.

Riders on the pedestrian bridge.

After riding for a while, we rejoined back onto the main trunk road. Now I am headed for the Hua Seng Keng temple. Also read from local blogs, it's located in the middle of an oil palm plantation. I have also got the exact directions to the temple from my chat with a local this morning. When we reached the plantation's guard house, we were not allowed to ride in. The plantation manager has issued a directive not to allow outsiders into the plantation due to an accident that happened before. We need to ride out back to the trunk road and head in from there which is quite a ride! After cajoling and seeing us in bicycles, he finally relented and allowed us in.

Hua Seng Keng temple, right in the middle of a plantation.

We rode about 2 kilometers off road and finally reached the temple. The uniqueness of this temple is there's a dungeon where there are statues of how folklore beliefs of a person is rewarded or punished according to your deeds in hell. Although interesting, I did not venture there. A few did though. I took a rest at the temple compounds. Rivern was hungry again and he rode out first after waiting for a while. When the rest are out, we rode out to rejoin Rivern who was already at Ai Tee Restaurant.

We had lunch there and frankly, no matter how the blogs describe, the food here is not really as good as the blogs described. But it still good to fill our stomachs and also the price was fair. We each paid RM13 for the seafood lunch, so it was not that bad.

Clockwise from top left : Catfish curry , Fried squids, towfoo hotplate, kangkong sambal and clams.

After lunch, we wandered into the fishing village opposite. A local folk gave me his namecard this morning and after enquiring from a petrol pump attendant (yes! they do have petrol station in fishing villages, hehehe), a small boy volunteered to leads us to the 'belacan' or shrimp paste factory.

Packing 'belacan' or shrimp paste.

Here we went into the factory and see how 'belacan' was made. Quite informative too. Lilian bough a few items here, some dried shrimps and shrimp paste. I wanted some 'Kurau' salted fish but there was none, they only have red fish. After 'camwhoring' and checking out the place we left and headed for the Bird Santuary nearby. We were a bit disappointed  with the place though. There's no guides. no information counter, NO BIRD and also quite hap- hazard. Also the mangrove around there was littered with rubbish. So, that concludes our first ride and we rode back to our cars and stuffed it into our cars and left.

NO BIRD sanctuary!

We went back to Taiping and was to visit Burmese Pool near the lake gardens. We went round and round hunting for the place but then finally gave up as we were sweaty and also wee bit tired. On the way back to the hotel, I took another wrong turn and then all 5 cars had to take a U-turn out. I can see the laughter in all cars and ironically, we saw the signboard to the 'Burmese Pool' on the way out! We did not stop though.

Time for rest at the hotel before another drive to Kuala Sepetang for dinner. At 6.30pm, Alex and Julie arrived at the hotel (he was staying with a relative) while Freda and Irene was going out on another date. So, the 7 of us made our way to Kuala Sepetang in 2 cars for dinner. We dined at the same place I had dinner last night, " Kang Kao Riverside Restaurant ".

Clockwise from top left ; The really good breaded prawn curry, fried mantis prawn, sambal 4 variety vege, house speciality towfoo and the steamed golden snapper.

Luckily the dinner here was superb! It's been quite sometime since I last tasted REAL fresh fish. I think it was since Langkawi days. The curry prawn in baked bread needs a mention here too. They were really good. Also RM25 per pax for such wonderful seafood is not expensive. Many were intimidated by the front facade of the restaurant but the price is fair.

After a good nights sleep, comes tomorrow, we ride to Kuala Sepetang!