The Road to Gerik--Day 2, The Longest Day (Part I)

Rise and Shine! We jump out of bed with great eagerness, as today, we will be riding the actual actual Gerik route. Is it going to live up to its famous reputation?















I can be a good chamber maid!
Spectrum shows off his bed making skill.
This is how the hotel room look like.

This hotel got give free breakfast.

Singaporean go anywhere all the same one. Got free thing sure happy.

See SV650’s gian face.

This hotel works out to be quite cheap actually. Each person paid only 80-90rm.

Plus the hotel carpark got jagga 24 hours and parking is free for us.

The ride plan for today is like this:

Spectrum think we all superman. Can ride to Gerik, then to the NorthEast edge of Malaysia, Kota Bahru. Then to hug the east coast and rest at Terengganu. And if still got time, maybe we can cross over to the Thail border at Route 4, Kg Nilong pass.

A more detailed map on the first leg of our ride today.

From Ipoh, we are to get onto NorthSouth.

Travel a short while, exit NorthSouth to get onto Route 76, at K Kangsar.

R76 will take us to Gerik town, then we head west to R4, across the Tasik Banding lake, to Jeli and to the East coast. We moved out at 9.30 am.

*****

Ride along Route 76

No chance to say bye bye to our beloved Nardia as she is off-shift liao.

We head onto the NorthSouth.

At first, I thought we already reached the Gerik route liao.

Because even the NorthSouth highway around Ipoh is very different from the NorthSouth I have traveled numerous times before Ipoh.

You see, it is so scenic! At first, I even thought I have already reached the Gerik route.

We are actually still on the NorthSouth highway.

A short ride later, we exit from NorthSouth into the Gerik exit.

What adventure lies beyond these Gates of Gerik?

Ticket of no return. Entering the Gates of Gerik.

Here we go.

Shortly, after we passed the Gates of Gerik, we entered biking paradise.

Yipee!!! Yahoo!!!! HeeeeYaaaah!!!

You see, the scenery is Fan-tastic!

The road surface is superb!!!! Cannot find in Singapore!!!

And there is another thing that makes riding here very different, very special, that most people have overlooked and don’t realize.

It’s got a special climate.

It’s like you drop into the Bermuda Triangle like that, and can teleported to somewhere in the northern hemisphere of the Earth.

First, the sunlight. The sun is very bright, but it is not intense. The sunlight reminded me when I was in the west coast of America, at Los Angeles, Las Vegas. The Gerik sunlight lights up the surrounding scenery and give them a special look-and-feel. You can tell the grass looks different. It is light green and not dark green.

Next, the air. It is not humid. Even though the sun is bright, and it is already 11.00 am, you would hardly perspire. So it is cooling when you ride here and your skin can feel the difference.

All these factors combine to make the ride so different from other places I rode before in Malaysia. Amazing! Magical!

We passed by this beautiful river running along R76. It makes me want to go there and just hang out there and relax.

The roads along this part of R76 so far are almost all straights.

If you are riding a super fast sportsbike, you can sprint along here at great speeds.

If you are riding a GoldWing or like us, just want to soak up the scenery and climate, it makes for wonderful Sunday morning ride style, cruising at 80-100 speeds.

We exited R76 temporarily to make a fuel stop at Lenlong town.

The pump boss told me he sees a lot of bikes at his station.

They mostly en route to Betong, a town in Thailand.

I topped up 29rm of fuel here.

We returned to where we left off along R76.

Along the way, we spotted quite a few cyclists.

I thought if we are crazy enough to ride our motorcycles to Gerik, aren’t these cyclists even more lunatic than us?

I rode beside one cyclist and asked her where is she from.

She said she is from KL and she has rode from Ipoh.

I should reach Gerik ahead of her and that should give me plenty of time to think of better ice-breaking sentences than my last attempt at Ipoh and to continue our conversation there.

Got cow sign. But I didn’t see any cows along the way.

About 50km from our Lenlong fuel stop, we reached the town that has given this route its namesake, Gerik.

Before I left Singapore, I was very worried that what if something happened along our ride to Gerik. We would be stucked in the middle of the mountains with no civilization hundreds of kilometers within reach to help us.

When I reached Gerik, I realized, Chay! All my fears were unfounded.

Gerik may not be a big town. But it has a big Gerik hospital and also motorcycle garages. Just those things you might need when you get into trouble on a motorcycle.

The one thing now, that we find most useful at Gerik, is its name.

Typical Singaporean tourists.

Need to show proof that we were here mah.

While I was busy taking photographs, I placed my helmet onto the grass patch. After I left it, the helmet started to roll along the slope and down towards the drain below. Everyone around me shouted in alarm to ask me to quickly save my helmet!

I turned around and saw the helmet rolling down the slope like a football. I knew I was too late to save it even as I start to move towards it.

Since it is World Cup fever now, it is like watching your opponent shoot the ball into the your goal and you are just helplessly watching the ball sailing towards the net.

Then suddenly, a hero appeared out of nowhere to save the day. Forza leaped out of nowhere, onto the grass, and saved my helmet in his hands. Exactly like a goalkeeper.

An re-actment of the actual fantastic save by Forza.

Forza has already saved Weiz from his broken gear level.

Now he saved my helmet.

I am starting to believe superheroes exist in real life.

*****

Route 4: Bends, Bends, Bends.

After leaving Gerik town, we reached Route 4.

The personality of the ride starts to change.

The route is a bit like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The first part, along Route 76, has the personality of a very pleasant Sunday ride. The ride along Route 4 has a more nasty personality. It is no longer a Sunday ride. You need lots of concentration.

Because there are lots of bends.

The bends are pretty sharp. They are like those along South Buena Vista road, in Singapore. The “9-turns-13 bends” route. They are not sweeping fast turns that you can really go very fast on.

Another thing that makes the bends tricky and that you can’t go fast is that the bends are almost all “blind”. That is, you can’t see the end of the bend as you enter the bend. The exit of the bends are blocked by the mountain walls. If you can’t see the bend exit, then you can’t tell, where is its apex, how long is the bend and if it is a decreasing radius bend. A decreasing radius bend is a ever tightening bend. As you traverse the bend, you find yourself that you have to lean the bike lower and lower. Yes, there are many bends along Route 4 that is blind AND decreasing radius.

So I would say that riding Route 4 is really a test of your eye-line. It is like back in the figure of 8 test in Singapore riding school. As you traverse the bend, you have to see far on how the bend plays out as it unveils itself behind the mountain walls.

Because it is a test of your eye-line, you need concentration. Or else you would find yourself getting close to the edge of the rather narrow roads. And what lies beyond the road is not pleasant.

Not only do you need concentration, you also need to concentrate for a long long period of time. Because Route 4 is longer than Singapore.

And to add to all these already tricky things, remember that you are riding along the waists of mountains. So the road sometimes ascend. And as you ride, you feel like you are in the aeroplane taking off. You automatically swallow your saliva now and then to clear your ears.

Flintstone, Yehpa-dehpa-du. I don’t need to engine power and I can easily roll down the slopes and bends of Route 4.

If you don't control your line properly, you can join the rocks and fall down the mountani.


The worse is when the road descends. As the road goes down slope, a sharp bend that winds itself behind a solid solid mountain wall appears. The downward slope makes braking more difficult because now your bike has more momentum. So you really are asked to judge very carefully if you have left enough distance for your braking as you roll downwards into the bend. If you misjudge and unable to bleed off speed in time, then there are the mountain wall, or down the mountain slope or the opposite incoming cars and buses to greet you.















There are embankments along the way. I dare not look over these embankments on how steep the slope is going down.
















From here, can tell if you go off the road, it is nonstop fall down.

Best is to ride carefully along Gerik.
















As if I already did not have my hands full, I saw Beware of Elephant signs.

Elephants in the middle of the Perak mountains? I didn’t see any thankfully.

*****

Company

First, we saw another group of 4 Singapore bikes along the way.

They were heading in the opposite direction of us.

Then as we stopped to take photo, we saw a long long convey of motorbikes traversing Route 4 in the opposite direction.

The front was escorted by a Malaysia police car.

We waived at them as the long stream of bikes passed by us.

I had a taste of how our President felt during National Day parade, as he stood and waived at those numerous contingents passing him.

One of the 4 Singapore rider is romylogy.

He PM/emailed me after I got back to Singapore. This is what he said:

"Hello there,

Yup the convoy was actually the group of Terenganu Bikers, we met with them while stopping for petrol pump at Jeli.

Have a bit of chit chat with them and since we heading the same direction to Betong, we just decided to move together and meet up with them again later at Pengkalan Hulu.

Well we went up to Gua Musang going through the route you indicate in red in your map, only different we use it to go up instead from Yong Peng cause we were actually contemplating of either putting up at Gua Musang or Kota Bahru."

*****

Tasik Banding

I was told Tasik Banding is the largest man-made lake in Malaysia. It already is a big lake even if it is natural, let alone man-made.

And Route 4 cuts right through Tasik Banding.

Route 4 will run through a small little island in the middle of this lake.

The part of the bridge leading into the island.

There is an army camp overlooking the bridge. To defend against elephants?

Astronaut landed at Tasik Banding.

We stopped in the middle of the small island to rest and to have lunch. I was getting a little tired from the continuous intense concentration needed to ride the bends of Route 4. The small little kopi tiam there serves surprisingly nice nasi ayam. The food on this little island is also not expensive, unlike those on the Singapore island Sentosa.

The bridge leading out of the island in the middle of Tasik Banding.

We continue with our ride through the mountains. I forgot the distance already, but we noticed that there is a special run-off area to our left and there are a lot of cars and people who stopped there. We also detour and go see see look look.

This place is like a viewing gallery. Here, you can see the surrounding mountains. The view is beautiful. We didn’t realize we are now so high up in the mountains. Luckily there is this viewing gallery. We have been so focused on our riding that we have forgotten to admire the beautiful surrounding around us. Don’t most of us live our life like that as well? We are so busy and focused with don’t know doing what that we forget to smell the roses around us.

Yo-lay-hee-wuu.

Nice. Beautiful. Splendid.

It would be a bad thing to really fall over.

Feeling on top of the world.

I would like to stay longer but we got to go. Because the weather doesn’t look very good.

There are a lot of dark clouds gathering on top and ahead of us. Don’t know is it going to rain or it is just that we have gotten so high that we are reaching the cloud level.

We continue to ride on. There we rode through this stretch that reminded me of the hantu (ghost) story along Gerik I read about over the internet. The story said someone rode along Gerik and saw a ghost and the ghost continue to follow the person.

Where got such thing as ghost in real life, you may think. I also think like that. But as I ride through this stretch, I suddenly not so sure.

This stretch is nothing special. The road is straight. Around it are just trees. The trees make the place darker because of their cover. But it is the air. As I ride through it, the air around suddenly turns very chilly. It is very distinct. And it is very quiet. The air is also strangely very still, when before we have experiencing all the wind from the gathering rain cloud. This place really gave me the crisp and make my hair stand on its ends as I rode through.

This eerie stretch only lasted about a couple of 200m. I know when it ends. Because the air around suddenly return back to normal. The chilly still creepy air is gone. Yeeks!

We then ride through a stretch of road which just had a new coat of tarmac freshly laid over. It gave a very interesting effect. The road is still hot because it is just laid over. There is a slight light drizzle and as the drizzle falls on the hot tarmac, a layer of steam appeared. The steam is not scathing. It is just very unusual visual effect.

Unusual visual effect.

I spotted ever gathering cloud. A storm is coming and it lies directly in our path and we have to ride through it.

Storm's ahead.
Ladies and gentlemen, buckle up your seat belts.

We are going to experience some turbulence.

And boy, I tell you, what a storm it is going to be. It is going to be a storm even more perfect than George Cloney’s Perfect Storm. It is going to throw our whole ride plan off.