How the legend of Malaysian cycle touring found us

Distance: 103km
Weather: Hot and steamy followed by a storm and pouring rain.

It seems that we've entered a period where every afternoon/evening it rains. Some days we've made it to a town in time, often we haven't. On this day the rain started pouring down while we were riding and we were soaked through. We only had 10km to go to the next town though, so we kept going, hoping that soon we would find a hotel and be dry and comfortable.

We had already checked at three hotels (either too expensive or too noisy) and were headed for our fourth when a man stopped to speak to Sam. He said he had a guest house 2km away that would cost us just RM$30 for the night, so we decided to follow him.

When we pulled into his driveway I saw a sticker on his car for the website www.bicycletouringmalaysia.com and I remembered reading in other people's cycling blogs about a Malaysian who hosted cyclists in his home. They all recommended visiting David and at the time I had tried to find him on warmshowers, but without any luck, so had forgotten about it. He had found us.

David had been hosting cyclists for about six years and estimated 200 visitors in that time. On that day he had a Sardinian (not an Italian) staying and they were off to an Indian wedding that night. Now we were too. We quickly showered and put on our best clothes before climbing into the car.

The wedding was about an hour away and by the time we arrived we were starving, having hardly eaten all day. Luckily there was lots of yummy food to eat when we got there. We filled our stomachs with rice and curry, met David's family, and had photos with the bride and groom. We then got back in the car for the long drive home.

During the car trips we'd talked to William and David about their travels, past, present and future, and realised they were two of the most genuinely friendly people we'd met. On the way home we stopped at a foodcourt to try and fill William's craving for a Thai style banana pancake, but had to settle for crispy roti (like a pancake) and chocolate. While we ate we watched a Manchester United game on the big, public TV, and saw Rooney add to greatly to collective Malaysian happiness when he score a goal (almost everyone in Malaysia goes for ManU).

Back at David's we were too exhausted to even make use of his wifi before going to sleep on a bed of funny shaped rocks.